Some 55 African nationals held at the Immigration Detention Centre in Aripo have embarked on an indefinite hunger strike hoping to gain the attention of the authorities to speed up their matters. One detainee, who called the T&T Guardian yesterday said there were detainees at the centre for over a year whose papers to have them repatriated to their respective homelands were yet to be processed. He said there were a host of African nationals at the centre including those from Ghana, Tanzania, Kenya and Mali. The detainee also accused authorities of "dealing with the papers" of other nationals while the plight of the Africans were neglected.
However, a spokesman at the Ministry of Justice said the stumbling block regarding repatriation of the nationals was that they were refusing to cooperate with authorities. He said the Africans were refusing to release their true identities which made it impossible for the repatriation process to begin. "They could be murderers in flight, rapists, we do not know and we just can't release them to any other country. "They could be anybody we do not know who they are because they are not giving us their true names because they want to remain in Trinidad and that cannot be the case," the spokesman said. He said oftentimes, the African nationals used T&T as a stepping stone to gain entry in North America. The spokesman said under the DNA Act the authorities could take DNA samples from the detainees to determine whether a match existed in any other country.