RIGHTS-ARGENTINA: Mozambican Official Victim of Discrimination

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Oct 31 2000 (IPS) - A government agency in Argentina filed a complaint with the courts Tuesday on behalf of a government official from Mozambique who was detained, mistreated and deported during a layover in Buenos Aires on his way to Bolivia, where he was to take part in a World Bank seminar.

“That place was a nightmare,” said civil engineer Antonio Mirasse, referring to a cell in the Ezeiza international airport in the Argentine capital. “I had to pay to go to the bathroom or to drink water, and I even cried at times…the treatment I received at the hands of Migrations was a grave moral offense to my person and to my dignity.”

Mirasse believes the treatment he received — which included being left nearly two days without food or water — was the result of the colour of his skin, and was not part of the procedures normally followed in Argentina.

On Tuesday, the National Institute Against Discrimination (INADI), a public agency, filed a complaint that Mirasse was the victim of illegal deprivation of liberty, abuse of authority and racial discrimination.

A World Bank representative in Argentina, Myrna Alexander, had presented the case to INADI on Sep 29. After waiting a month for a response from the Migrations office, INADI finally decided to take the case to court.

Migrations Director Angel Roig denied that Mirasse was taken into custody, although he acknowledged that the Mozambican national was put in a cell because at that moment there was no waiting room, as there is now. But he blamed the mistreatment on the Aeronautics Police, which has refused to provide any explanation.

On Tuesday, a day after the Buenos Aires daily ‘Página 12’ reported the case in a front-page article under the headline “Black Novel”, featuring a photo of Mirasse behind bars — taken with his own Polaroid camera — INADI decided to stop waiting for a response from Migrations and to take the case to court.

Alexander said that for the World Bank, “which is by definition multi-racial,” such a situation is absolutely “intolerable.”

She warned that if a repeat incident occurred, the institution would make sure foreign nationals invited to its seminars and other events would not be routed through, or scheduled to visit, the Argentine capital.

The coordinator of INADI, Cecilia Lipszyc, described the treatment to which Mirasse was subjected as “appalling,” and blasted Migrations officials who, when they found out about the case through a newspaper article, defended themselves by arguing that they did not know the man was a government official.

A Brazilian national had also filed a complaint against Migrations personnel with INADI, Lipszyc told IPS. However, he failed to follow up on the case, and nothing came of it. But, she added, there are many other cases which are never reported for fear of reprisals or harassment.

There are very few blacks in this Southern Cone country, the population of which is largely of European — mainly Spanish and Italian — origin, while there is a large indigenous and mestizo (mixed-race) component.

The strongest expressions of racial discrimination target the Jewish community — the largest in Latin America –, the Roma or gypsies, and immigrants from east Asia or neighbouring countries like Bolivia, Peru and Paraguay.

The Argentina-based International Organisation of Migration (IOM) and a number of human rights groups complain that a law dating to the 1976-83 military dictatorship, defining immigration as a “security” problem, is still on the books here.

Mirasse, a waterworks engineer with Mozambique’s Ministry of Public Works and Housing, left his country on Jun 23, heading for La Paz, where he was to participate in a Jun 26-30 seminar on water and sewerage systems. But he never made it to the seminar.

Since he did not have a visa for Bolivia, which he was to be given at the La Paz airport, Mirasse spent one and a half days in detention, and was deported as an undocumented alien, despite the fact that his passport and air tickets were in order, and that he had a letter inviting him to the seminar.

Mirasse is in charge of water and sewerage works and projects in Mozambique’s Ministry of Public Works and Housing. This year, the impoverished southeast African country was hit hard by flooding that led to the evacuation of some 500,000 people.

On his ill-fated journey, Mirasse flew out of Maputo, the capital of Mozambique, made a first stopover in Johannesburg, South Africa, and from there flew to Buenos Aires, where he was to catch a connection to La Paz.

But when he arrived in Buenos Aires, he was detained by Migrations personnel because he could not produce a visa for Bolivia, although he tried in vain to explain that he would be given a visa when he reached the airport in La Paz.

Due to weather problems, Mirasse had missed his connection to La Paz. That aggravated the situation, because he also lacked a visa allowing him to stay in Argentina for a day waiting for the next flight to Bolivia, and was only authorised as a passenger in transit.

He said Migrations personnel nicknamed him “Saddam Hussein” and locked him in a cell, where he spent nearly two days without food or water, and without being allowed to place a phone call, even though he explained over and over again that he had business to attend to in La Paz.