Religious Symbols

Via the Athens News

AFTER visiting one of the country’s most criticised migrant detention centres, Spyros Vouyias, the new deputy minister for the protection of the citizen, condemned the state of the overcrowded facility using language surprisingly harsh for a government minister.

“I apologise for the lack of humanity in this warehouse of souls where Dante’s Inferno pales by comparison,” Vouyias said after his visit to the Paganis detention centre on Lesvos last week.
Speaking to reporters, he described conditions there as “appalling, inhuman, a violation of basic human rights”.

The deputy minister was accompanied by representatives of the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR), Pro Asyl, a rights group from Germany and the local Ecumenical Refugee Programme.

Emphatic

No other Greek government minister has ever spoken out so strongly against the country’s migrant detention policy. His stance on the matter was welcomed by human rights advocates, who have long criticised the state’s indifference to the deplorable conditions in detention centres for undocumented migrants and would-be asylum seekers in Greece.

A former transportation professor, Vouyias was quick to reveal the socialist Pasok government’s plan for a U-turn in the country’s immigration policy and announced the closure of the Paganis centre and plans to create “human” and “dignified” facilities.

“It is necessary to change the way we receive migrants,” he said.
This is in line with the policy overhaul already announced by Prime Minister George Papandreou. As leader of the opposition last June, Papandreou had stressed the need for a “drastic overhaul” of the country’s asylum and immigration policy.

Last summer, the former New Democracy government passed controversial legislation allowing authorities to detain undocumented migrants for up to one year. Plans to transform dozens of disused military facilities into detention centres were also on the cards.

Karl Kopp, a spokesman for Pro Asyl who accompanied the deputy minister to the detention centre, said everyone was shocked by the conditions at Paganis.

“It was really awful,” Kopp told the Athens News. “It was hell, just like the deputy minister described it. There was a lot of dirty water on the floor where the women and children are being held. It was very smelly.”

He said 250 women and children were being held there.

Health risks

“It was terrible,” Kopp added. “From a medical point of view, the situation is dangerous.”
It is important that a Greek government official finally announced the closure of Paganis, Kopp said.

Volunteers from the Greek branch of Doctors of the World have visited the centre regularly over the past two months. In a statement, the group said more than 70 children, including some as young as 12 months old, are currently at Paganis and sleep on dirty mattresses laid out on the floor.

The doctors reported that the only two toilets at the centre do not flush properly and that the two showers are broken.

“It’s become very difficult for us to help them,” said Martha Falk, a psychologist with Doctors of the World.

The Paganis detention facility has recently made international headlines after migrants staged a demonstration and rioted to protest the deplorable living conditions.
“Nobody can live there,” Kopp said. “Hopefully, this awful place will close very soon. And, hopefully, this is a starting point to rethink the entire detention system in Greece. The current situation is unacceptable.”

The detention centre’s maximum capacity is 300 people. There are currently more than 600 men, women and children being held there. There have been as many as 1,200 detainees in the past.
According to news reports, the Pasok government will order the immediate release of almost 100 migrants held at Paganis. Officials are to issue them pink cards (rose kartes) - a temporary residence and work permit for asylum seekers.

“We will find ways to speed up the bureaucracy so that they do not have to stay here for so many days,” Vouyias told reporters. “And, of course, we will [create] better facilities where they can stay for as long as is necessary.”

Let me go

The migrants at Paganis appeared pleased to see the deputy minister. Some pleaded for their release. Some have been detained there for more than four months.

Vouyias publicly apologised to the migrants for the conditions at the detention centre.
“I was by the minister’s side during the visit and he apologised continuously to these people,” said Efthalia Pappa, director of the Athens-based Ecumenical Refugee Programme, an organisation established by the Church of Greece.

“He walked into the cells, which, believe me, are so terrible that you wouldn’t want to go within 10 feet of them. But he went in and he spoke to them and showed a compassion which I believe was sincere.”

“We met with six pregnant women,” she told the Athens News. “We also saw children, babies and newborns - all packed into the crowded cells. We saw people with serious health problems like heart conditions and diabetes.”

According to Pappa, Vouyias stressed the government’s desire to work with non-governmental organisations.

“This is very positive,” she said. “Up to now, it has been extremely difficult for us to help these people. The doors have been closed and we have even been accused [by officials] of inciting riots. We are here to help, not to throw oil onto the fire. I believe the minister understands this.”

Allegations of abuse

THE ATHENS office of the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) issued a press release on October 26 expressing “serious concerns” over the alleged abuse of migrants at the Paganis centre on Lesvos.
“Police officers guarding the centre abused and beat detainees, including a 17-year-old, who was taken to hospital,” the UNHCR claimed. “He was diagnosed with lesions on his head, back, waist and arms… the incidents were triggered by the tension generated in some of the wards where groups of detainees were protesting against their protracted detention.”

Via Kathimerini

Deputy Citizens’ Protection Minister Spyros Vougias yesterday heralded an investigation into the fate of several hundred thousand euros in European Union funding released to the previous conservative government for the purpose of accommodating a relentless influx of illegal immigrants into Greece from neighboring Turkey.

“We are going to look at where this money went as we have noted serious problems with infrastructure and outstanding debts resulting from the provision of care to migrants,” Vougias told reporters in a briefing in Athens yesterday. He referred to the example of the Pagani reception center on the eastern Aegean island of Lesvos which reportedly owes some 2 million euros to suppliers. During a visit to the center on Wednesday, Vougias condemned conditions there as “wretched and inhumane” and pledged to work with other government ministries to improve the quality of accommodation offered to would-be migrants and refugees arriving in Greece from Turkey.

Yesterday a group of 47 residents of the center lodged an official complaint about the alleged beating of a 17-year-old migrant on Wednesday afternoon when police were called to the facility to contain the unrest that had broken out following the departure of the visiting minister. According to the complaint submitted by the migrants, the 17-year-old sustained serious injuries to his head, legs and arms after allegedly being beaten by officers.

During his briefing with reporters in Athens yesterday, Vougias added that the government would push for more operational support from the European Commission in view of the particular burden Greece faces as an external border state of the EU and the problems created by Turkish authorities which refuse to honor a bilateral pact for the repatriation of migrants, signed by Athens and Ankara in 2003. “The prime minister will broach the subject during the EU summit [in December] so that the EC can assume its responsibilities and assess the role of Turkey in this situation,” Vougias said.

Technorati Tags: greece, immigration, migrants, aid, pagani

Is this a change of heart from this previous attitude ?

Via Kathimerini

Migrants to join police
Minister wants foreigners on the force, orders probe into Pakistani death

Citizens’ Protection Minister Michalis Chrysochoidis yesterday said he was determined to integrate immigrants into the police force following talks with members of the Pakistani community regarding the death of a 25-year-old Pakistani national alleged to have been beaten by officers while in custody earlier this month.

Apart from his vow to introduce migrants into the force, a pledge made several times over the past five years by the previous conservative government, Chrysochoidis also heralded the amendment of a law introduced by his predecessor that puts the examination of migrants’ claims for political asylum in the hands of police departments at first instance, and at the discretion of the relevant minister on appeal. Chrysochoidis said this process would now come under the remit of the new Interior Ministry, which no longer deals with public order issues. The legality of the police dealing with asylum claims has been questioned by rights groups and other organizations including the United Nations refugee agency which suspended its participation in processing Greece’s huge backlog of asylum claims in protest at the police’s dominant role in the process.

According to Chrysochoidis, the first phase of integrating immigrants into the police force would be for them to act as “mediators” between officers and members of communities with large immigrant populations such as the central Athens district of Aghios Panteleiomonas. According to sources, the second phase would involve the employment of second-generation immigrants as full members of the force. This would require the amendment of a presidential decree which is reportedly in the pipeline.

As for 27-year-old Muhammad Kamran Atif, who was found dead at his home in Nikaia, Piraeus, on October 9, just a few days after allegedly suffering a severe beating at the hands of police in a local holding cell, Chrysochoidis said he had asked the Supreme Court to launch an investigation into the incident. “I will not choose to conduct yet another internal investigation as this usually leads to such matters being forgotten and becoming an internal police affair,” the minister was quoted as saying.

Technorati Tags: greece, immigrant, migrant, foreigner, police, pakistan

The BBC’s Europe editor Gavin Hewitt has an article up at his blog called Greece’s Immigrants in Limbo

On a hill above the town of Samos in eastern Greece are a series of long buildings with grey walls and red roofs. They could be a barracks but this is a detention centre for immigrants. It was built to hold 300 people. Today, 473 are held there. Fifty-three are women and 10 are under the age of 18. They live behind barbed wire and wait. They stay for between one and three months, their frustration gnawing away at them. These are people who have made long, often dangerous journeys to reach the shores of Europe.

Within minutes of us starting to film through the wire a young man in a red football shirt detached himself from a group and shouted out to us. Clinging to the wire fence he said he was from Somalia but looked as if he had come from West Africa. He demands to know why he is being locked up. “Why?” he pleads with me. In a refugee centre in town someone has written on a wall: “They don’t let us come. They don’t let us stay. They don’t let us go.”

Read the full post here

Also read his post Migration Road from two days ago.

Technorati Tags: greece, immigration, asylum, detention, bbc

The Human Rights Watch has released a report on Greece saying that

The European Union should press the newly elected Greek government to end the abusive detention and summary expulsions of migrants, including unaccompanied children, and to reform the country’s broken asylum system

You can read the full report here

Also, see the latest news article from the organisation “Greece: Escalating Risks for Migrants, Unaccompanied Children”

“Greece’s illegal expulsions have reached a new level,” said Simone Troller, researcher at Human Rights Watch, “Migrants are now being arrested throughout the country and then pushed back to Turkey. Clearly, people who need protection are not safe in Greece.”

Greece’s dysfunctional asylum system is entirely in the hands of police, who create obstacles to filing asylum claims and deny asylum seekers fair hearings and assessments of their claims. More than 99 percent of asylum seekers are denied after their first interview. In July, the previous government effectively abolished asylum appeal procedures, a standard requirement under European and international human rights law. The action left adults and children alike with no effective remedy and at risk of being deported to places where their lives and safety may be at risk.

Technorati Tags: greece, asylum, migrant, immigration, children, minors

Via Human Rights Watch

France, the UK, and the rest of Europe act as if everything is perfectly fine in Greece. But Greece denies 99.5 percent of all asylum claims, has recently eliminated its appeals procedure, and detains migrants in deplorable conditions.

Bill Frelick, refugee policy director at Human Rights Watch

France: Don’t Return Calais Migrants to Greece
EU Asylum Disparities Put Those Sent Back at Risk of Mistreatment
September 25, 2009

(Paris) - Many of the hundreds of migrants arrested by French authorities following the destruction of their makeshift camp in Calais are at risk of being sent back to Greece, Human Rights Watch said today.

The French police reportedly arrested 276 migrants, including 125 children, on September 22, 2009, and destroyed their makeshift camp. The French immigration minister said several months ago that many asylum seekers entered through Greece and should be returned there. The New York Times, reporting on the situation, cited remarks by French officials that those who had entered the European Union through Greece would be returned there. The UK’s home secretary is quoted in The Guardian expressing his “delight” at the Calais operation and saying that the migrants there could seek asylum in the first country they entered, meaning that many are likely to be returned to Greece.

“France, the UK, and the rest of Europe act as if everything is perfectly fine in Greece,” said Bill Frelick, refugee policy director at Human Rights Watch. “But Greece denies 99.5 percent of all asylum claims, has recently eliminated its appeals procedure, and detains migrants in deplorable conditions.”

Human Rights Watch said that France and the UK should ensure that any children among those removed who have family members in the UK, including siblings and other close relatives, are able to join them on humanitarian grounds.

Under the European Union’s Dublin II regulations, the country where a person first entered the EU is generally held responsible for examining that person’s asylum claim, whether or not the person applied there. European governments enter the fingerprints of all migrants they apprehend into an EU-wide database that allows other governments to trace where a person first entered the EU and to send that person back.

While the Dublin II regulations are premised on the notion that all EU member states have comparable asylum and migration practices, there are wide disparities, with some countries like Greece effectively offering no protection at all. This disparity underscores the importance of reforming the Dublin system and ensuring that EU member states are held to account for their failure to respect their obligations under EU law to provide access to asylum.

Human Rights Watch has called on European governments, in two reports released in 2008, to stop sending migrants and asylum seekers, including unaccompanied children, back to Greece under the Dublin II regulations. The reports said that Greece fails to guarantee a fair assessment of asylum claims, continues to detain migrants and asylum seekers in conditions that can be inhuman and degrading, and has not provided adequate reception conditions for migrants, or special protection for vulnerable groups, such as unaccompanied migrant children. Greece also adopted a law in July abolishing a meaningful appeals procedure. The new law leaves asylum seekers with no right to an appeal or remedy against risk of removal to inhuman or degrading treatment, as required by article 39 of the EU’s procedures directive and articles 13 and 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Asylum seekers whose claim has been rejected are at risk of being immediately deported.

Concerns are further heightened, Human Rights Watch said, due to Greece’s recent arrests of large numbers of asylum seekers and their transfer to detention centers in the north, close to the Turkish border, where some are reported to have been pushed across the border back to Turkey. Greece has a record of systematically pushing migrants back to Turkey, including those seeking protection.

On August 5, Human Rights Watch wrote to the Greek interior minister asking him to take immediate steps to stop this practice and to treat migrants apprehended in Greek territory in a humane and dignified manner.

In a November 2008 report, “Stuck in a Revolving Door: Iraqis and Other Asylum Seekers and Migrants at the Greece/Turkey Entrance to the European Union,” Human Rights Watch documented how Greek authorities have systematically expelled migrants illegally across the Greece-Turkey border, in violation of international law. These “pushbacks” typically occur at night from the northern detention facilities, and they involve considerable logistical preparation. At that time, Human Rights Watch conducted private, confidential interviews in various locations in both Greece and Turkey with 41 asylum seekers and refugees, who gave consistent accounts of Greek authorities taking them to the Evros river at night and then forcing them across.

France and other EU member states are bound under the European Convention on Human Rights not to return a person to a country where he or she is at risk of inhuman and degrading treatment (Article 3) and bound by the international legal principle of nonrefoulement. The Dublin Convention allows parties to exercise their discretion under article 3 (2) (the sovereignty clause) not to return an asylum seeker and to examine the asylum claim themselves.

“It is hard not to have the impression that European governments are perfectly happy with Greece doing the dirty work for them and giving them the opportunity to get rid of these migrants, including potential refugees,” Frelick said. “Instead of sending them back to Greece, French authorities should ensure these migrants have the chance to apply for asylum in France.”