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NGO head: Czech detention centres for migrants are inhuman

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Bern, Switzerland, Oct 8 (CTK) – Living conditions in the Czech detention facilities for refugees are inhuman and humiliating, Czech Organisation for Aid to Refugees (OPU) head Martin Rozumek said in an interview with Swiss Radio and Television (SRF) released on Wednesday.

Rozumek said there were not enough toilets in the facilities and the refugees often did not even know why they were detained.

The Czech government wants to discourage possible further refugees from moving across the Czech Republic in this way and make them choose a different route, he told SRF.

He said the Czech authorities are shifting the burden to other countries.

The Czech police are intensively searching for Syrian, Iraqi and Pakistani refugees who chose the Czech Republic as a transit country, and they place them into detention facilities, including children, minors travelling alone and whole families, Rozumek said.

He said OPU volunteers said they saw barefoot and poorly dressed children who seemed to be hungry in Czech detention centres.

Sanitary conditions were very bad in the facilities, Rozumek said, adding that about 70 men slept on camping mats in a gymnasium and only few toilets were available to them and they were not allowed to go there without guards.

He said he considered the conditions in which the refugees were staying a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Rozumek confirmed to SRF that the Czech police forced the migrants to get naked. He said the migrants had to pay for their stay in the detention facility according to Czech law and they had to undergo thorough body searches because the police had to find out whether they had any money or not.

This was inhuman and humiliating, he said.

As long as Milan Chovanec (Social Democrats, CSSD) is Czech interior minister, nothing is going to change in the detention centres, Rozumek said.

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