Manolada strawberry farmers shoot immigrants who demanded 6 months salaries. 28 wounded in hospital.
The immigrant workers had reportedly gathered to demand six-months’ worth of unpaid wages when one of three work supervisors whom they were negotiating with shot them. About 20-30 of the 200 strawberry pickers from Bangladesh got injured. Local media reported that four of them are in a serious health condition. The employer has been arrested and investigations are going on.
Several thousand migrant workers (many of them reportedly undocumented) are empoyed as strawberry pickers in the area.
This is not the first time that immigrants in Nea Manolada have protested against harsh working conditions.
In 2008, immigrant farm workers staged a two-day strike (delaying the shipments of strawberries by at least a few days) to protest against harsh working conditions. Their strike exposed slave wage exploitation, shocking living conditions and prejudice.
The government at the time responded to the strike by ordering labour inspectors to crack the whip on farmers exploiting migrant workers in Nea Manolada.
Despite the country’s soaring rate of unemployment, agriculture is heavily reliant on immigrant labour.
In 2009, two farmers in Manolada, alleged to have tied two Bangladeshi immigrants to a motorcycle and reportedly dragged them through a central square.
More than 2,000 immigrants held in reception centers in Greece have been on a hunger strike since April 6 to denounce the intolerable conditions.
KEERFA activists said at a press conference on April 8, “The culmination of the poor detention conditions, the mistreatment and tortures migrants have to deal with in reception centers was the three suicide attempts which happened in Amygdaleza center in northern Athens last weekend”.
KEERFA coordinator, Petros Constantinou, talked about the inhuman conditions in reception centers, adding that hunger strikes have spread across Greece, while many police departments have turned into places of abuse for immigrants and refugees.
Local immigrant community leaders who also spoke at the press conference called on authorities to give them permission to visit with hunger-striking migrants at the detention centers and to provide them access to doctors and lawyers.
The bodies of three immigrants, one young woman, one boy about 5 and a girl about 8 years old were found in different beaches of Lesvos island.
Relatives of 9 Syrians refugees missing since the 7th of March, when they tried to cross the Aegean, notified the authorities that their relatives were aboard a vessel carrying 15 immigrants from Dikeli (Turkey). They said that they lost contact with the people in the small boat during their crossing from Dikeli to Mitiliene.
Doctors Without Borders and Amnesty International lashed out on Thursday at Greece’s treatment of Syrian refugees fleeing their war-ravaged homeland, with many locked up as illegal immigrants or reportedly facing police brutality.
(Reuters) – Syrian shopkeeper Osama fled the fighting in Aleppo convinced he would be welcomed in Europe. Five months later, he is stuck in near-bankrupt Greece, where money and sympathy are scarce.
Beaten up and robbed by traffickers when they arrived in Athens, Osama, his wife and two children were arrested as illegal immigrants and thrown into detention when they recounted their ordeal to Greek police. Ordered out of Greece but without any place to go, he rues the day he set foot in the country.
Another hungers strike has started, this time because some ‘illegal’ migrants have been held 94 days and decision has been made that some will be held 1 year more! Also the conditions are inhumane.
An immigrant from Senegal died falling from a height, on the rails of the subway in Thiseio station in central Athens, during an operation of Municipal Police to remove peddlers from tourist area.
A big operation of Municipal Police started on Friday afternoon on the touristic area of Thiseio, in central Athens, to remove immigrants from the streets, who work as peddlers to live. During this operation Cheikh Babacar Ndiaye a 37 years old immigrant from Senegal, was chased and he died falling from a height, on the rails of the subway in Thiseio station. From the blood seen on the pictures possibly his death resulted from the fall.
Subway metro services were disrupted for at least two hours. First aid assistants removed the body of the immigrant from the rails. Meanwhile his friends gathered at the station, together with other people from Senegal. Some of them mourned, but when they saw the stretcher with the dead body they began to shout and protest. Some of them they shouted that Police is racists. Riot police arrived immediately and attacked the gathered people, and cleared the area around the station. At the same moment of the attack the dead body of immigrant was moved to an ambulance and left the area, for an unknown and undeclared direction, in spite of the questions made on this.
A young male from Pakistan aged 27 was murdered yesterday late in the morning at approximately 3.30am, in the area of Petralona in the centre of Athens. The perpetrators were two Greek men aged 28 and 24 years old. The young Pakistani was attacked with a knife and died shortly afterwards. After the murder the two men tried to ride away on their motorbike, but the neighbours and eyewitnesses of the murder kept track of their license plates, they were arrested soon thereafter near Syntagma square by the Police. Anti-racist organizations demonstrated this afternoon in the neighbourhood.
One of the accused assassins was serving in the Fire Department. In the appartments of the two arrested the police found batons, butterfly knives, bullets, brass knuckles, an airgun, and, among other things, dozens of election leaflets for the Golden Dawn neonazi party.
The tourists held by Greek police as illegal migrants
By Chloe Hadjimatheou BBC News, Athens
Greek police have stepped up efforts to catch illegal immigrants in recent months, launching a new operation to check the papers of people who look foreign. But tourists have also been picked up in the sweeps – and at least two have been badly beaten. Read the rest of this entry »
Yesterday, January 2 2013, 15 kids held in Amygdaleza migrant detention centre for immigrants started a hunger strike to protest the beating of an 11-yr-old boy by police on January 1st, 2013. The kid was asking to go to the toilet…
Coast guard police has found the bodies of 18 immigrants who were trying to enter Greece from the Aegean.
Their boat capsized early Friday.
A 20-year-old man found alive Friday told authorities there were 28 people on the crowded boat, including its Turkish owner, when it capsized off the northeastern island of Lesvos, near the Turkish coast. The man, who has been hospitalized, is the sole survivor found so far.
A coast guard spokeswoman said the migrants were “of Asian origin” without specifying further.
Last September, in a similar shipwreck in the Aegean, 60 immigrants died, amongst them 31 children…
(Reuters) – Egyptian immigrant Waleed Taleb says demanding his unpaid wages in Greece came at a heavy price; 18 hours chained and beaten by his boss, a stint in jail and orders to leave the country he calls home.
One of hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants who toil in Greece’s black labor market, Taleb had just finished cleaning the bakery where he worked one November morning on the island of Salamina when he sparked his boss’s fury.
What followed would end up symbolizing how migrants have become among the biggest and most defenseless victims of Greece’s economic crisis, facing racist attacks, police apathy and a system that punishes them rather than their assailants. Read the rest of this entry »
Dozens of unknown incidents of racist violence, arbitrariness and abuse of office by members of the Greek Police are publish today in Sunday edition of news paper TO ETHNOS. Torture, insulting and even theft are the among the complaints filed by migrants and migrants human rights organisations.
A list of cases records the appalling detains of fascist practices by member of Greek police, practices that are completely ‘harmonized’ with the practices of extreme right Golden Dawn (Chrysi Avgi).
Among the cases under investigation by the Internal Affairs Directorate of the Police are: torture, insults of sexual dignity, theft, extortion, but also destruction of legal document.
From the preliminary results of the investigation, it looks as if in the majority of the incidents listed, the police officers involved apparently keep -in addition to a common mindset – also ‘loyal’ relations with the Golden Dawn.
On Tuesday November 20 some of the migrants detained in Mytilini police station for undocumented entry into Greece through the Turkish border started a hunger strike in order to protest against the humiliating detention conditions and the long detention periods. They struggle for freedom. It is not known how many of them continue the struggle and if some have been already released or not.
Arrivals of migrants have started again this summer, fastly exceeding the capacities of detention cells in the local police stations of the island. Due to the general order “to keep them as long as possible in detention” overcrowdedness amongst others has been reported throughout the four months to worsen the detention conditions. Read the rest of this entry »
Following the events of last Sunday in Corinth detention centre, today the detainees of Komotini started an uprising. Left.gr reported that gun shots have been heard from within the prison and smoke was seen. A solidarity demonstration was held outside the detention center this afternoon, while extra police forces arrived to “control” the situation.
The new mass detention centres in Corinth, Komotini, Xanthi, amigdaleza and Drama are hosting huge numbers of detainees (200-800) under miserable conditions. Only last month the detainees heard of the new law extending detention periods. Desperate and without any information on the period they will have to survive there they have started protesting first in Corinth and now in Komotini.
Despite police brutality (beatings, arrests, tortures) during the third antifascist motorcycle patrol, the 4th antifascist motorcycle patrol took place last Tuesday in Athens. Meanwhile, mass media and the institutional state racism keep promoting the fascist gangs.As a reaction, antifascist initiatives are constantly created throughout Greece, in every neighborhood, town, island while demonstrations, concerts, open discussions, festivals, etc are organized on a daily basis…
Newsnight’s report on the Greek far-right party Golden Dawn made headlines across Europe last week.
In it, MP Ilias Panagiotaros claimed Greece was “in civil war” and indeed advocated a new kind of civil war, pitting the far-right against migrants, anarchists, etc.
Within 24 hours Mr Panagiotaros had retracted his claim that Greece was “in civil war”, saying instead “there is no civil war” and accusing Newsnight of “paraphrasing” his words. We had simply broadcast them, un-edited and in English.
Now three new reports cast light on the substance of our story – which was: alleged police torture of anti-fascist detainees, Golden Dawn’s influence inside the Greek police force, and its potential influence on the operational behaviour and priorities of the police in the Attica region around Athens. Read the rest of this entry »
Fifteen anti-fascist protesters arrested in Athens during a clash with supporters of the neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn have said they were tortured in the Attica General Police Directorate (GADA) – the Athens equivalent of Scotland Yard – and subjected to what their lawyer describes as an Abu Ghraib-style humiliation.
Members of a second group of 25 who were arrested after demonstrating in support of their fellow anti-fascists the next day said they were beaten and made to strip naked and bend over in front of officers and other protesters inside the same police station. Read the rest of this entry »
In the evening of Sunday, Sep 30th the third anti-fascist motorcycle patrol spotted nazis in the area of Amerikis Square in Athens and clashed with them. Soon thereafter, the anti-fascists were brutally attacked by the police. Many antifascists were injured and 23 arrested. Read the rest of this entry »
The manufacturing of a populist ultra-right “movement”
and 6 myths about migrants in Greece
Α lot has been written about how we decide to discuss political affairs without falling into the trap of simplifying facts and taking power structures for granted. Power structures are for granted however until they are challenged. A few years ago Greek Universities and the bar culture were still a paradise for Erasmus students, the islands an agreeable yet maybe increasingly expensive place for vacation.
And it was plain to see, almost everywhere, that a significant part of the population, and that does not only include youth, subscribed to a kind of rhetoric of anti-authoritarianism and vague social justice. Public spaces in the cities were often used as commons, and it was much more fashionable to be an anarchist than a neonazi.
This has changed. We will try to merely outline, rather than to explain, this change, and will point to a simple fact: That today we are experiencing a devaluation of labor and life in Greece and that this seems to be part of a larger picture. This larger picture has been described in different ways… Subcomandante Marcos declaring, in 1997, that the 4th World War has begun, has given a lucid account of it:
“…[T]here is a proliferation of “regional wars” and “internal conflicts”; capital follows paths of atypical accumulation; and large masses of workers are mobilised. Result: a huge rolling wheel of millions of migrants moving across the planet. As “foreigners” in that “world without frontiers” which had been promised by the victors of the cold war, they are forced to endure racist persecution, precarious employment, the loss of their cultural identity, police repression, hunger, imprisonment and murder (…) The objective of neoliberalism’s migration policy is more to destabilise the world labour market than to put a brake on immigration. The fourth world war – with its mechanisms of destruction/depopulation and reconstruction/reorganisation – involves the displacement of millions of people. Their destiny is to wander the world, carrying the burden of their nightmare with them, so as to constitute a threat to workers who have a job, a scapegoat designed to make people forget their bosses, and to provide abasis for the racism that neoliberalism provokes…” (Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos, The fourth world war has begun, 1997)
More than half of the 60 migrants who died after their boat sank in the Aegean sea on Thursday were children, according to Tahsin Kurtbeyoglu, governor of the coastal district of Menderes in Turkey’s western Izmir province. Kurtbeyoglu, said 31 of the dead were children, including three babies.
The shipwreck happened as the migrant routes through the Greek-Turkish borders shift from Evros to the Aegean, as a result of the “Xenios Zeus” police campaign, aimed mainly to a distraction from the recent IMF/Troika imposed austerity cuts…
At least 39 people were dead and many more were missing after a boat carrying illegal migrants sank off Turkey’s western Aegean coast on Thursday morning, a district governor said.
Tahsin Kurtbeyoglu, the governor of Menderes, a coastal district in Izmir province, told state television TRT he expected the death toll to rise.
Television footage showed small boats searching for survivors close to the shore.
Turkey’s location as a bridge from Asia to Europe, as well as its relative wealth compared to neighbouring states, has long made it both a destination and transit point for migrants from as far afield as sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
TRT reported that 45 people had been rescued alive and that the boat had sunk around dawn after travelling just 50 metres from the coast.
The Global Day of Action for the Rights of Migrants, Refugees and Displaced people on December 18, 2011 was the first step towards the setting-up of a global movement of migrants and of all people who support them. More than 20 countries carried out various activities. What we managed to do was to transform that day in a collective event in which all ideas that are being executed every day by different organizations and networks that defend migrants’ rights came together.
This year we would like to experience it one again, together with those who were with us in 2011 and also with those who crossed our paths during the last year. We invite all organizations and networks to become promoters of the Global Day of Action. Below you can find the call WE MIGRATE TO LIVE, NO MORE DEATHS, NO MORE MISSING PEOPLE which throws this years’ Global Action Day.
WE MIGRATE TO LIVE, NO MORE DEATHS, NO MORE MISSING PEOPLE
To migrate is a decision we take to improve our lives, to escape misery or war, in search of a better future for us and our families.
Crossing borders, however, by land or sea, today is a synonym of death. All the migration paths around the world are marked by graves. Every year thousands disappear on these paths leaving behind their families in anguish and uncertainty. Read the rest of this entry »
While the police is operating a huge sweep in Athens and Evros since August 2nd, racist attacks are getting more. Migrants communities speak of more than 500 hate crimes in the last six months and an organised wave of hate crimes in the last days.
The government assumes that these hate crimes are the try of extreme right wing groups to subvert the “organised” (and highly repressive) approach of government to deal with the migration issue in order to keep their political gains as they had in the last two elections due to their xenophobic agenda. Government officials commented that this reaction was foreseeable when the starting sweep operation set out to take away the main agenda of the fascist party GD. While the government warns the extreme right and announces to encounter hate crimes in a very strict manner, migrant communities complain about more than 500 racist attacks in the last six months and an ongoing apathy by the police who is not reacting.
The most recent victim was a young IRaqi refugee who fell victim to his attackers stabbing him close to the place of worship he was visiting in the month of Rhamazan. He had visited the place in the early morning around 4:30 in order to eat before sunrise. The attackers came on four motorbikes in front of the mosq and attacked the young man with knives. He died yesterday due to the severe injuries after the transfer to he hospital.
Migrants communities see a planed series of hate crimes within the last days. Last Thursday at 21:30 15-20 persons attacked another place of worship in Piraeus while there were 20 Pakistanis. ON Saturday night attacked two other mosqs in Reddi and Nikaia, Athens. In Crete in the night of Saturday there was a fight between a group of fascists and migrants from Pakistan that evolved out of provocative comments by the first. The fight ended in the arrest of one Greek who had beaten an Pakistani badly on his head and a Pakistani who was lacking legal papers. Five days ago four unknown persons attacked some Indian migrants in Rethimno, Crete, stabbing them with knives. One week ago a similar incident was registered in Likovrisi. The victim is still hospitalized after the severe injuries inflicted to him.
In the police press release they refer amongst others to a hate crime on June 12 against Egyptian fishermen in Perama, the stabbing of migrants in Neos Kosmos by a group with motorbikes, an attack with metal globs against Pakistani workers in chalikida, the pogrom against migrants in Likovrisi by mid June and some other attacks in Nikaia. In most of the cases the perpetrators were not yet identified and arrested.
At the same time, the fascist party GD is preparing meetings all over the country in order to “map” the “problems” fascist Greek people have with Roma and Sinti and with migrants. The aim is to then “clean” the areas from the “problematic” population as GD has already done in some areas of Athens such as Agios Panteleimonas and Attiki Square. Fascist attacks might lead to vendetta like situations in the smaller towns of Greece and other severe hate crimes at places of agglomeration i.e. during the feast of Eid by the end of Ramazan.
A 19-year-old Iraqi died in an Athens hospital on Sunday after being stabbed late on Saturday night by five unknown persons riding motorcycles, police said. The assailants had earlier targeted two other immigrants, one from Romania and one from Morocco, who managed to escape.
Four Indian men were being treated for knife wounds at a hospital in the Cretan prefecture of Rethymno on Thursday after being attacked by a group of unidentified assailants while they were waiting at a bus stop in the Sfakaki area.
A total of six Indians had been waiting for the bus to go to work when a car pulled up, four men jumped out and started beating them. One of the assailants pulled out a knife and knifed four of the migrants. After the assault, the four assailants got back into the car and fled the scene, according to the victims who said they believed the men to be Greeks but gave no other details.
More than 1,100 sans-papiers migrants were arrested and another 4,900 brought in for questioning by police on Saturday in the context of a sweep operation code-named “Xenios Zeus” in the wider Athens area, the Attica Police General Directorate (GADA) announced on Sunday. 52 house searches were also conducted.
A police announcement noted that the police checks would continue daily.
Operation Xenios Zeus, named after the name of the king of the ancient Greek gods in his role as protector of guests, mobilised 2,000 police in Athens and another 2,500 on Greece’s eastern border with Turkey.
The Athens operation came as creditors from the International Monetary Fund, the European Union and the European Central Bank meet with Greek officials to discuss the further budget cuts needed to unlock the next tranche of aid in September, worth 31.5 billion euros.
The 99-page report documents the failure of the police and the judiciary to prevent and punish rising attacks on migrants. Despite clear patterns to the violence and evidence that it is increasing, the police have failed to respond effectively to protect victims and hold perpetrators to account, Human Rights Watch found. Authorities have yet to develop a preventive policing strategy, while victims are discouraged from filing official complaints. No one has been convicted under Greece’s 2008 hate crime statute.
PRO ASYL together with the Greek Council for Refugees published a report on the systematic ill-treatment of refugees and migrants by law enforcement officers in Patras. download the report here
PRO ASYL together with the Greek Council for Refugees published a report on the systematic ill-treatment of refugees and migrants by law enforcement officers in Patras. download the report here
Greece: New government should address police violence
Police in Greece routinely use excessive force including chemical sprays against largely peaceful demonstrators. Despite numerous accounts of people being brutalised during arrest or detention the authorities are refusing to acknowledge the extent of the problem creating a climate of impunity, Amnesty International warned in a new report published today. Read the rest of this entry »
Evros river is the 160 km natural borderline between Greece and Turkey, Europe and Asia and since 2007 one of the preferential ways for the immigration to Europe.
Riverside had been planned the construction of a ditch and the first 15 kilometres were ready in August 2011. The initial project, later considered to be too expensive, was then changed into a double barrier of wire-netting and barbed wire. Read the rest of this entry »
907 kilometres is the distance to reach the Omonia quarter, in the centre of Athena, leaving from the Greek-Turkish border. This is a political border represented by the Evros river, the 160 km natural borderline between two countries, Greece and Turkey, but also between two worlds, two cultures. This river is the gateway for many migrants who try to enter into Europe from the East, it is the oriental gate of Europe. Read the rest of this entry »
Refugees trying to reach safety in Europe get stuck in Greece: Once in Europe, they have to remain in the country they first arrived in. They speak about lack of basic support like housing, clothing and food and daily racist abuse. Not only by fascists like Golden Dawn, but also Greek people – and the police.
An unknown man suffered serious injuries and was in coma at the Patra hospital following a gang attack on Sunday night, according to local reports.
The victim, who is said to be an “illegal” immigrant, was assailed by a group of men on motorbikes. He was rescued by people who were watching a play at a nearby theater.
Witnesses have identified one of the assailants as a local member of the far right Golden Dawn party, according to a local newspaper.
Brutal attacks against migrants in Greece are becoming almost a daily occurrence, with violent mobs acting almost unhindered as police have failed to make any significant arrests.
A video of the attack, recorded secretly by a bystander and uploaded onto the Internet, showed a group of young men, most of them dressed in black, running down a flight of stairs at a metro station and attacking someone. Cries of “No, no” in broken Greek can be heard, though the victim is barely discernible, as well as an exchange between two of the assailants.
“Did you stick the knife in him?” one asks. “I shoved it in all the way,” another responds.
Migrants see rise in racist attacks
Representatives of immigrant groups in Athens have told Kathimerini in the wake of an Egyptian man being seriously beaten by a group of assailants that there has been a spike in the number of attacks on foreigners following the May 6 election, when neo-Nazi Chrysi Avgi (Golden Dawn) vastly increased its share of the vote.
“Things have got worse since the elections,” Reza Gholami, the head of an association of Afghans, told Kathimerini. “There are daily beatings. These guys don’t just want to frighten people, they are hitting to kill. They are hitting on the head, a lot of people are attacking at the same time. Most incidents are not known because immigrants do not notify authorities. They are afraid for their lives or don’t have legal papers or lack the funds to pay the cost of a lawsuit.”
Another immigrant, who wished to remain anonymous, described how attacks take place in the Aghios Panteleimonas district of Athens, where he lives.
“The attacks are carried out by gangs, either on motorbikes or on foot,” he said. “If there is a witness, the attackers start shouting that the victim is a thief.”
An Egyptian fisherman was severely beaten at his home in Perama, near Piraeus, early on Tuesday. A group of assailants entered the house and while three migrants were able to escape their attackers, the 28-year-old was unable to run away and suffered a broken jaw and nose, as well as other injuries, in the attack. Six suspects, including an 18-year-old woman, were arrested later.
Sources close to the victim told Kathimerini that unidentified individuals approached other Egyptians in the area later in the day and warned them that they would suffer reprisals if anyone testified against the suspects.
A Golden Dawn official told Kathimerini that he did not know if the suspects were members of the far-right party.
In a report on Tuesday, the Guardian newspaper quoted Golden Dawn candidate Ilias Panagiotaros as saying, “If Chrysi Avgi gets into Parliament, it will carry out raids on hospitals and kindergartens and it will throw immigrants and their children out on the street so that Greeks can take their place.”
On June 6, 2012, Jerusalem Post reporter Gil Shefler was assaulted in Athens while trying to film a mob attack outside the National Archeological Museum, one of the city’s main tourist attractions.
The incident began around 8 p.m. when a group of about 20 masked men wielding batons started beating refugees, migrants and homeless people in the middle of the street.
Athens, June 1, 2012: Migrant Stabbed With a Sword – Five Racists Attacks in the last days
Incidents of migrants stabbed on the streets or at public transport means have increased during the last days, with the latest two attacks to have taken place within 20 minutes. One man from Albania and two men from Poland fell victims to what it seems to have been ‘racist attacks’.
Eyewitness describe the incredible attack that took place on Thursday night at Neos Kosmos district of southern Athens.
The first victim was an Albanian man who was penetrated with a …sword by attackers on motorcycles outside the elementary school of the area.
Twenty minutes later after the attack and some three kilometers away, two migrants from Poland were attacked with knives. They are also hospitalized but were not able to testify to the police yet.
Last Tuesday, a man from Bangladesh was stabbed by an attacker who was holding a knife inside the Athens Metro in Omonia Square. The attacker managed to flee.
On Monday May 29, a man from Pakistan collapsed at the platform of the Urban Train <Agios Nikolaos> station after he was stabbed.
An organized racist attack took place in the early morning hours of Tuesday, when a group of 20 people, armed with iron bars, wooden sticks and batons stormed the home where migrants from Egypt have been living. The incident took place in the industrial suburb of Perama, in the southwest of Piraeus. Read the rest of this entry »
Angry residents of Patras, in North-Western Peloponnese, and supporters of extreme-right Chrysi Avgi (Golden Dawn) tried to storm an old factory where dozens of immigrants take shelter. Local media report of five people injured as protesters clashed with police, with the one side hurling stones and wooden sticks and the other firing tear gas. Among the injured are two policemen who were attacked with wooden sticks, and one GD member. Read the rest of this entry »
A detention center for undocumented immigrants in Amygdaleza, northwest of Athens, started operating on Sunday, despite vehement protests by local residents and rights groups, with the transfer of dozens of migrants detained over the past few days in police sweeps in central Athens.
Police said they transfered a group of 56 migrants in the early afternoon and were to move another 164 into the compound late last night.
Meanwhile residents staged a protest against the center outside the police training school which is adjacent to the facility.
According to Citizens’ Protection Minister Michalis Chrysochoidis, a total of 1,200 migrants are to be moved into the center until mid-May. Then additional centers are to open in different parts of the country, according to the minister, who insists that this project will solve Greece’s problem with illegal immigration.
The minister noted, in a posting on his Twitter account yesterday, that the opening of the first facility was a success. “With Amygdaleza we have proven that a government can and should work even a few days before elections,” he said. In a separate posting on Facebook he expressed conviction that local residents would accept the center once they see how it operates.
Last week the minister had brushed off objections of local residents to the project, noting that security concerns were not an issue due to the proximity of the police training school to the facility.
In a related development, a spokeswoman for the Doctors Without Borders aid group complained about the health checks being conducted by joint teams of police officers and health officials on undocumented immigrants living in crowded apartments in central Athens. “Public health cannot be safeguarded through police-led inspections and through scaremongering,” the head of the group’s Greek office, Reveka Papadopoulou, said.
Source: http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_wsite1_1_29/04/2012_439869
Three people found a horrible death and four were seriously injured after the car they were in got fire while trying to escape a FRONTEX control. Greek media report that local police for Illegal Immigration Enforcement and members of the European agency for the security of external EU borders FRONTEX had spotted a car transporting illegal immigrants. The officers followed the car and cut its way in an attempt to stop it for inspection. Read the rest of this entry »
The first of 30 detention centers for undocumented immigrants that the government is planning to open over the next two years is to be located in the administrative region of Attica (the area around Athens). According to government officials it will be located in the deserted Air Force camp in Katsimidi, near Mount Parnitha, north of Athens.
The ministry of national defense had sent the “ministry of citizen’s protection” a list of six inactive military camps that could be converted into immigrant detention centers, out of which Katisimidi was chosen.
M. Chrysohoidis, minister “of Citizen Protection”, announced today the creation of thirty detention lagers for immigrants in cooperation with the Ministry of Defense.
The minister had a meeting with the governors of 10 Greek prefectures to ask them if they agree to build detention centers in their areas and if they have specific facilities to offer for this purpose.
He also assured that the EU funding for these centers will be 250 million euros for the three following years.
For each detention lager a new independent police department will be created with personnel of 150 new police officers and also 70 private security men for every 250 immigrants detained.
According to the plan, each new detention center will be divided into four sector will capacity of 250 detained immigrants, i.e. 1,000 immigrants in each of the 30 lagers announced, a total of 30,000!
Yesterday, Monday March 19, the Minister of Citizen Protection Michalis Chrisochoidis announced in the Greek Cabinet that a new immigrants’ detention camp will be created in Kozani.
The camp will be under the authority of Greek police and will be located in a former military base. The camp’s capacity will be 1,000 inmates.
This will be the first official detention camp in Greece. The responsibility for guarding the perimeter of the detention camp will be given to the Greek police, but according to unofficial info, a private security company will be contracted for the interior.
The member states’ home affairs ministers will meet, on 8 March in Brussels, to debate governance of the border-free Schengen area and in particular the problems they are experiencing with Greece, the main gateway to Europe for 80% of “illegal migrants” (more than 60,000 caught at the border between Greece and Turkey in 2011). Read the rest of this entry »
On the morning of February 21, 2012, in the rural area near the village Amorion (Orestiada) another corpse was discovered. The dead immigrant was a woman of African origin, aged 18-25 years. The immigrant died because of bad weather, while trying to enter the “European dream” from Turkey, via the river Evros. On February 1, 2012 another African woman was found dead near river Evros, in the area of Tychero village this time. She was about 25 years old, and died either from drowning or hypothermia, as in those days, temperatures in the border areas could fall as low as 15 degrees below zero.
The confirmed number of dead immigrants in Evros river from the beginning of the year is six, while eight more are still missing, including a 9-years-old little girl. She and her grandfather were lost in the cold waters of the river.
TEXT: ANDRÉS MOURENZA // PHOTO: ALESSANDRO PENSO
Finally, on Monday morning (2 days after the incident) the suspect of the racist attack to migrants in Corinth was arrested by the police. Also one of the two hospitalized migrants was able to leave the medical premises and return to the train station, with the other migrants. Nabi is still in hospital, well treated, and although with difficulties, he is recovering as photographers Alessandro Penso and Giorgos Moutafis were able to confirm this Monday after visiting him. Also journalist Antonio Cuesta visited the migrants at the train station this Monday. Read the rest of this entry »
Nabi, a 20-years old Moroccan, is lying on the ground. He looks dead.
Twenty minutes earlier we were sitting in the recovered-from-garbage chairs and furniture, smoking cigarettes and chatting in one of the abandoned wagons of the old train station of Corinth (Greece). Nabi lives there with about other 50 migrants from Afghanistan, Iraq, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Yemen. Nasir—a polyglot, art lover Afghan interpreter—asks Nabi, another art lover, to draw something. The young Moroccan sketches the boat of the Hellenic Seaways moored just 200 meters down in the bay. They all are waiting the lucky day in which they will be able to catch the ferry; climbing to it, or hidden in the load of the trucks that the boat carries to Italy. And then… go further North in search for a job, a future, a safe and normal life. Crisis-hit Greece has become a nightmare for them. There is not the slightest possibility for work in a country with rocketing unemployment figures. Greeks don’t want them, neither they want to stay in Greece, but they are stuck here because European Union treaties allow third countries to return them to the state where they first entered the EU. And Greece has been the gate to Europe in the last years for 90 % of migrants.
On June 6, 2012, Jerusalem Post reporter Gil Shefler was assaulted in Athens while trying to film a mob attack outside the National Archeological Museum, one of the city’s main tourist attractions.
