Refugee Commissioner's clarification

Reference is made to yesterday's report in The Times regarding the migrants' protest.

For the record, the Office of the Refugee Commissioner would like to clarify as follows:

Case workers from the Office of the Refugee Commissioner regularly go to the closed centres to interview asylum seekers regarding their application for refugee status.

On February 9, 2006 a delegation of the Office of the Refugee Commissioner met migrants' representatives at Safi Barracks who wanted to speak about their general situation.

On Monday afternoon, February 20, the undersigned was informed that migrants at Lyster Barracks asked to meet a delegation from the Office of the Refugee Commissioner to speak about their concerns. The undersigned agreed immediately.

As is the practice when such requests are received, on Tuesday morning, arrangements were made for a delegation of the Office of the Refugee Commissioner to go to Lyster Barracks for this meeting on Wednesday morning.

On Wednesday morning, at around 9.30 a.m., a delegation led by the Assistant Refugee Commissioner started meeting three different groups of migrants' representatives at Lyster Barracks. This meeting continued to around mid-day. In the meantime, a protest had developed by a group of other migrants also from Lyster Barracks.

Meanwhile, the Refugee Commissioner was contacted and asked to go to speak to the migrants who had staged the protest, at Lyster Barracks. The undersigned went to Lyster Barracks right away. After a brief introduction with a big gathering of migrants, a long meeting followed with around 20 migrants' representatives from 12 different nationalities. The migrants' representatives had all opportunity to air their concerns and ask all the questions they wanted to ask. The exchanges were frank, calm and cordial.