The Tribune

By LAMECH JOHNSON

Tribune Staff Reporter

ljohnson@tribunemedia.net

HUMAN rights activist Fred Smith is calling on Immigration Minister Fred Mitchell to remember his “Human Rights days” and do his job in a lawful, organised and systematic way.

Mr Smith, QC, who has been consistently dismissed by Mr Mitchell as “a joke”, spoke to The Tribune yesterday following the arraignment of 19-year-old Dahene Nonord concerning an alleged assault and obstruction of an immigration officer on Monday. Ms Nonord, who was born in the Bahamas in 1995, holds a Commonwealth of the Bahamas Certificate of Identity, which was granted by the Bahamas government in 2011 and expires on April 3, 2016.

Disagreement between Mr Smith and Mr Mitchell over the government’s newly implemented immigration policy intensified earlier this month when Mr Smith compared conditions at the Carmichael Road Detention Centre to a Nazi concentration camp.

His statement came days before Mr Mitchell was due to speak before the Organisation of American States, to clear up what the minister said was misinformation over the immigration restrictions.

On Sunday, Mr Mitchell not only said he would not respond to Mr Smith, the president of the Grand Bahama Human Rights Association (GBHRA), until he apologised and retracted the comparison but further dismissed his calls for an explanation of a photograph depicting illegal migrants “caged like animals” in the back of a vehicle following their apprehension in Exuma.

“Mr Mitchell was a human rights advocate with me,” said Mr Smith yesterday, reminding the public that Mr Mitchell “worked with Joe (Joseph) Darville and me back in the 80s and 90s in the draft of the mandatory death penalty, on all sorts of issues”.

“Please, Mr Mitchell, remember your human rights days as well as being a politician,” Mr Smith said. “This is a sincere message, please tone it down, respect people’s rights, but still do your job in a lawful, organised, but systematic way.”

Mr Smith suggested that instead of conducting raids in the capital and various Family Islands – as Mr Mitchell said the government would do – “what you should do is to pause and please have your hundreds of officers look at the thousands of files that exist in Hawkins Hill and go through them one by one, and people who are entitled to citizenship or permanent residency or work permits or spousal permits, etc, start to issue them.”

“So suddenly you’ll have thousands of people who are allegedly undocumented, suddenly they’ll be documented, suddenly they’ll have status. And you bring them into the economy so that they become part of the economy and they don’t stay outside of the economy.”

He added that the current approach of “running around, raiding people, putting them in the Carmichael (Road) Detention Centre where there’s no space or facilities for them to be held” only complicates the issue and further breaks the law by unlawfully holding persons and deporting them without due process.

Mr Darville, vice-president of the GBHRA, said that the handling of the immigration issue “goes way back to 25 to 30 years ago when this same gentleman (Mr Mitchell), Fred Smith and I, fought on behalf of Bahamians who were being harassed simply because of their origin or nationality.

“That is something that has to be wiped clean out of this situation and I am calling upon the Minister for Immigration to read my ten-point plan that I presented to him immediately after this whole situation began.”

“None of this situation would take place, beginning with an amnesty going all the way through to a committee which is formed to examine all of the possibilities within the Commonwealth of the Bahamas, island by island, to find out who is here legitimately, who is not, and then to deal with it in a very humane, Christian, christ-like fashion. And that is not what is happening in my beloved Bahamaland right now.”

On Monday night, the Department of Immigration released a statement opting not to comment on the alleged incident between Ms Nonord and immigration officers except to say that whatever Mr Smith says should be taken with “grains of salt”.

“We again say that the Department of Immigration has not been involved in or sanctioned the inhumane treatment of anyone within its care or control,” the statement said.