The Rights of refugees
ENDuring 2004 the Migration Department under the Ministry of the Interior received 458 applications of aliens to provide the asylum in the Republic of Lithuania (including children). Compared to 2003 the number of applications reduced by 186 or by 28.8 % (546 applications during 2002). The majority of applications was submitted by the citizens of Russian Federation (358 applications that formed 78.2 % of all the applications; compared to 2003, reduced by 25.6 %). The status of the refugee has been granted for 12 aliens (all of them the citizens of Russian Federation). The status of refugee during January–July 2005 was granted for 3 persons (the citizens of Russian Federation). Quite many changes in the field of the safeguard of the rights of the refugees took place when Lithuania became the member of the European Union. The intercept of the European Union acquis in the field of the refuge is related to the membership: implementation of EU directives; direct application of EU regulations related to the implementation of the refuge procedures on the territory of Lithuania; effect of the new wording of the Law on the Legal Status of Aliens (hereinafter referred to as the Law on the Legal Status of Aliens) as well as other legal acts. After the Lithuania’s accession to the European Union the Eurodac system, the database of the fingerprints of the asylum applicants, started functioning for the identification of the asylum applicants and help to establish the state responsible for the analysis of the asylum applications. The social integration of refugees is being implemented, for example, the social integration tutors employed by the Red Cross help the refugees to find the work, start the social relations and so on.Following the agreement between the Ministry of the Interior and the Lithuanian Red Cross, the asylum applicants receive the free of charge translation services, free of charge legal assistance (the legal assistance is provided on all the Lithuanian territory, Refugees Reception Center, Refugees Registration Center, at the Lithuanian Red Cross secretariat in Vilnius), the free of charge legal assistance is also provided at the Vilnius University Law Clinics. The project of the frontier monitoring is being implemented with the help of which the lawyers of the Red Cross provide the information on the asylum procedure for the aliens near the border. After the establishment of European Refugee Fund, following the funding of the mentioned fund and the partial funding by the Ministry of the Interior, the Day Center of the Asylum Seekers has been established in Kaunas, the representative office of International Migrations Organization in Lithuania according to the funding of the mentioned fund is implementing the project on the assistance to voluntary return and reintegrate for persons who have been refused from the asylum (other projects are being implemented as well related to the safeguarding of the rights of the asylum seekers and aliens). On 28 April 2005 the Law on Health System has been amended providing that the free of charge health care includes also the health care of the asylum applicants or aliens that have been granted the temporary or subsidiary protection. The new Law on the Status of Aliens compared to the previous regulation consolidated quite many positive novelties in the field of detention of asylum seekers (the detained persons are provided with the free of charge legal assistance, the repeated examination of the necessity of detention is provided, the alternative detention measures have been provided and so on).The negative attitude of the society and mass media to the asylum seekers and refugees still remains as a problem. Such attitude has been expressed in the Report as of 2002 of the European Committee for the Fight against the Racism and Intolerance. On 6–9 November 2003 the sociologic research was carried „The Profiles of Tolerance in Lithuania“. Following the conclusions of the research among the groups of persons towards which the residents are least tolerant there are also the group of refugees (38.3 % of the respondents have the negative attitude towards the refugees). According to the opinion of the experts, the consultations have been carried with whom during the research, the negative image of the asylum seekers is formed due to the negative facts provided by the mass media, the lack of positive information at the mass media, the lack of the public information on the activities of the state institutions in the field of safeguarding of the rights of refugees. On the other hand, the report “Human Rights in Lithuania in 2001–2004” specifies that the attention towards the rights of migrants and refugees is sufficient – 32 % (insufficient – 11 %). The evaluations slightly improved if compared to the year 2002. Moreover, 19 % of the interviewed have mentioned that the protection of these rights improved and only 1 % mentioned that they got worse [p. 354-355].
