Human Rights Watch: Summary Returns to Greece Violate Rights

(Rome) – Italy is summarily returning unaccompanied migrant children and adult asylum seekers to Greece, where they face a dysfunctional asylum system and abusive detention conditions, Human Rights Watch said in a report published today. Stowaways on ferries from Greece, including children as young as 13, are sent back by Italian authorities within hours without adequate consideration of their particular needs as children or their desire to apply for asylum.

Detainees' rights overrule absconding and rioting charges, courts rule

Two recent judgments in Italy and Greece have found detainees innocent of the charges that were brought against them by the local authorities following escape from one migration detention centre and rioting in another. Courts ruled that the actions of detained migrants in opposing their detention conditions were legitimate.

Greece: Escaping undignified conditions

The first judgment was rendered by the Criminal Court of First Instance of Igoumenitsa, Greece, on 2 October 2012 but was only made widely available when it was published online on 11 January 2013.

Fifteen migrants who had entered Greece illegally escaped from the Thesprotia Police Headquarters where they had been detained for a period ranging from 9 to 45 days. They were later arrested and charged with escaping under the Criminal Code,[1] but the judge ruled that their actions constituted a legitimate defence against their "deplorable" conditions.

Greek Court Acquits Immigrants who Escaped Appalling Detention Conditions

In the midst of ever deepening economic woes, Greece is struggling with yet another crisis, this time of a humanitarian character. It is no secret that thousands of immigrants crossing into Greece mainly from Asia and Africa are held in appalling conditions in Greek detention centres. The UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants visited such centres just before the end of 2012 and faced a bleak situation (the relevant report is still forthcoming, but see the Reuters report here), while the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights found already in January 2011 that returning an asylum seeker to Greece under Dublin II violates Article 3 of the ECHR (see M.S.S. v Belgium and Greece, paras 344 seq, along with a description of the horrible conditions of detention facing immigrants and asylum seekers in Greece).

Irregular migration in Greece must be addressed by European Union – UN expert

A mother and her children at a detention centre in Greece. Photo: UNHCR/J.Björgvinsson

3 December 2012 – A United Nations independent expert today called on Greece to boost measures to protect the rights of migrants, while stressing that it is also the European Union’s (EU) responsibility to address the plight of a growing number of irregular migrants trapped in the Mediterranean country on their way to European destinations.

“As the large number of irregular migrants stuck in Greece is mainly a result of EU policies and practices, there is a strong need for solidarity and responsibility-sharing within the EU in order to ensure full respect of the human rights of all these migrants,” the Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, François Crépeau, said at the end of a nine-day visit to Greece.

Movement for Human Rights of Samos: criminalization of demonstrated solidarity towards imprisoned refugees

MOVEMENT FOR HUMAN RIGHTS SOLIDARITY TO REFUGEES

Briefing report

Samos, 20 November 2012

In 2010 members of the Movement continued to visit the detention centre of Samos on a weekly basis. Following serious allegations we received by detained refugees and given their inability to address the competent authorities by themselves, we gathered all acquired information and wrote a letter to the Ministry of Citizen Protection requesting to be informed about the manner in which deportations are carried out.

The letter was communicated to other humanitarian organizations as well as the Police Headquarters of Vathi town in Samos. The authorities not only refused to answer our questions concerning the treatment of the detained refugees, but they also forwarded our letter to the prosecutor, asking him to press charges against the member of our movement who had sent the letter in question for alleged defamation and false statements.

Announcement about the victims of racist violence

Last weekend was marked by a series of new incidents of racist violence which has by now taken on dramatic dimensions.

In one of these incidents, in the area of Agios Panteleimonas, where racist violence threatens to turn into a pogrom, organised groups indiscriminately attacked migrants, their stores and their houses.

In another incident in Palaio Faliro, an unidentified group stabbed a passerby migrant sending him to hospital.

In the third and most chilling incident, a bakery owner in Salamina, together with his son and two more accomplices, tortured a migrant working in their bakery and abandoned him after chaining him to a tree.

What was the reaction of the State to these incidents? 

For the untimely loss of our member Sarantis Theodosiou

On the evening of Sunday 21 October we lost our colleague and friend Sarantis Theodosiou. Sarantis had been fighting for his life for 13 days at the Intensive Care Unit after a car accident, losing ultimately the battle.

We now have to cope with his absence. Even more, however, we have to come to terms with the absurdity of the arbitrary loss of a person so young.

In the face of such a difficult yet primordial and overpowering human condition, words cannot convey our feelings and thoughts. Perhaps our silent sorrow or tears are of richer content than any consoling narrative could be.

Nonetheless we do wish to speak - even briefly- about the comrade who left us. We have to talk about Sarantis, a young lawyer who was quirky enough to enjoy teaching Greek to migrants in the Sunday School of Migrants; who decided to learn Albanian, the language of yesterday's scapegoats, of the inferiors of this country, in order to better understand them or maybe to even imagine himself as this 'Other'. Sarantis also supported from the outset our venture, the Group of Lawyers for the Rights of Migrants and Refugees. He supported our collective effort to form a separate existence, different from the mainstream exemplar in our field, and to denounce the exploitation of the “weakest of the weak”, of migrants and refugees. He shared with us 6 adventurous years of collective effort, of a struggle to save our “basic principles” within an environment of multifaceted decay. His path was joined with ours, the bonds we created are and will remain strong.