Greece, human rights emergency on border
Every country has its dark places, some darker than others, and in greater contrast to the tourists appreciation of the beauty of the landscape and graciousness of the people. The dark places in Greece, darker than any tourist would know, are revealed in two horrifying reports published in March. One is by Manuel Nowak, the UNs special rapporteur on torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, exposing the rot at the heart of the Greek governments treatment of so called irregular migrants.
The other, by the EUs Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA) on the same subject, focuses on the Evros region along the Turkish border. FRA director Morten Kjaerum concluded: “The situation at the EU’s external land border between Greece and Turkey constitutes a fundamental rights emergency. People, including pregnant women and families with small children, are held in inhumane conditions.
What they are forced to endure is reminiscent of some medieval version of hell on earth.
But says the FRA, the Greek authorities have done nothing to alleviate this emergency. Both the rapporteur and the FRA acknowledge that the Greek government has plans to restructure laws and procedures affecting irregular migrants but meanwhile nothing is being done and people are suffering horribly.
Migrants and asylum seekers, amongst them children, are locked up in filthy, airless places, they are neglected and brutalised, crammed into overcrowded police cells, border guard stations and detention centres where sanitation is so hazardous that in one place faeces overflowed from the bathrooms into the sleeping area. Mattresses are shared, cells are infested with mice or insects, medical care is scant, interpreters and doctors virtually non existent and there is no legal aid. Detainees suffer from mental and physical ill health. Many dont see day light nor do they get exercise, such is the guards fear of punishment if anyone escapes. People are held indeterminately without charge sometimes for months, and many mistakenly assume that when finger printed and questioned on arrival, this constitutes an asylum claim. They cant contact anyone because their mobiles are taken away and there is no access to telephones. Most dont understand the grounds for their detention. They face arbitrary violence from those in authority. Some of what Nowak heard in relation to treatment of migrants by police amounted, he said, to torture.
For the irregular migrant the cruelty begins on arrival. A male detainee, his wife and three children, from Iran, were brought over the border during the night, Nowak writes. They were a group of 100 people from Iran and Afghanistan. They swam across the Evros River and walked a long time towards the lights [at Fylakio Migration Detention Centre, Orestiada, Evros]. They came across police officers sitting in three police cars. The police let out dogs to chase them back to Turkey. They were captured… and stood outside the cell for hours in order to be fingerprinted. They could not communicate with the guards but think they were registered for asylum. There were no toilets in the outside enclosure. They had been travelling for three weeks and they were tired and hungry, the conditions of the facility were much worse than they could have imagined.
According to the regional coroner, several dozen immigrants are found dead every year in or near the Evros river having drowned or died of hypothermia, most are never identified. They are buried in makeshift cemeteries, many of their graves unmarked. One cemetery is looked after by a Mufti who has built walls to keep wild animals from digging up the bodies. It appears to be impossible to keep a register of these deaths and many bodies are never identified.
On 29 January in zero temperatures, the FRA visited Soufli Border Guard Station, also in the Evros region. They found 144 people crammed into one room far too small to accommodate them, with no heating. There was one toilet and one cold shower. Nowak was told that that they were kicked, slapped and shoved, mostly when they did not understand or follow officers orders immediately, or when they made complaints.
Further south from Soufli, at Feres Border Guard Station, despite the chief of police appearing to be committed to meeting detainees basic needs, Nowak noted that 123 were held in a space designed for 28. The cells were dirty, dark, cold and unhygienic. They were so overcrowded that men, women, and children, migrants, refugees, smugglers and people of different ethnic and religious background were not properly separated.
In Venna, west of Feres, the police officers union is quoted by the FRA as reporting on old warehouses being used to detain people despite being dangerous and not converted for human habitation.
In the Evros region the number of people coming over the border increased by 369 % last year. All are routinely detained. 1,400 were arrested during the first two days of Nowaks visit. Most are fleeing from conflict. In 2010, over 28,000 Afghans, 7,500 Palestinians, 6,500 Somalis and nearly 5,000 Iraqis were apprehended in this region. There is evidence of people being sent back to Turkey where they would face deportation to countries such as Iran and Iraq, despite having undecided asylum claims. This in violation of the Refugee Convention. If one applies average EU rates of recognition of people as refugees, Greece would have taken 1,700 Afghans as of the end of last year but took only 15 and by the same token recognised 10 Iraqis as worthy of asylum compared to the EU average of 4,380. The Greek system is so chaotic and dysfunctional, and the odds so stacked against anyone getting asylum, that the rate of acceptance at first claim is virtually 0% and at the equivalent of appeal, under 3 per cent.
Nowak saw unaccompanied minors held with adults in police detention, border guard stations and migration detention centres, instead of reception centres designed exclusively for them. Most had not been adequately informed about asylum procedures. Age assessment and identification were poor and many reported being registered as adults. Cases of ill-treatment of minors were corroborated by medical evidence. When released pending deportation, these unaccompanied minors were at significant risk of being exploited or trafficked.
Scandal piles on scandal. Nowak found forty people held in irregular and unofficial detention centres in police cells at Omonia, Agiou Panteleimonos and Akropolis in Athens. They werent registered. Their exclusion from official statistics renders them even more vulnerable than others. Some had to sleep on the floor, drinking water and toilets were severely limited, and they had to buy their own food.
With very little accommodation and no financial aid or education available to asylum seekers once released from detention, many people are destitute, living on the streets, and forced into illegality to survive which serves to increase xenophobia and racism.
The dire state of the Greek economy excuses nobody and shouldnt be invoked as a fig leaf for human rights abuses, particularly in view of some apparently missing millions earmarked for refugees.
According to the NRA, the Greek government has been awarded nearly E17 million in emergency funding from the European Refugee Fund since 2008 on top of its normal quota, to ameliorate the dire situation for refugees coming over its borders. The money was earmarked to reinforce reception centres,to meet urgent health needs, process a backlog of applications and so on. But by the time the report was published in March, apart from a Ministry of Health medical programme and legal aid measures to be run by the UNHCR, there was no evidence that these resources were finding their way to the detention hell holes in the Evros region. It makes you wonder how many such places there are all over the world where no Special Rapporteur or human rights organisation has been.
This news didnt appear anywhere in the UK press. But this did:
All across northern Europe, the great moral argument of our straitened times is being fought. Should we book our holidays in Greece now, or should we wait until the end of the week when the country defaults, brings back the drachma and military dictatorship? Clearly this is a complex subject, so let’s try to put to one side whether all this would be a good thing for Greece, and look at how this might impact on your holiday.”
