The prosecution warns Government of the Canary Islands that the thesis with which he intends to hold the State responsible for the migrant minors who reach its shores by boat cannot be supported and He sees no reason to delay his entry into the centres suitable reception structures.
“Unaccompanied foreign minors are always helpless. There is no clearer situation for a homeless minor than that of unaccompanied foreign minors,” says the chief prosecutor of the Canary Islands, María Farnés Martínez, in a document advanced by ‘The country” to which the Efe agency had access.
The head of the Public Ministry of the Canary Islands makes these reflections on the foundations of the decree made public on Friday -only its device- in response to the procedure that the Government of the Canary Islands intends to implement to put an end to the “disorder” in the reception of immigrant minors, a decree in which he warns that he is willing to open criminal proceedings for the offence of abandonment if the children are not welcomed “immediately”.
With more than 5,300 minors in the centres of the Islands, the Attorney General recognizes the effort that the Canary Islands have made to care for the most vulnerable people among those who arrive in Cayuco: children and adolescents without an adult family member to take care of them. A task, he says, that “has been carried out in accordance with the legal system and from a human rights perspective.”
The government of the Canary Islands published on Thursday a new protocol where it establishes a series of conditions that the State requires to be met before releasing a minor: correctly identify him, question him to find out if he is a candidate for shelter and process an individual file. All this, while waiting for the autonomous community to finally determine whether or not there is a free place for him.
“Discrimination based on origin”
The Office of the Prosecutor modify this protocol both for reasons of form and substance. Regarding the form, he emphasizes that the protocol establishes requirements that are not contained in the law and, furthermore, he tries to impose them on a third party, the State, which he cannot do; and, concerning the context, fears that this may harm the minor.
“Foreign minors are a group of people who have a plus a particular vulnerability: because they are minors, because they are foreigners and because they are alone. This circumstance directly determines their helplessness and, therefore, the need, ‘ex lege’, for the competent administration to take charge of them through administrative protection mechanisms,” he warns. And their protection “This will never be the responsibility of the General Administration of the State.“, he adds, “unless modified by the corresponding Statute of Autonomy”, because the guardianship of abandoned minors falls in all cases to the community where they are.
The Prosecutor’s Office also warns that Treating homeless foreign minors differently that for Spanish boys who suffer from the same situation, this “clearly” represents a “discrimination based on origin” that the Spanish Constitution and the Convention on the Rights of the Child do not allow. “The published protocol does not specify what the possible consequences are of the autonomous community not exercising the powers assigned to it by law, such as the protection and immediate assistance of minors,” he emphasizes.
Regarding the procedures that the Canarian government wants the police and the prosecution to carry out before handing over a child, it points out that the new protocol “does not take into account or analyze the repercussions that police intervention can have on minors, especially if they are foreigners and alone.” The Attorney General shares that the minor must be listened to in order to try to protect their rights and interests as best as possible; However, you should know that this is not something that can be rushed through in the first moments of your arrival in Spain and without respecting the due guarantees. “It is clear that a minor who has just arrived on land after a life-threatening journeyis not able to be heard with guaranteesand even less, as the protocol seems to indicate, that he declares that he has a family member or close friend in a place other than the Canary Islands and that, therefore, action should be taken in this sense, since this would imply a clear risk for the minor,” he defends.
The Public Prosecutor’s Office also questions whether the Canary Islands government intends to demand bureaucratic procedures in “urgent” situationsamong other things, remember, because the law on minors says that “when the urgency of the case requires it (…) the action of the social services will be immediate”. “There is no reason to subjecting a small child arriving alone to a non-existent procedure in the law and delay entry into an appropriate juvenile facilitywhich is provided for by law. Without a doubt, the application of this protocol allows the permanence of unsuspected minors in police stations,” the prosecutor emphasizes.
