Lany, Central Bohemia, Oct 24 (CTK) – President Milos Zeman is supporting the migration policy of the Czech government and Interior Ministry, Interior Minister Milan Chovanec (Social Democrats, CSSD) told journalists after a meeting of Zeman’s expert team Friday.
They only differed in their views of Slovakia’s legal complaint about European Commission over the mandatory quotas for the redistribution of refugees he would like to join, Chovanec said.
“Zeman only mentioned it that he would like to join Slovakia’s complaint against the European Commission. Otherwise, we agree,” Chovanec said.
Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka (CSSD) said earlier the Czech Republic would not join the Slovak complaint as it did not want to be isolated in the talks on the rejection of the permanent immigration quotas.
Chovanec said the participants in the meeting had also spoken about the situation in the detention facilities for refugees, due to which the Czech Republic was criticised by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCR), Zeid Ra’ad Zeid Al-Hussein.
He accused the Czech Republic of violating the migrants’ rights.
Zeid Ra’ad Zeid Al-Hussein argued that it was common for Czech authorities to hold the refugees for 40-90 days, making their strip searches in order to gain money from them for the payment of their costs of their stay in the refugee facilities.
Chovanec said participants in the meeting had agreed that the refugees should be detained even in the future so that the European right were observed.
“These are the people who do not want to stay here, who do not want to ask for asylum,” Chovanec said.
He said the refugees were being detained so that they could be returned to the countries from which they had come to Europe.
Chovanec said he had invited Zeid Ra’ad Zeid Al-Hussein to visit the Czech detention facilities.
The conditions in them are being constantly improved, he added.
He said he wanted to demonstrate this by inviting the media and ambassadors of some European countries to them.
“They should see the real state of affairs,” Chovanec said.
