Castle Peak Bay Immigration Centre detainees allege abuse

Indonesian migrant worker, Yuli Riswati, lived in Hong Kong and covered the Anti-Extradition Bill protests for her home country. Towards the end of last year, the Immigration Department detained her for 28 days on grounds that her work visa had expired. Afterwards, she was deported back to Indonesia. She tearfully complained of the inhumane treatment she received while in custody. She, a Muslim, was stripped nude for physical examination by a male doctor. Human rights concerns at the Castle Peak Bay Immigration Centre (CIC) were raised as a result.

In their interviews with Stand News, many formerly detained women stated that the environment at the detention centre was so horrible and their treatment so inhumane that they would have rather gone to jail than stayed. One claimed to have sustained injuries inflicted by multiple female immigration officers whose knees pressed her naked body to the ground for a body search. Another said that insufficient medical care led to the necrosis of her re-implanted fingers. They were outraged with the Immigration Department and swore to bring the truth to light. "These are the facts. People must know the truth." Some LegCo members believe that the Immigration Department uses the same methodology as the Correctional Services Department in its treatment of detainees and that the CIC is "a black hole within a black hole". In response to an inquiry from Stand News, the Immigration Department stated that it ensured its detainees of medical care, the means for lodging complaints and fair treatment in other respects in accordance with established procedures. It also stated that no suicides had occurred since it took over the CIC.

Ms S: body search while naked and held to the ground

Forty-year-old Nepalese Ms S (alias) came to Hong Kong in 2003 to escape from the Nepalese Civil War. After her visa had expired, she was detained twice in the CIC. In 2007, she surrendered herself to the Immigration Department and was held in detention for more than four months. Then, in September last year, she sought to make a formal request for asylum. Once she went to the CIC to renew her Recognizance document, she was suddenly arrested. She was detained for more than three months in total. To this day, she still does not know why she was imprisoned.

S indicated that during her sudden detention last year, the arrangements for her body search were extremely inappropriate. At the time, seven or eight female immigration officers took her to the basement washroom in the CIC. They ordered her to strip off all her clothes and restrained her in a "face down" position on the ground by pressing their knees on her. Then, they searched her body. They also shoved her against the walls and the floor. When she loudly asked, "Why are you arresting me?" They did not respond.

The body search led to injuries to her back, waist and arms. After a few days in the CIC, some immigration officers took her to the clinic within the centre. The male doctor and female nurse requested her to take off her remaining underwear to examine her wounds. After the nurse had drawn the curtain, a three-inch gap remained through which the male staff could observe the entire examination process. She felt offended.

S mentioned an Indonesian woman whose fingers were broken from an accident before she entered the CIC. She was previously turned away by the hospital. The Immigration Department did not permit outside doctors to prescribe medication but there was insufficient medication at the CIC clinic. After multiple fruitless complaints for weeks, her re-implanted fingers subsequently necrosed.

She told Stand News that Castle Peak Bay has "unwritten rules". When the Justice of Peace or LegCo members visited, the immigration officers would consider them "disobedient and troublemakers” if the detainees dared raise their hand to complain. As punishment, they would be sent to solitary confinement.

Once, when a senior immigration officer came to patrol, S raised her hand to ask why she was detained. It resulted in her being sent to solitary confinement. She said that the space had no window or toilet. The blanket provided smelled strongly of urine and was mouldy.

Demands for the Immigration Department to stop treating detainees like dogs

If asking questions at the CIC was a crime, then the forty-year-old Indonesian woman NN (alias) was a "rabble-rouser" in the eyes of its staff. NN was held prisoner for three weeks in 2013 and recalled being under intense pressure while there. A female Vietnamese fellow detainee did not understand English and wanted to ask the staff for a rubber band to tie up her long hair, which led to a female staff member shouting at her "as if she were a dog". Unable to tolerate it any longer, NN told the staff member, "Speak slowly. She doesn't understand." She expressed her desire for staff not to take their anger out on fellow detainees. The staff member retaliated, accusing her of "stirring up trouble" and controlling other detainees. The staff demanded a public apology from NN and sent NN to solitary confinement for two days. Afterwards, she found out that the other detainees held a hunger strike to demand her release. The staff wrote a letter to the detainees indicating that she was fine but did not allow her to return to her original cell.

S and Yuli were both forced to go through the humiliation of having a male doctor examine them while naked. NN had a similar experience, too. NN said that on her first day at the CIC, a male doctor told her to strip naked for examination. She complained to the staff and asked to be placed in a different room but to no avail. The doctor told her to turn around twice. On the third time, he told her to turn around more slowly so he could see.

The CIC disregarded her seafood allergy and her request for vegetarian meals. The staff said that they would need to follow up with the doctor's recommendations so the issue with her meals persisted for at least a week. When the resulting rash developed all over her body, her request for soothing cream also fell on deaf ears. Another prisoner had a headache and asked for analgesia but a staff just replied, "You don't have to see the doctor if you don't have a problem." In the end, the pain was so unbearable that the prisoner fainted. NN recounted another incident where she did not have a change of clothes for three days so she had to do her own laundry at night. In the daytime, she wore only a thin blanket as clothing. She was asked why but she was reprimanded by the staff when explaining herself. She frequently had to wear clothes that were not fully dried. The transgressions were countless.

To this day, NN remains indignant about her treatment at the CIC. She admonished the CIC for not having specific rules for staff to follow, saying that such bad treatment was unnecessary, "CIC is not a prison. In prison, they don't even subject you to this amount of pressure and they would provide medicine for headaches." NN demanded that the Immigration Department stop treating detainees like dogs and shouting at them. "It's like they're saying, 'You're begging Hong Kong to take you in. You are low-class degenerates so you have to do whatever we say.' Those are the rules!"

Utilizing methods favoured in the Correctional Services Department, CIC is "a black hole within a black hole"

The CIC was previously a detention centre within the Victoria Prison. In mid-2005, the CIC was temporarily managed by the Correctional Services Department until April 2010, when the Immigration Department formally took over. The majority of the detainees held there were to be deported. They would eventually either leave Hong Kong or be issued a Recognizance document. However, the wait can take anywhere from a few days to years.

Together with Shiu Ka-Chun, Fernando Cheung Chiu-hung and others, LegCo member Eddie Chu Hoi-dick paid an official visit of inquiry to the CIC in May this year.

Chu described the space inside the Centre as filthy and cramped. The crowds of detainees barely see daylight and spend all their time in the so-called "activity room" watching television. On the day of his visit, a female detainee came to him and said, "This place is miserable. It's full of hardship."

He feels that it is inappropriate to have only one male doctor on duty. It shows absolutely no consideration for the female detainees and makes them feel violated, especially in regards to Muslim rights. He questions why detainees that have not broken the law are held in conditions even worse than prisons. He believes that after the Immigration Department took over the CIC, they continued treating detainees with methods borrowed from "prisons under the Correctional Services Department". "The Immigration Department clearly learned the bad habits from the Correctional Services Department." He used the analogy of a "black hole" and said that if the Correctional Services Department is a "black hole", then the CIC is a "black hole within a black hole". Completely independent from the correctional system, "this will only produce more and more problems."

A frequent visitor of CIC detainees and their families, Rev Franco Mella said the Centre lacks clear rules in many areas. He stated that some female immigration officers would order the detainees around like "queens" and shout at any disobedient subjects; even permission has to be granted for meals. Some detainees feel "it's worse than prison" and would rather return there. "Why does the Immigration Department have so much authority? How can it be more powerful than the Correctional Services Department?"

Rev Mella said that another problem is that there is no time limit to one's detention at the CIC. Some are imprisoned there for many years. Stand News previously reported on Vietnamese refugee, Vo Van Hung, who was a minor when he committed murder. He was sentenced to 29 years in prison under Tung Chee-hwa and was released in 2016. But as he missed his deadline to apply for Hong Kong residency, the Immigration Department planned to deport him. As a result, the CIC detained him once he was released from prison. In August this year, he will have been detained for four years. 

Because of the recent COVID-19 pandemic, many flights were cancelled and detainees were forced to remain at the CIC for more than two months. Rev Mella questions why Recognizance documents are not being offered as a discretionary measure to allow detainees to leave, believing it would have reduced infection risk.

Locked up in Stanley Prison last year, Shiu Ka-chun said he has heard many things about the CIC from his fellow foreign inmates. They said that they would rather stay in Stanley Prison than go to CIC. He had made nine recommendations to the Immigration Department on improvement of the treatment of detainees. All were rejected except one, which had to do with the supply of water. It may have been because detainees were witnessed sharing a scoop to draw water from a large bucket. "Caught red-handed", the extremely unhygienic practice was finally changed.

Family reveals detainee's suicide

Members of the CIC Concern Group identify themselves as Yuli's friends. Before she was deported to Indonesia, they promised her to continue publicly exposing the conditions at the CIC even after she had left. On top of the poor living conditions, many CIC detainees developed mental health problems from long-term imprisonment. Many weeks ago, a family member of a detainee revealed that a Pakistani man died from hanging himself after being detained for more than eight months. S said she also knew of people who committed suicide but this information was not made public. The Concern Group found that the majority of those detained at the CIC before 2010 expressed that the problems were minor based on interviews with dozens of former detainees and their families. The human rights violations that S and NN referred to only occurred after the Immigration Department took over in 2010.

Fernando Cheung Chiu-hung drew a parallel between a "black box" and the lack of supervision of the CIC. Detaining people indefinitely is a form of torture. Checks and balances must be put in place. Otherwise, the people involved would abuse their "supreme authority", which would be extremely horrifying. He believes that the suicides in the CIC should be made public because it pertains security procedures.

The Concern Group put forward four major demands: (1) The Immigration Department must provide up-to-date information on the number of detainees and their detention duration. (2) The Hong Kong Government must expand the ombudsperson's scope of responsibilities and independence to operate. (3) The CIC must re-evaluate its current complaint mechanisms and set up an independent means for complaints to ensure detainees' protection. (4) The Immigration Department must explain how internal investigations deal with complaints and guarantee that complainants will not be subject to solitary confinement or other reprisals.

Despite knowing that the Immigration Department would use every opportunity to take "revenge" by revoking her Recognizance document or relegating her back to the CIC, S still chose to speak out because she was so infuriated. Determined to expose horrible violations occurring within once she left, she told the staff at the CIC, "I don't even care if you kill me." As for NN, she wanted to share her experiences because the truth must be known. "This is the truth. People must know the truth."

Immigration Department's response: no suicides since CIC's takeover

When Stand News enquired with the Immigration Department, it stated that the CIC provided detainees with medical treatment and examination, exercise, personal hygiene, means for complaints, visits by Justices of the Peace, communication with legal consultants and other arrangements according to Cap. 115E of the Laws of Hong Kong, Immigration (Treatment of Detainees) Order (hereinafter referred to as "Treatment Orders"). It claimed to operate strictly in accordance to set procedures to ensure detainees fair and proper treatment.

The Immigration Department claimed that there has been no cases of suicide since it took over the CIC in April 2010 and that the CIC does not document any relevant statistics. The CIC detained 385 last year and 390 people up to May this year. Its website previously stated that the CIC held 404 detainees as of March this year.

The Immigration Department also stated that the CIC takes the health of its detainees very seriously and sends them to the doctor for routine examination on arrival. Medical staffs of the same gender as the detainee assist in this process. Additionally, if a detainee is unwell and has a food allergy, for example, the doctor will provide them with the proper medical treatment. The doctor can also request the CIC to modify meals or refer the patient to public hospitals for treatment as required. They will also explain medical procedures, prescriptions, test results and etc. to the detainees.

The Immigration Department indicated if a detainee violates the rules, the CIC would launch an inquiry and investigate based on the circumstances, allowing those involved an opportunity to exculpate themselves. According to the Treatment Orders, a detainee can be separately confined by order of the Superintendent for a period not exceeding 7 days in the interests of good order in the Centre. Moreover, officers can authorise the isolation of individual detainees per the doctor's psychological or physical assessment to maintain the safety of others.

The Department asserted that detainees are informed of the means to lodge complaints through posters and notices. If they are dissatisfied with these arrangements, they can complain via current mechanisms and the Immigration Department will handle it seriously and fairly.

In response to the COVID-19 outbreak, detainees arriving in Hong Kong from Mainland China or other countries must undergo 14 days of quarantine with medical supervision before being placed at the CIC.

The Centre is currently arranging throat swabs for all newcomer detainees. The CIC presently measures detainees' temperatures and provides them with surgical masks on a daily basis. Those with fever or other symptoms will be immediately sent for medical examination or to a public hospital if needed. The Immigration Department specifies that the daytime activity rooms, sleeping quarters, bathrooms and office areas are regularly disinfected. The CIC has also suspended all non-essential visits to minimise social contact.

The Immigration Department website previously stated that it did not keep records of the average and maximum detention periods. It states that that it regularly reviews individual cases to determine whether a detention period should be extended based on detention policies and relevant legal principles set by the court. They would notify relevant personnel in writing of the conclusion and its justification.

Editor's Note:

A Recognizance document is not a visa and simply provides one with conditional release. It does not legalize one's stay in Hong Kong nor confer any rights. The document holder must report to the immigration authorities periodically.

Source: The Stand News, June 2020, https://bit.ly/2ZzKlfI