Prague, May 29 (CTK) – A part of foreigners in the detention facility in Balkova, west Bohemia, started a rebellion against the police and barricaded themselves inside a room on Monday, but the police suppressed the revolt, Interior Minister Milan Chovanec has tweeted, adding that no one suffered any injury.
The rebellion was probably provoked by the fact that one of the foreigners had received information about being expelled from the country, Katerina Rendlova, spokeswoman for the foreigner police, said.
The police will know the exact reason after questioning the foreigners.
Rendlova said two citizens of Nigeria started the unrest around noon. Thirteen other foreigners joined them.
They barricaded themselves in a room. When the police wanted to take them out, they started to throw furniture and vandalise the facility, Rendlova said.
An emergency police unit helped suppress the revolt. The foreigners were marched out of the room after less than one hour.
Chovanec denounced the rebellion still before it was suppressed. Those who stirred it up should bear the consequences, he said.
“We will by no means tolerate such a behaviour. I hope that the police will soon resolve the problem,” he told CTK.
The detention facility for foreigners has a capacity of 200 beds. According to the latest data by the Interior Ministry, 56 foreigners were staying there as from midnight.
This detention facility serves to foreigners who are waiting for their expulsion from the country.
Other similar facilities are in Bela pod Bezdezem, central Bohemia, and in Vysni Lhoty, north Moravia, with the capacity of 288 beds together. There are 23 foreigners in them now, according to the Interior Ministry’s data.
The detention facilities were crowded mainly during the migrant crisis in 2015 when refugees were crossing the Czech Republic as a transit country to get illegally mainly to Germany and Nordic countries.
The foreigner police detained 8563 foreigners staying in the country illegally then, which was 3741 more than in 2014. Last year the number of detained illegal migrants dropped by 3302.
Foreigners detained in now closed facility in Drahonice, south Bohemia, went on a hunger strike in 2015. They also revolted once in Bela and wanted to get out of the strictly protected complex.
Those are usual forms of protests in detention facilities, Rendlova said.
“Today’s case was exceptional since nothing like that had happened for a quite long time,” Rendlova told CTK.
Apart from detention facilities, there are admission, stay and integration facilities for the foreigners seeking asylum in the Czech Republic.
