Sign the Petition to Release a Refugee Who Has Long Been Detained!!

   On February 9, the long-awaited verdict of Mr. N’s asylum case came out (“Mr. N” is a pseudonym used for safety reasons): the case was decided in Mr. N’s favor! In other words, the Seoul Administrative Court acknowledged the fact that Mr. N would be at risk of persecution if returned to Nigeria.

The news of the decision was all the more exciting since Mr. N had been detained in the Hwasung immigration center for the past year and 8 months. Soon enough, however, we were informed that the center would not be releasing Mr. N, as the Ministry of Justice would be appealing the decision. The center had no intention of releasing Mr. N until the decision was finalized in favor of Mr. N.

Such unreasonable stance of the Ministry of Justice is unacceptable. The present refugee status determination process is not a system to make someone a refugee but a system to simply identify an already-existing refugee as such.    

  

Even someone who is arrested under a murder charge and undergoes the trial process is immediately released if his innocence is upheld by the court of first instance. But in this case, even though Mr. N has been detained not due to a criminal charge but due to a violation of an administrative measure, namely immigration law, the Ministry of Justice is refusing to release Mr. N in spite of the verdict which has in effect declared Mr. N a refugee.

Furthermore, the fact of the matter is that immigration detainees could be subject to indefinite detention. This is according to the Korean immigration law. We all know that one of the most important rights enshrined in the modern criminal law is the principle that nobody may be arrested or detained without due process of law, without a fair trial at court. Yet, this same principle does not apply to foreign nationals living in Korea. Why should their human rights be any different from the Korean nationals’ human rights?

 

When we visited Mr. N at the Hwasung immigration center last time, he had become much more fragile, both physically and emotionally. He told us that he had been continually harassed by other detainees at the center because he was from Africa and he was black: “They constantly call me names and call me a monkey,” he told us.

 

Please join us in sending a letter of petition to the Minister of Justice on behalf of Mr. N who is being forced to endure yet another prolonged detention until his case is finalized, even after a year and 8 months of being confined inside a jail-like center facility although he has now attained a successful verdict and deserves protection as a refugee.    http://www.change.org/petitions/minister-of-justice-south-korea-release-a-refugee-who-has-long-been-detained 

 

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