Fleeing Kosovars `would have little protection under immigration Bill'

Kosovan refugees fleeing to Ireland for protection could be expelled to face persecution in their homeland under the provisions of new Government legislation, according to Amnesty International.

There was no guarantee that a person fleeing here from Kosovo would be given access to an independent asylum procedure under the terms of the Immigration Bill, 1999, currently before the Dail, Ms Mary Lawlor, director of Amnesty, told the joint Oireachtas committee on justice, equality and women's rights yesterday.

A Department of Justice spokesman said no Kosovars had been deported from Ireland.

While there were many different grounds for sending a person out of the State, there was "no way" an asylum-seeker from Kosovo or elsewhere would be sent back until their case had been adequately dealt with.

Dr Colin Harvey, an international human rights expert at Queen's University Belfast, said he was appalled at the Bill, which raised serious concerns from refugee and human rights perspectives.

International human rights standards had been neglected in the formulation of the Bill, he said. Refugee protection was essentially a human rights remedy, and there was no better example of this than the current crisis in Kosovo.

"There is no need to fear best-practice standards in human rights. This in no way collides with an effective and fair system.

"But if you react defensively now, there will be problems down the road," he warned TDs on the committee.

Dr Harvey said he expected the human rights commissions being established in Northern Ireland and the Republic would come to address the refugee issue.

Dr Harvey said the Bill was an emergency measure designed to plug a loophole which had arisen. It would not be transformed into a broader immigration measure.

The Bill failed to recognise the "differentiated level of migration" to Ireland, which included asylum-seekers, job-hunters and other groups. It also lacked a proper complaints procedure.

After the meeting Mr Frank Jennings, campaigns director of Amnesty, called on Ireland and other Western states to share the responsibility for dealing with the humanitarian crisis unfolding in the Balkans.

NATO should have foreseen this crisis before it began bombing and should have put adequate measures in place, he said.