By Center for Legal Aid – Voice in Bulgaria* By virtue of its geography, Bulgaria is likely the most important land border of the European Union with regards to recent migration flows and Europe’s efforts to keep asylum seekers off the continent’s territory. It borders both Turkey, where millions of refugees reside and which is…
As part of the Who Gets Detained? project, over the course of 10 months starting in August 2016, the team of the Center of Legal Aid – Voice in Bulgaria collected statistics on the number and characteristics of the people who end up behind the walls of the closed centres for foreigners, and of those who are arrested and…
by Maria Cheresheva “There is no life for us – neither in Bagdad, nor anywhere else. The Islamic State rape girls and force them to convert to Islam. They have taken over 500 girls already. It was unbearable at this point. I dropped out of fifth grade and left.” This is how the story of…
By CLA staff On 15 February 2016, the Ombudsman of the Republic of Bulgaria published its annual report as a National Prevention Mechanism of torture and other forms of cruel, degrading and inhuman treatment in Bulgaria’s prisons and other places for deprivation of liberty. A key theme in the report were the conditions in the…
by Radostina Pavlova A landmark decision of the Bulgarian Supreme Administrative Court (SAC) from January 2016 may improve substantially the state of human rights for detainees in the closed centres for foreigners awaiting deportation, sparing them the humiliation and pain of body searches and solitary confinement. The ruling in successful lawsuit against the Ministry of…
An analysis of 55 rulings of the Sofia City Administrative Court, related to the detention of migrants in the Busmantsi closed centre, shows that it is relatively easy for the police to find reasons to issue detention orders. Not having ID documents or having already served a prison sentence for crossing the border illegally are…
by José Antonio Sanchez Manzano The former Jewish neighbourhood close to Zhenski Pazar (Women’s Market) in Sofia, ”Iuchbunar”, is now called Little Beirut more and more often, because of the growing number of inhabitants of Arabic origin. During the day the streets of the most multicultural part of the capital are colorful and merry, filled…
By Radostina Pavlova Just two months after the coming into force of the changes in the Law on the Asylum and Refugees (LAR), which granted powers to the Bulgarian State Agency for the Refugees (SAR) to place asylum seekers in closed centres (see Law allows detention of asylum seekers in Bulgaria), the LAR was amended…
Amendments of the Law on the Asylum and Refugees grant the Bulgarian State Agency for the Refugees the power to place asylum seekers in closed centres. These broad discretionary powers pose risks of arbitrary detention and corruption.