Haitian and Cuban detainees, including children, are reportedly being beaten and tortured by immigration staff at the Carmichael Road Detention Centre in Nassau, Bahamas.
The revelations have prompted Amnesty International, the respected Human Rights Organization, to call for an “immediate, thorough and independent investigation into these allegations, to ensure that anyone found responsible is brought to justice.”
The human rights group claims a number of Haitians escaped from the Centre, which is used to hold asylum-seekers and illegal migrants, on October 9. Over the following two days, staff allegedly beat several adult Haitian detainees, apparently in retaliation for the escape. Some detainees were seriously injured but were denied medical treatment, according to Amnesty International. All detainees who were beaten were sent back to Haiti, apparently to cover the evidence, but other detainees are at risk of further violence.
A number of other incidents were reported that even involved children being tortured.
Disgraced Attorney General Alfred Sears was skeptical of the reports but promised to “investigate” the matter, his usual response.
Amnesty International has, for years, complained about the illegal and inhumane conditions of another Bahamas detention centre, Her Majesty’s Prison at Fox Hill. The Bahamas Government has done absolutely nothing to rectify the situation there, despite the prison being a national disgrace, having been described as one of the most inhumane prisons on earth. Conditions at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq are considered more humane.
