Bulgarian Guantanamo

Thank you all so much for your comments to my post on racism in Bulgaria. The stories you share a horrific but, I think, it'd be worse to leave them untold. I was especially shaken after I read an anonymous comment by someone who said they were talking from experience and described the experiences of black people in detention camps in Bulgaria.

Until I read that comment, I had never heard of anything like it so I started looking around for more information. I contacted Yana Buhrer Tavanier, freelance journalist and Bulgarian Activist Alliance member, who, turns out, actually wrote a story on the Busmantsi Detention Center that my Anonymous Reader was referring to. The piece was published in June 2007 and paints a pretty gruesome picture of the Busmantsi Home for Temporary Foreigner Residence. One of the people she interviews for the piece (a non-detainee), actually, describes Busmantsi as the Bulgarian Guantanamo.

Basically, the "home" is supposed to serve as temporary residence for illegal immigrants or people whose application for refugee status was rejected and are waiting to be deported. That's all fine and make sense BUT unfortunately, there are many problems:

• People are supposed to be taken into the detention center only as last resort: when a person has committed a crime, when they are a security threat, etc. Instead, locking people up is pretty much the norm.

• People are supposed to be held there only temporarily while their respective country representatives prepare their deportation papers. In most European Union countries that period is about 60 days but human rights groups are pushing for a one-month maximum wait period for obvious reasons. Well, in Busmantsi people are held for YEARS (1, 2 or more). No explanation why or for how long.

• Not knowing how long they are going to be detained, people begin to demand information. Officials cannot provide it. People protest and to gain control over them, officials put them in solitary confinement. Reminder: this is NOT a prison.

• MANY detainees turn to self-abuse and even try to commit suicide. One person sewed their mouth shut. Another wraped himself up in his sheet, then tried to set it on fire with his cigarette. Another person wrote "Where is my freedom?" on the wall of his solitary confinement cell. In his own blood. When asked about suicide attempts, the Director of the Institution responds: There have been no suicide attempts. There have been provocations in the sense that they (detainees) make demands and if their demands are not met, they harm themselves. But suicide attempts: no such thing. For real.

If you are Bulgarian, you should Yana's piece: Моят дом - моята крепост. For everyone else who doesn't read Bulgarian, you should read the brief note on this in this past year's Amnesty International Report on Bulgaria and this conversation with a Bulgarian Migration Officer in The Sofia Echo.

In the meantime, I am trying to figure out what to do with all this newly acquired information. What's really sad is that if Yana's piece should have been enough to put an end to all this but judging from the Amnesty report and the testimonies here, that seems not to be the case. Pathetic and sad.