RIGHTS-AUSTRIA: Immigrant’s Death Sparks Protest In Nigeria

By Toye Olori Reprint | | Print |

Toye Olori

LAGOS, May 6 1999 (IPS) - Rights groups in Nigeria have protested the death of a Nigerian immigrant in police custody in Austria.

The immigrant, Marcos O died of exhaustion due to excessive gagging by three Austrian police officers trying to enforce his deportation last week.

In two separate protest letters to the Austrian Ambassador to Nigeria and the Nigerian Minister of External Affairs, Ignatius Olisa-Emeka, the Constitutional Rights Project (CRP), a Lagos- based human rights group, expressed shock and outrage over Marcos’ death.

“The media accounts of the extreme humiliation and degrading treatment meted out to this hapless Nigerian have remained undenied by the Austrian government, thus leaving us to accept them as the true account of the events leading to Marcos O’s untimely death,” Clement Nwankwo, Executive Director of CRP said in the letter, made available to IPS Thursday.

“The Constitutional Rights Project notes with concern what is fast becoming an institutionalised norm in European countries and their law enforcement agencies, who ordinarily are supposed to be the shining examples in respect for human rights and due process of the law, no matter who is involved, whether black or white, immigrant or refugee,” the CRP said.

Marcos O’s death brings to two such murders in the hands of foreign law enforcement agents within the past one year, while trying to enforce deportation order on Nigerian immigrants in Europe.

Semira Adamu, a 20-year-old asylum seeker, died in Brussels, Belgium, in September 1998, due to the effect of sedative substances she was injected with during a deportation exercise.

Before her death, Semira had succeeded in thwarting efforts to bundle her out of Belgium by engaging a private lawyer who made sure that each attempt to deport her during the previous five times was publicised. Her death sparked protests in both Brussels and Lagos.

Barely six months after her death, another Nigerian asylum seeker, John Madu, 31, allegedly died in Belgium after doctors refused to attend to him.

Madu, who had been living in Belgium without proper documents, after his application for asylum was turned down by the Belgian authorities, had developed liver disease — hepatitis B — but was refused treatment when he visited hospital, according to media reports.

The CRP says it is surprised that “such a level of inhuman and degrading practices could still be taking place in Europe at this time and age.”

In the letter to Nigeria’s Minister of External Affairs, the CRP says “despite these incidents perpetrated by foreign governments against our citizens, the Nigerian government has refused to show any commitment by responding to such injustices.”

“As a responsible government, we do no expect your ministry and the Nigerian government to fold its arms while its citizens are treated in this manner by foreign countries. If it must be emphasised, the Nigerian government owes it as duty to respect, protect and demand for the respect of the rights of its citizens anywhere in the world, whether they are illegal aliens or not,” it argued.

The CPR called on Nigeria to prevail on the Austrian government to fully investigate the circumstance surrounding the death of Marcos O and punish those responsible. It also called on the Nigerian government to forestall future incidents.

Nigeria’s military leader, General Abdulsalami Abubakar, last month urged a group of Nigerian diplomats to always demand of their host countries, fair and humane treatments for all “our nationals whatever the circumstance.”

“It is incumbent on you to give pride of place to the promotion of the welfare of Nigerians in your respective countries of accreditation,” Abubakar told the 45 envoys posted to Nigerian missions abroad.

The economic down-turn in the West African country of more than 110 million people, since the introduction of the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) in 1986, coupled with the political chaos following the annulment of the 1993 presidential election and human rights abuses by the late Gen Sani Abacha’s regime (1993-1998), has forced many Nigerians to seek greener pastures abroad.

Sixty four Nigerian immigrants were deported from Italy last month. They include 47 girls and young women aged between 15 and 20, who were alleged to be street hawkers in that country.

The police in Lagos, which is still holding them, said the women would undergo HIV tests to determine their health status before any of them is released.

“The police also would like to find out why they chose to travel to Italy without proper documents and whether a syndicate for human traffickers was behind them,” says Abimbola Ojomo, an Assistant Inspector-General of Police.