Imprisonment and deportation for Venna insurgents

Thirty six of the insurgents of Venna, Iraqis, Afghans and Pakistanis, have been convicted to 8 months of imprisonment and in effect Judicial DEPORTATION for participating in the Venna insurgency.   Six more were convicted to 4 months of imprisonment and Judicial depotation all the same!

Their repulsion will take place in the next days.

source : http://www.xronos.gr/detail.php?ID=52615

The final (Feb 4) version of the immigration bill: from bad to worse!

In our recent text we argued that “the bill, which is ostensibly introduced to correct at least partially an injustice, does hold many pitfalls…those in the worst position now will be then further devalued. The division into ‘goods’ and ‘bads’, ‘useful’ and ’superfluous’, ‘legal’ and ‘clandestine’ immigrants is being petrified as the global system of exploitation deepens.”

The final, modified version of the draft law which was officially announced on February 4, 2010!

• Both parents of the child to be entitled to citizenship must meet the requirement of 5 years of incessant legal residence in Greece (first version provided for only one parent).
• Adult immigrants to be eligible for citizenship must present proof of 7 – instead of 5 as was first proposed – years of incessant legal residence in Greece, to which the further requirement of a “long residence permit”, which has been granted to just 130 persons since its inception in 2006!).
• To the existing requirements of exclusion (high fees, law-abiding behaviour, clean criminal record etc,) the new draft law adds:

Special Civil Education and History tests set up by the Citizenship Committee.

That there are no “public or national security” reasons to deny citizenship.

Insurance and financial status

According to the ministry of interior those eligible to file an application today are: 130 long residing people, 14.000 with a 5 year residence, 1.000 parents of Greek citizens, 1.000 entitled to international protection, 120 people with no citizenship, a sum total of less than 16.500 people!

Anti-racist Anti-fascist gathering Saturday February 6th at 11am at Propylaia, Athens

source athens indymedia

We call every activist to the open assembly at the Dean’s Office (Propylaia) at 8pm tonight, Friday Feb the 5th, to discuss tomorrow’s anti-fascist gathering at Propylaia.

OPEN ASSEMBLY OF PRYTANEIA (DEAN’S OFFICE) ANNOUNCEMENT

Today February 5th we anarchists, anti-authoritarians, antifascists, decided to keep the Prytaneia (Athens University Dean’s Office) open as a space to collectively organize the struggle building. Our aim is the fermentation and the counter-informing in view of tomorrow’s antifascist gathering that has been called for at 11:00 am at Propylaia. A gathering that stands against nationalist and racist activities of fascists, who have also called a gathering in the same place tomorrow at 3:00 pm, a gathering that stands against the solidarity of the oppressed during a period of pronounced attacks on immigrants by state militants and para-militant groups.

We stand hostile against both institutional racism, as expressed through the recent proposed legislation on naturalization, and independent callings of misanthropes who aim to physically harm immigrants.

At the same time that the government targets centers of resistance in general, fascists attempt to invade a space, which after lengthy tough struggle belongs to the world of freedom and resistance. We are not willing to even allow a square meter to the state/police and fascists.

We call every activist to the open assembly at the Dean’s Office (Propylaia) at 8pm tonight, Friday Feb the 5th, to discuss tomorrow’s anti-fascist gathering at Propylaia.

AUTHORITY IS NOT OUR FRIEND

NO OPPRESSED ARE OUR ENEMY

ASYLUM DOES NOT BELONG TO FASCISTS AND POLICE

IT BELONGS TO ACTIVISTS AND THE WORLD OF FREEDOM

WAR AGAINST STATE AND BOSSES

SOLIDARITY TO IMMIGRANTS

Anti-racist Anti-fascist gathering Saturday February 6th at 11am at Propylaia

Migrants in the Venna “detention centre” (prison) revolt

source after the Greek riots

Migrants in the Venna “detention centre” (prison) revolt – the truth behind the government’s migrant-friendly mask!

While tension is building up in Athens, due to the upcoming fascist demonstration at Propylea (main University of Athens building) this Saturday, migrants face repression and inhuman treatment at all levels. Needless to say that the government’s new migration bill focuses on legal migrants and their children, who have no right to Greek citizenship or nationality and thus have no civil rights, although they might be born and have lived in the country all their life. The grey zone of “illegal” migration is swept under the rug, and no solution whatsoever has been given to the disgraceful welcome/hospitality/and all other euphemistic-adjective centres for migrants.

In the early hours of Tuesday (2.1.2010) the approximately 130 detainees held in the Venna “detention centre” for migrants, in the prefecture of Rodopi (very close to the North-Eastern borders of the country) revolted. They protested against their continuous and illegal detention, plus the horrendous living conditions in their prison. Some of them have been imprisoned for over 3 months. The uprising went on the following day. They set fire and some injured themselves as a sign of protest. The prefect of Rodopi, the head of the local police and the fire brigade went on site. The media reported that approximately 30 were released. However, a post on indymedia reads that 43 migrants were taken yesterday to the prosecutor, facing charges of mutiny and public property damage. An open assembly has been called for today in Komotini, in order to take action.

Frontex first Regional Office to open in Piraeus

source kathimerini

Frontex Office to open in Piraeus

The European Union’s border-monitoring agency Frontex is opening its first European regional office in Piraeus, the Citizens’ Protection Ministry said yesterday. According to a statement released by the ministry, the office is being set up in the context of efforts by Greek authorities to intensify border inspections and curb an illegal influx of immigrants. According to Frontex, which has its headquarters in Warsaw, the Aegean is expected to remain the «key point of entrance» for would-be migrants seeking to enter Greece illegally in 2010.

Citizenship bill made stricter

source kathimerini

Citizenship bill made stricter

Second-generation immigrants who are hoping to obtain Greek citizenship under the new law proposed by the government yesterday discovered that the conditions for doing so are going to be substantially stricter than had originally been announced.

PASOK submitted the revised bill to Parliament yesterday and it soon became apparent that some of the draft law’s provisions have been tightened up following a period of public consultation during which there were many objections to what some people regarded as the ease with which citizenship would be awarded.

Under the new provisions, a child born in Greece to immigrant parents will need to have had both his father and mother living in the country legally for five years before he or she can apply for citizenship. Originally, only one parent would have had to be a legal resident.

Also, the children will have to prove that they have spent at least six years in Greek schools rather than the three years originally proposed by the government.

In another major change to the initial plans, applicants will also need to produce recommendation letters from three Greek citizens.

The proposed law would still allow second-generation immigrants to vote in local elections and to stand as city councilors after obtaining citizenship and proving that they have a good command of Greek.

The Interior Ministry estimates that the bill would allow more than 250,000 people to join the electoral register after gaining citizenship. Interior Minister Yiannis Ragousis said that the imminent law would apply to any immigrants who obtained legal status up to January 2005.

Despite the stricter measures contained in the new bill, New Democracy still criticized the draft law for being too lax. “Every immigration measure that the government has announced so far constitutes the lowest threshold anywhere in Europe for awarding citizenship to immigrants,” said ND spokesman Panos Panayiotopoulos.

Meanwhile, the Church of Greece’s Holy Synod said it believes the bill does not effectively tackle the country’s immigration problem.

“The citizenship bill does not directly respond to the immigration problem, so the state has to carefully study the conditions under which citizenship will be granted,” the statement read. “At the same time, though, it has to approach the immigration issue with seriousness, taking into account the sensitivities and particularities of certain parts of our homeland and the possible effect it will have on the general population.”

“Our struggle is a struggle for dignity” – update on the fishworkers’s strike

info from athens indymedia articles and http://asyntaxtostypos.wordpress.com

Yesterday Wednesday Feb 3, the Egyptian fishworkers’s strike was brought for the fourth time to court. The trial’s outcome for the first time was positive. The court decided for the first time that the strike is not “illegal and abusive”.

Unsurprisingly this was the first time the court examined the case’s essence, unlike the three previous courts when the strike was declared “illegal and abusive” on various technical legalistic “irregularities” (for example on the pretext of notification of the strike to the “wrong recipient” or “at a wrong time”, etc.).

In this trial as well, two witnesses were examined, one from the shipowners side, the chairman of the cooperative of the ship owners D. Ntaoultzis, and a witness for the defence of fishworkers, the Secretary of the Trade Union Center of Thessaloniki, Zarianopoulos.

At the beginning of the process in front of dozens of fishworkers, people in solidarity and ship owners , the judge asked police officers to come forward and stay in front of the judges.

The issues addressed included the non delivery of necessary documents by the ship owners to the workers for the latter to be able to renew their residence permits, which is a very urgent thing. Fishworkers defence also referred to the fishworkers uninsured status in case of work accidents and the assignment of the [yellow] workers union – which does not include the mass of Egyptians – with the calculation of shares.

The ship owners representative admitted indirectly that he had taken action to have scabs sent to Michaniona (in cooperation with the labour representative of the Egyptian embassy). The issue of the document proposed by the ship owners as a settlement of demands [see previous posts/updates] targetting active strikers and prohibiting political or syndicalist activity to Egyptians was also discussed. The ship owners representative argued that the process of calculating the shares is accessible and transparent to the fishworkers, who refuted this by saying that at the crucial time of the calculation they are still on board. He also said that he does not think it is necessary that Egyptians are represented at the process and that “it would be good if Greeks had those jobs to combat unemployment”- prejudice towards foreign workers was obvious at all times. The ship owners lawyer warned the strikers that they “should be careful, because things will be wild from now on!”. He also said that the strikers are misguided by CP / PAME trade union, which supports them to gain their votes in view of the granting of voting rights to immigrants with the new immigration bill.

The strikers said after the trial’s first day “our struggle is a struggle for dignity”. Dignity will be the criterion of their decisions for further action.

Despite the good news with the court’s decisions, the strikers are in a very difficult situation in terms of money. Today there is a meeting of the Solidarity Assembly at the Thessaloniki Antiracist Initiative’s place [ermou & venizelou str.] for practical solidarity coordination.

– > previous update

About the death of the Indian immigrant worker in Varipetro, Chania, Jan 31, 2010

This is a Forum of Migrants in Crete press release.

For the death of the Indian worker in Varipetro, Chania, on Sunday, 31/1/2010

3 FEB 2010
Labour accidents are tragic, shocking events. But what is more than shocking is what these people die of: inadequate protection measures.
One more spectre that should haunt the sleep of state bureaucracies, trade union bosses, and the business world.

Another worker killed, due to inadequate safety measures.

He fell from scaffolds, from a 6 meters height …

We note that many immigrant workers have already lost their lives in a working regime verging on cruelty. We are not only talking about the labour intense and unsafe conditions, but also about the long shifts, the ridiculous wages and of course the uninsured status. It is the harsh reality, which the Greek politicians do not see and nobody refers to now that the new bill on citizenship and immigration is discussed. It is the hard fact that some Greek people refuse to see, entrenched as they are in insecurity and fear and the conviction that they have discovered the “enemy” of their wealth: immigrants. Yet, it is immigrants -uninsured and underpaid – who build their houses, who look after their elderly relatives and their household, who pick fruit from their fields, who do all those jobs that Greeks refuse to do anymore.

We require that the state protects workers and implements the labour law.

We demand that trade union leaders deter further accidents and deaths by having unions’ and associations’ gates wide open for their immigrants colleagues (with or without papers) who should be fully entitled to the rights of membership

Let us not wait passively for the next “accidental death”.
Greek and foreign workers, united, let us claim now everything that is ours.

Let us push with our actions the employers, who we know very well will never show concern for us.

No more deaths, no more crippled workers.

Solidarity with immigrant street vendors in Athens!

FINANCIAL SUPPORT FEAST FRIDAY, February 5, 2010, ASOEE (Economic Univ., Patision str.), 9 pm SOLIDARITY GATHERING, Monday, 8 February 2010, EVELPIDON STREET COURTS, ATHENS 10 a.m.

Immigrants text:

Immigrants,

we invite you to support en masse our action and show your solidarity.

We call all those who feel that this is of their interest,

Every day we immigrants vendors, we get arrested and beaten and imprisoned for doing “illegal trade”

We’re on the road and we need to sell things.

We want a better life.

We want to work and make a living free and out of the sweat of our hands,

Let us unite for the common goal: solidarity and mutual aid among immigrants.

Immigrants

:::::::

The text of people in solidarity

In the center of Athens and Piraeus, the political and municipal authority, all kinds of cops, media and “indignant” shopkeepers engage everyone diffuse manhunts against immigrants.

On December 30, 2009, ca. fifty cops persecuted immigrants in the streets around Ermou street. They pushed around and beat savagely four of them.  One was taken to hospital and after his return to the infamous Acropolis police station he was beaten up again. Yet, it was the immigrants who were accused of “resistance to authority, disobedience and property damage”. The trial was postponed for February 8, 2010. One of them is still detained for not having “papers”.

The fury of racist cops, the beatings, the tortures and even the murders of immigrants are not “single / isolated incidents”.

It is an integral part of the daily and extensive structural violence against immigrants from the ones in power, cops and judges.

Solidarity, dignity and resistance pave the road for common struggles.

FINANCIAL SUPPORT FEAST  FRIDAY, February 5, 2010, ASOEE (Economic Univ., Patision str.), 9 pm

SOLIDARITY GATHERING, Monday, 8 February 2010, EVELPIDON STREET COURTS, ATHENS 10 a.m.

::::

{for background see these posts:

• Manhunt against immigrant street vendors in Athens center.
• More testimonies of abuse and humiliation at the Acropolis Police Station Torture Chamber
• New case of severe immigrant abuse by cops of the Acropolis Police Station}

Zero tolerance terror against immigrants once more in Igoumenitsa

In recent days, a wave of police terror has swept the port town of Igoumenitsa on the Ionian sea side of Greece. This is one of the main gateways to Italy and immigrants o try there to get into ferries to Italy. This is the town where one year ago the Kurd refugee from Iraq Arivan Abdullah Osman had been severly injured on the 3rd of April at Igoumenitsa port by Port police men – he died in hospital a couple of months after.

Zero tolerance terror was implemented once more against sans papiers of the area. As athens indymedia users report, in the last days of January police operation tried to clear up the makeshift nylon huts immigrants had to protect themselves from the harsh winter conditions. The police not only destroyed the huts but also burnt people’s clothes and blankets.

After the barbarity was made known people of the area and near cities provided immigrants with clothes and necessary things, but this was not the end of the story.

The police, some days after the destruction of the settlement, raided once more towns’ spots where immigrants gather, they beat and arrested dozens, who were then kept in detention cells of the police stations, under “Guantanamo” conditions. There has been rumour that gunshots could be heard during the operations.

A solidarity committee has been formed in the town and is working on practical solidarity issues. Their next meeting is on Thursday, February 6, at the Igoumenitsa Technical University premises.

Immigrant victim of police torture passes away in Athens

source: tvxs

An immigrant fell victim of police brutality

A brutal incident of police violence occurred on the evening of September 26 in Nikaia, Athens.   The victim a 25 year old immigrant, who died yesterday of his wounds. Petros Constantinou of the movement “Together against racism and the fascist threat”, talked to tvxs about the events that caused Pakistanis’ Mohammed Kamran Atif death.

On 26 September,  at01.30 at night, 15 police officers raided the house of the young immigrant at 82 Ilioupoleos str., Nikaia, shouting and beating both himself and his family. The neighboors who witnessed the incident say that the deceased was just semi-conscious,  and that while he was being carried out of his house his head kept banging on the stairs while he and his family were getting off the house crawling.   Against him there was a complaint for child beating.

He was then taken to the Nicaia police station, which turned into a torture chamber.   Kamran remained in detention for two days.  The charge against him remained ungrounded, and the complainant withdrew his charge .  Kamran was then released and he himself described to his family the horrific moments he had gone through.   “He was tied hand and foot and banged with clubs and then subjected to electroshock  with wires on his hands and knees” is the testimony of  Kamran’s amily.

Both the family and the neighbors knew about the abuse Kamran had suffered . Fear kept him away from the hospital since Kamran had no documents.

The police tried to cover up the incident.   Kamran’s brother was pressured and misled to testify that his brother brought no bruises when he left the police station.

Tomorrow on (Sunday 11 Oct) at 16:00 in the house of Mohammed Atif Kamran  an interview and a protest wil take place organised by the Pakistani community in Greece,  “United Against Racism and the Fascist Threat” and ” ANTARSYA.

From Anti-Immigrant Summer to Zero Tolerance on Election Bait

Text in Greek available here.

On the occasion of the International Migrants Day

Just over a month and half ago Prime Minister Papandreou used the Global Forum on Immigration & Development proceedings in Athens to sketch government measures which would stand for a humanitarian turn compared to the policies and situation of the recent months .  He described as necessary

“[T]o stimulate the participation of immigrants in the political life of the country, through the possibility of Greek citizenship acquisition, particularly of course for the so-called ’second generation’, in which we are suggesting the acquisition of citizenship by birth for the new person born in our territory.”

For people in Greece, though, the announcement of the Secretary for Home Affairs Theodora Tzakri two weeks later, which made clear that Greek citizenship would be granted only to children born to legal immigrants, came as no surprise.

The doctrine of “Zero tolerance to illegal migration” goes hand in hand with this government’s humanitarian turn… As for what this turn is all about, it aims at incorporating immigrants mostly from Albania, after two decades of overexploitation, and in exchange for votes. A phony exchange indeed.

Along with this, the dividing of immigrants into ‘good’ and ‘bad’, ‘useful’ and ’superfluous’, ‘legal’ and ‘illegal’ becomes more intense, and the system of exploitation grows deeper roots .

As we wrote in our above linked text on the Global Forum on Immigration & Development:

“The aim of developmental policy is to control migration flows (through the FRONTEX patrols and detention centres) as well as to regulate them (through 5-year rotating work permits, the annulment of asylum rights), in order to keep a stable proportion of productive inhabitants within the increasingly ageing, unproductive populations of Europe. In other words, recycling the migrants will keep the indexes of development in check, development being the systematic and bloodthirsty pillage of lives and resources, time and space.

According to the “UN Population Division report on replacement migration”, if the Europeans want to keep their ratio of older people to active workers at the 1995 levels, the Union will need 135 million immigrants by 2025.

This demographic issue is only part of the story, and maybe not the most important. Neoliberalization inside Europe has meant a weakened, destabilized labor force. It’s not just that capital wants selected migrants because it needs more workers, it wants migrants because they are powerless, unorganized, low-paid workers for whom there will be no job security, no health care and no pensions.In other words, they are far cheaper and less troublesome workers”.

Illegal immigrants are necessary because through them the rights of the legal ones are suppressed (there is of course rotation of people in these roles). At the same time, illegal immigration helps governments maintain a useful xenophobic atmosphere to impose authoritarian policies. ”Migration management” includes both authoritarian hysteria and humanitarian logistics. The two seemingly opposite positions are the two sides of the same coin of subjugation.

So let’s outline against this backdrop the government’s humanitarian turn after the elections of October 2009…

The Doctrine “Insulated Greece”

The new doctrine was introduced by Minister of Citizen Protection (= Public Order) M. Chrisochoïdis on Tuesday, December 15, at his meeting with the FRONTEX Executive Director J.Laitinen.   The construction of the Southeast Mediterranean FRONTEX Headquarters at the U.S. base of Aktion or at Piraeus has been a permanent request of the Greek government, which proudly stated that 75% of illegal entry arrests at the sea borders of EU for this year took place in the Aegean sea.

A few days earlier in the frame of FRONTEX operations (on Saturday, December 12) officers in Samos island, on no notice whatsoever and violently, carried out with utmost secrecy the transfer of over 85 Afghan refugees from the local detention center to the island’s airport at Pythagorio.  There the refugees were boarded on an airplane which departed for an unknown destination.

The slaughter in the Aegean Sea continues

In less than two months, 16 migrants have died in the icy waters of the Aegean. Most of them were children.

• On Tuesday, October 27, 8 immigrants, three adults and five children, drowned in the east part of the Aegean Sea.
• On Saturday, November 7, the lifeless bodies of six children from Palestine, aged 2 to 12 years, washed up on shore near Bodrum (Alikarnasos), Turkey.  The boat in which 19 Palestinians – half of them children – squeezed themselves on an effort to pass from the Turkish town of Turgutreis to Kos island overturned 500 meters from the shore.
• On Friday, December 11, a boat carrying undocumented migrants sank near the island of Leros. Fishermen found 25 migrants perched on a rocky island and two more lifeless bodies in the sea.

Police violence

Incidents of abuse and humiliation by the police amount to dozens, and most of them never reach the public attention. We report the following characteristic cases:

• In the afternoon of October 22, immediately after the visit of Secretary of State Vougias the detention center in Pagani of Mytilene, police officers responsible for guarding the center abused and beat prisoners, including a 17-year boy, who was evacuated to the Vostanio Hospital, where lesions were diagnosed on his head, back, waist and arms. According to the interpreter, the police promised 350 euros to the victim to buy his silence.
• On the 19th of November in the afternoon a 35-year old immigrant was beaten by two officers serving at the infamous Aghios Panteleimonas Police Station in Athens. Her two year old child witnessed the beating and the arrest, and along with her mother remained under custody at the Kypseli Police Station for four hours! The incident became known only because the woman is married to a famous Greek musician.
• On Friday, November 20 , immigrant detainee Mohammed bin Taher collapsed in the courts of Evelpidon street in Athens. His condition was such that he was taken to hospital by ambulance. As reported by the his fellow detainees (and he later confirmed) Mohammed bin Taher had been savagely beaten by police at the Omonoia Police Station.
• On the 9th of October Mohammed Kamran dies after the treatment he received by the policemen who had raided the house where he and fellow Pakistani workers resided in Nikaia, Athens.

Para-state violence

The para-state mechanism was launched last summer against immigrants and since then it has been working relentlessly despite the supposed change of policy.

• The most recent incident was the attack of last Tuesday, December 15, against the Social Haunt – Immigrants Haunt in Chania, Crete (hometown of the former Minister of Public Order Markoyannakis).  In the same city on December 8 there has been a savage criminal attack against two immigrants by unknown perpetrators. The near-killers attacked the immigrant workers in the back with crowbars, and left them with serious head and body injuries.  One of the 2 victims was among the 15 hunger strikers of last year , who shook the island of Crete with their proud struggle. The intensity of the attacks in Chania definitely is related to the dynamic struggles of immigrants in the city.
• In Athens, brutal attacks against Arab shops took place at the Neos Kosmos district on Monday, November 22, when 40 people holding crowbars and molotov cocktails attacked and injured the employees in two mini-markets, destroyed the merchandise and stole the money of the cashier.

Para-state organized violence encourages and feeds the diffuse social one.

• Thus, on November 8, four immigrants who had been working at olive fields in Messolongi, Western Greece, were attacked with crowbars and clubs and beaten savagely by circa 15 people. The immigrants were transferred to the emergency dept. of the Messolongi hospital. The immigrants had been asking their wages from the owner of the fields in which they had been working.  They were ambushed and beaten in an old warehouse, where they had an appointment with their employer to get their money.

Institutional violence

• In late November the trial of 25 immigrants (mainly Arabs and one Afghan) took place; they had been arrested during the events of December 2008 and had been detained ever since.  All this period they were considered missing.  All of them were sentenced to imprisonment from 7 months to 3 years.  It is characteristic for the fairness of the trial that only one interpreter had been assigned , who translated simultaneously for 24 defendants who were divided in three groups in the court’s room.  The Afghan who did not understand Arabic was seated on the last bench of the room…
• On Friday, December 11, in Thessaloniki, a report was issued by the Hellenic League for Human Rights, about the detention centers in Evros and Rodopi.  The survey took place from the 25th to the 29th of November 2009 and states:

In many cases there is inadequate lighting, ventilation and heating (…)  At virtually none of the premises visited have the possibility to go outdoors on some yard. Even in detention centers where there is an adequate yard, the large number of detainees on the one hand and the lack of personnel on the other allows usually only for some prisoners to have outdoor breaks for a minimum period and not on a daily basis (…)  Food in many cases is inadequate, the quantity and quality in general varies (..). The care taken for sanitation and hygiene conditions varies from inexistent to inadequate (…) The availability of medical and nursing staff is poor and at all cases occasional (…) The detainees were in total confusion regarding their rights, the time of their detention and ill-informed as to asylum procedures; interpreters were not available.

December 18, 2009

Clandestina Network

Group of Immigrants and Refugees, Thessaloniki

Complaint submitted to the European Commission: Greece violates EU asylum right

SOURCE: http://www.proasyl.de/en/

Greece violates EU asylum right

Complaint submitted to the European Commission

On November 11, 2009, PRO ASYL, along with fellow refugee organizations Dutch Council for Refugees, Finnish Refugee Advice Center, and British Refugee and Migrant Justice, filed a complaint with the European Commission against Greece. Twenty other European refugee organizations support the complaint.

PRO ASYL demands that the European Commission immediately initiates an infringement procedure in the European Court of Justice based on Greece’s failure to abide by fundamental European asylum policy. Greece provides for asylum protection within its laws, however it falls short of its legal obligations in practice.

COMPLAINT & REPORT available at NGO complaint against Greece. The report includes many testimonies.

Human Rights Watch: “2009 a Bad Year for Migrants – Deaths, Labor Exploitation, Violence, and Poor Treatment in Detention”

source: human rights watch website

(New York) – Many governments’ policies toward migrants worldwide expose them to human rights abuses including labor exploitation, inadequate access to health care, and prolonged detention in poor, overcrowded conditions, Human Rights Watch said today in advance of International Migrants Day, on December 18, 2009.  A 25-page roundup of Human Rights Watch reporting on violations of migrants’ rights this year, “Slow Movement: Protection of Migrants’ Rights in 2009,”  includes coverage of China, Cuba, Egypt, France, Greece, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Malaysia, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Thailand, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States.

Government on Citizenship for Second Generation immigrants

source: http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_politics_100002_23/12/2009_113525

Immigrants to get citizenship

Cabinet approves pioneering draft law to give foreigners and their children greater rights

Second-generation immigrants are going to be given the right to claim Greek citizenship and vote in the country’s elections, the Cabinet decided yesterday.

In what will be groundbreaking legislation for Greece, the proposed law would allow some 250,000 children who have been born in the country to migrant parents to call themselves Greek. Under the draft law, now open to public consultation, if one of the child’s parents has been living in Greece for at least five years in a row, then their son or daughter will be able to claim citizenship.

This right will also be available to children who have attended the first three years of primary school in Greece or have studied at Greek schools for a total of six years. The Interior Ministry estimates that if the law is passed before next year’s municipal elections, then 150,000 second-generation immigrants will be able to vote in the polls.

The bill also proposes that foreigners living and working in Greece legally for five consecutive years will be able to be naturalized, allowing them to vote and run in local elections but not general elections.

Citizens’ Protection Minister Michalis Chrysochoidis said that police have already been instructed not to arrest or deport second-generation immigrants over paperwork discrepancies.

New Democracy accused the government of ignoring the significance of awarding someone citizenship, while the nationalists Popular Orthodox Rally (LAOS) accused PASOK of “distorting the electoral body.”

Yesterday’s Cabinet meeting was also memorable for another reason, as it was the first time that the head of the Church of Greece was invited to take part. Archbishop Ieronymos repeated proposals that unused Church property be used to help raise money for noble causes.

Political refugee from Turkey in risk of deportation

source: athens indymedia article

Early today the police put on a plane from Crete to Athens the Turkish political refugee Ridvan Celik (Rido), who has been claiming political asylum since 1991 in Greece.
Rido who was persecuted by the Turkish Military  for refusing to join the army and  fight the Kurdish rebels) fled to Greece in 1991 and since then has filed twice political asylum applications.
Rido was arrested on Dec 6, 2009, when riot police attacked a group of 20 comrades who were on the road for the rally point of the march to commemorate the completion of of one year since the murder of Alexis Grigoropoulos and the rebellion that followed.
Until today morning he had been detained at the  Heraklion police headquarters.  The mobilisation for his release and the reinitiation of political asylum processes did not bear fruit.

Apparently this secret transport to Athens and the day the Greek state chose for it (24 Dec) means that they intend to deport without crating fuzz.
UPDATE: according to athens indymedia users, Rido is detained at Petrou Ralli Police dpt.

Europe’s murderous borders: report by Migreurop

Text below by BRISTOL NO BORDERS

“A report published by Migreurop (a Euro-African network of 40 organisations from 13 countries working on issues of immigration policy, externalisation and their consequences within and beyond the EU’s borders) in October 2009 paints a vivid picture of the effects of the EU’s migration policies by focussing on three regions in which a number of common denominators are identified in spite of the significant difference between them (the Calais region and the north of France, the Greek-Turkish border and the Oujda region in eastern Morocco). These are added to by a case study on events on the Italian island of Lampedusa, where practices have been adopted for the sake of expediency that confirm the suspicion that legal guarantees and human rights conceived as minimum standards for the treatment of all human beings are becoming a luxury that is not meant for migrants who have been criminalised and de-humanised as “illegals”.”\

The themes that run through all the sections from specific areas are those of controls and attempts to stop migrants, their detention in awful conditions that often entails abuses by guards, and a de-humanisation that goes so far as to result in deaths and in the use of legal and illegal dissuasive practices, among which the Dublin II regulation and illegal repatriations are identified as being particularly harmful. Instances of resistance against policies enacted by government by migrants themselves and local populations that express solidarity for them are also examined. A special emphasis is placed on how some French policies are officially justified as seeking to prevent “a draught” that would encourage others to migrate towards Europe, that the authors interpret as people being made to endure dreadful situations not for their own sake, but for the message to reach their home countries and particularly those who might be tempted to follow them in the future.

Surprising parallels are drawn, such as those between the “tranquillos” in northern Morocco and the so-called “jungles” in France, which are both make-shift shelters self-managed by those attempting to escape the attention of the police, immigration authorities, in short, to become invisible while they try to plan the next stage in their journey after hitting a dead end. In Morocco, they face the choice between trying to cross a heavily guarded stretch of the sea in which thousands have died en route to Spain, trying to climb the six-metre-high fencing erected around the Spanish north African enclave cities of Ceuta and Melilla, or to reach them by swimming around the border, again, risking death. In France, they have the Channel blocking their way into the UK, the Dublin II regulation stopping refugees among them from claiming asylum in case they are sent back to the countries they first entered the EU from (most often Greece, where the level of successful applications is well below 1%), resulting in a likelihood of them never being able to obtain asylum regardless of whether they fulfil the requirements for it.

Everywhere, the police are on their tracks, and capture involves the risk of detention, sometimes entailing violence as well as terrible living conditions, and expulsion, except for those who come from countries to where some European states will not expel them (unlike the UK, France does not usually repatriate Afghans), although this is not an issue if they are captured in Morocco or in Greece, where night-time returns to Turkey in perilous conditions across the river Evros are commonplace. The Italian practice of directly returning intercepted boats to Libya without identifying the people on board or their nationalities since May 2009 is a classic example of how the wish for expediency is trampling even the limited guarantees provided by increasingly harsh national immigration laws- expulsion without a judicial authority issuing a formal order; the presence of likely refugees disregarded; returns to presumed transit countries where they are likely to experience further abuses.

There are many excerpts of first-hand accounts from migrants’ experiences, ranging from a complete lack of understanding of the situation in which they are forced, for instance an Afghan youth in Calais who wonders how it is possible that he is not allowed to stay, nor allowed to leave and is thus condemned to roaming aimlessly, feeling as if he were “in a cage”, to harrowing descriptions of spiteful and mocking treatment at the hands of border guards that went so far as to lead people to perish, both on the Moroccan-Spanish border and the Greek-Turkish one.

The lasting impression caused by the report is that thousands of people are facing incredible ordeals as a result of policies, that awful living conditions from poorer countries are entering the EU as a result of exclusion and the creation of categories that are permanently forced to live in a condition of invisibility. On the other hand, to help them “regulate” immigration flows, the EU and its member states are funding a vast expansion of the internal security apparatus in bordering countries and of tough laws that are often implemented on the basis of skin colour.

This often means that visits by authorities from European countries and EU institutions for negotiations with third-country governments in this field result in indiscriminate round-ups in neighbourhoods in which large numbers of migrants live and in the spread of racism, both by security and police forces as well as by members of public, for example in north African countries against sub-Saharan migrants suspected of seeking to emigrate to Europe.The report is available on the Migreurop website:

Les frontières assassines de l’Europe (French, original)

Europe’s murderous borders (English)

Fronteras asesinas de Europa (Spanish)

Rapport-Migreurop-nov2009-en

Money for detention centers until “screening centers” come…

source: athens news

THE GOVERNMENT has announced it will pay back all the money spent last year by the country’s border prefectures – including Samos, Lesvos, Chios, Chania and the Dodecanese – to maintain and operate the detention centres for undocumented migrants and asylum seekers. The prefectures have accrued some 8.5 million euros in debt.

The decision was announced by Deputy Interior Minister Theodora Tzakri during a meeting with the prefects in Athens on December 7.

“We are very pleased with the minister’s announcement,” Manolis Karlas, prefect of the island of Samos, which lies just off the coast of Turkey, told the Athens News immediately following the meeting. “She promised we would receive all the money owed by the end of the year. A first instalment will be paid next week. This money has been spent to feed and clothe the migrants and to pay for their transportation to Athens.”

Karlas, like the other prefects, is responsible for the maintenance and operation of the detention centres for illegal migrants.

“We have about 80 [migrants] on the island today,” he explained. “But during the summer months the number exceeds 800. And they all need food, clothes and shoes. We feed them three times a day. All this costs money.”

He and the other prefects informed Tzakri that the current situation has forced them to shop on credit and run up huge debts with local merchants.

The number of migrants sneaking into Greece has skyrocketed in the past few years. Official data compiled by Greece’s interior ministry show more than 146,000 migrants were arrested for entering the country illegally in 2008. This is more than double the number recorded three years ago. The government has repeatedly stressed the need for more EU help.

To provide a permanent solution, the Pasok government is planning to transform migrant detention centres into so-called screening centres, where undocumented migrants and asylum seekers will stay for only a few days as their status is being decided. A similar system exists in other European Union countries.

This is a major detour in policy pursued by the former New Democracy government, which had announced the creation of dozens of additional migrant detention centres across the country. It had planned to transform dozens of disused military facilities into detention centres and to detain undocumented migrants for as long as a year or until they were deported.

However, the conditions at many of the country’s existing migrant detention centres have been harshly criticised by representatives of local and international human rights groups, and the current government itself.

During a visit of the overcrowded facility on the island of Lesvos, Spyros Vouyias, the deputy minister for the protection of citizens, condemned the condition of the overcrowded facility on the island of Lesvos and ordered its immediate closure last month.

Using language surprisingly harsh for a cabinet member, he told reporters that conditions there were “appalling, inhuman, a violation of basic human rights”.

Last week, the government announced plans to overhaul existing asylum legislation in order to increase the number of people who may secure refugee status. Greece currently has the lowest rate of refugee recognition in Europe. According to Michalis Chrysohoidis, the citizen protection minister, it is currently 0.03 percent.

Chrysohoidis has also announced that the police will no longer be the sole decision-maker on asylum applications. This will be assigned to a new committee of government officials, legal experts and members of non-governmental organisations. As many as 40,000 asylum applications are currently pending.

Fasco-thugs hit once more in Chania, Crete.

The fasco-thugs in Chania, Crete made one more hideus, cowardice assault (for the previous ones see this and this).   In the small hours of Dec 27 inside a bar in the city’s Venetian Port area (an area with many bars) they beat with  baseball bats and knuckle dusters two Palestinians and one Moroccan guy, as well as a German woman who was in their company.    They only person in that company they did not beat was a Greek woman.   The “hit squad” of the thugs entered the bar prepared and with the sole purpose of attempting the murderous assault they did attempt, without having been provoked in no way whatsoever.

The male immigrants suffered injuries at their head and face, but were not in immediate need of hospitalisation after receiving first aid treatment.  The German woman is at hospital, with very severe injuries at her head and with face virtually deformed.

source: Forum of Migrants in Crete’s blog.

Manhunt against immigrant street vendors in Athens center.

source: athens indymedia

In the last two days in Athens downtown, particularly around the area of Ermou (High) Street, the police have launched a manhunt against  immigrants street-vendors, which has resulted in numerous injuries and an unknown number of arrests.

It is indicative that during a visit of comrades at a public hospital to support a wounded immigrant who had been arrested some hours ago, two more  immigrants, wounded on their chests, heads and legs by the cops came  at the same hospital.

The immigrant is kept under detention and will be led tomorrowat the Athens Courts at Evelpidon street, accused of resistance, disobedience and property damage .  Note that although he displayed his documents during the arrest, these “disappeared” after the arrest and he is now in risk of deportation.

Also, on 30 Decembe at noon one more immigrant street-vendor was led to court with the usual charges  cops accuse people of after beating them  (resistance to authority, disobedience, etc.); he has been released after a regular trial date was set.

Solidarity tomorrow at 10.00 at the Evelpidon courts is important.

There have also been reports of municipal police hunting street vendors who tide their large bikes furiously on the pavement and amidst people walking, posing serious safety threats.

New case of severe immigrant abuse by cops of the Acropolis Police Station

sources: athens indymedia, tvxs.gr

A Chillean immigrant detained was severely beaten on New Year’s Eve by personnel of various police forces at the infamous Acropolis police station.   His injuries were so serious that he was transferred to hospital – he is stille there in critical condtiion.  The immigrant had been arrested a week ago allegedly for having attacked someone with an iron bar.  Since he had no documents, he was detained and to be deported.

5 cops have been arrested for the case – which is a very very rare if not unprecedented thing.   Apart from torturing the detainee, in order to cover up their own action they prepared a file of proceedings with the false accusation that the 30-year-old had attempted to escape.

The minister of citizen protection released a sensational pledge that he is not going to put up with this kind of violence.

see also: http://libcom.org/news/torture-under-acropolis-03012010

updates (from comments on the article linked above): Two out of the five policemen charged for not stopping their colleagues torturing the immigrant were set free on January 5.
The rest appeared to the prosecutor on Thursday.

According to the testimony of the two officers they did not intervene when they “saw the arrested man handcuffed and two policemen kicking him punching him and beating him with a plastic glob in various parts of his body” as they “found nothing reprehensible in all these”. The three men directly accused of the torture testified to the interrogator today, without the script of their testimony been made public to this moment.   One policeman finally was imprisoned pending trial after giving testimony.

More testimonies of abuse and humiliation at the Acropolis Police Station Torture Chamber

source: movement “united against racism and the fascist threat”

On December 23, the same day that the Chilean immigrant Pedro Navarro was arrested and tortured, African street vendors received the same treatment by police officers who participated in operations coordinated by Greek Police and the Municipality of Athens at the down-town Athens commercial streets.

One of them, Joe Usman said:

I was arrested by three police men and a police woman at Ermou str.  They handcuffed me, then took me to a dark spot near the church of Kapnikarea  and one of them hit me with his knee  at the stomach by pulling my head down.   Then they took me to the police station, I was in great pain and ponaga much and I vomitted.   They then took me to hospital.  When we left the doctors gave me some document but the police took it from me. Within the Police Station I saw one more Senegalese guy being beaten very hard.
They left me free on December 30 “.

Gil Dawa said:

“Police arrested me on December 29 at 6 to 7 pm at Ermou str.  I was on my way home, I was not selling  anything. I asked them ‘do you need to see my papers and they said ‘ no ‘. They threw me down and raised my leg to my head. They handcuffed me and took me on foot at the Acropolis Police Station.  On the way they hit me on my mouth.  I was forced to go up the stairs with handcuffs and with my hands on my back; they kept shouting and kicking me.   They told their superior that they did this because  I was making fuss.
In my cell they stripped me off my clothes while I still I had the cuffs on and then beat me on my head, feet and hand with their arms and clubs.  They photographed me naked and they were laughing shouting  ”Fuck you black asshole, this is  Greece,  leave,  go to Africa.” After laughing they were teasing my dick and put a finger in my ass. They let me go the next day; I went to hospital and the doctors gave me some paper [apparently about beating marks etc] “

15 dead in suspected immigrant boat accident in northern Greece

UPDATE JAN 8, EVENING: The number of bodies found so far has risen to 15.  The date of the shipwreck is estimated to be the 29th of december.

UPDATE JAN 6, AFTERNOON: Unfortunately, the number of dead bodies washed ashore is rising, 10 bodies have been found so far.

source: associated press

THESSALONIKI, Greece – Police in northern Greece say six bodies have been recovered from the sea or have washed up on the shore following a suspected boat accident involving illegal immigrants.  Their IDs were not found, reports said.

Two bodies were found Monday and four at the weekend near Alexandroupoli, a city in northeastern Greece, near the border with Turkey.

Egyptian fishworkers on strike in Nea Michaniona, Northern Greece.

photo from Rizospastis newspaper

solidarity with the struggle of the Egyptian fishworkers - graffiti in Michaniona

UPDATE JAN 16: On Thursday, January 14, the case of the trawlers bosses against the strike was brought to court, and the strike was judged “illegal and abusive” (the strike was under the auspices of the private sector employees union, until the fishworkers validated their own Union during the stike by union elections – the Union was established three years ago but remained unofficial for not having undergone elections).

Despite this court decision, the fishworkers will go on  with their struggle and their Union has decided repeated one-day stikes for the days to come.

On Thursday the protest march called by the fishworkers took place.  It concluded at the Ministry located in Thessaloniki.  PAME (CP’s Union) had a strong presence.  Extra-parliamentary leftists and antiauthoritarians did participate but their numbers were lower than one would expect given the significance of the struggle.

After the demonstration an assembly was held at the Polytechnic University and today a text was leafletted at the city’s fish market, and a poster was billed on the streets calling for an information event at the same place on next Wednesday.

source: athens indymedia article

UPDATE JAN 13 :

the lawsuit the vessel owners lodged against the strike will be brought to court tomorrow, Thursday, at 9.00. There is a call for a demonstration by the strikers and the CP controlled trade union PAME for tomorrow at 6.30, at Aristotelous sq. (Agalma Venizelou). People obviously from the anarchist / antiauthoritarian scene also call through Athens Indymedia (in Greek) for active support to the strike and the demonstration, since on Tuesday (when the case was at first to be judged) the presence of solidarity beyond CP supporters outside the courts was miniscule (a relevant call has been posted at the Thessaloniki University, and there will be a gathering for coordination after the demonstration at the Polytechnic school).

Rizospastis Newspaper reported that yesterday “some vessel owners “kicked the Egyptians out” of the trawlers where they stay at night according to the treaty,and in violation of the latter’s terms manned their trawlers with scabs and sailed, ”.

UPDATE WEDNESDAY 12 JAN.:

Yesterday Jan 11 the trial of the lawsuit the vessel owners lodged against the strike was postponed (it will take place on Thursday). Meanwhile, there have been negotiations. The employers, in cooperation with the Mayor of Michaniona and the Egyptian Embassy, along with creating an atmosphere of threats and bigotry, proposed an outrageous text as a basis for the settlement for workers demands. This text not only failed to satisfy any of the demands, but also included clauses prohibiting union organisation for the Egyptian workers, demanding the dismissal of those “misbehaving” or those “being incosistent with their obligations”. It also included a blacklist of the “troublemakers”, which had been already sent to the Embassy (one can easily understand what kind of treatment these persons – those prominently active in the struggle – will receive if deported, actually, to Egypt). They also tried to fool the Egyptians providing this text in three languages (Greek, Arabic and English) with the condition that the English is to be considered the valid one in case the translations are found not exactly matching – while the Egyptians only understand the Arabic variant. The workers clearly rejected the text.

About 300 Egyptian workers at the fishing boats of Nea Michaniona (a village near Thessaloniki, Northern Greece) blockaded two days ago the small port of the village.

Italy: revolt for life and dignity!

photo published at athens.indymedia

text below from http://nobordersbrighton.blogspot.com/

Racist Attack Provokes Riot In Southern Italian Town

A racist attack on African migrant farm workers in the Southern Italian region of Calabria by a gang of local youths armed with air rifles has provoked a series of disturbances in the town of Rosarno. Last night hundreds of cars were damaged and set on fire as the migrants sought revenge for the attack that left several of them injured.

Earlier today, some migrants erected road blocks on the main roads into the town, whilst shop windows were again smashed as up to 2,000 immigrants gathered to protest outside city hall, chanting “we are not animals” and waving placards saying “Italians here are racist”. They demanded to see the town’s government commissioner, Francesco Bagnato, appointed last year when the town council was disolved to try and combat local influence of the mafia.

He tried to reassure the migrants that the police would protect them and persuaded them to leave peacefully. Nearby locals clashed with police and the situation was further inflamed when a local fired rifle to apparently try and scare the migrants off. Police said there were 15 arrests and 20 people injuried.

Interior Minister Roberto Maroni, in typical fashion, sought to exploit the situation, saying, “In all these years illegal immigration has been tolerated without doing anything effective, an immigration that on the one hand has fed crime and on the other has led to situations of extreme squalor such as that at Rosarno”. However, the governor of the Calabria region, Agazio Loiero, said that whilst the violence was “unacceptable”, the rioters had been “strongly provoked”.

The migrants are exploited both by the local farmers and by organised criminal gangs, and many are forced to live in squalid conditions in empty factories. Bagnato however claims that he has tried to improve living conditions since his appointment, reconnecting mains water to the factories and bringing in chemical toilets for the migrants.

…on the background of these:

• a text by Roberto Saviano, the anti-Mafia journalist and author of “Gomorra”
• and a months old New York Times article on the strenghtening of the anti-immigrant regime in Italy in the past few months  (both brought to attention byhttp://katalipsiesiea.blogspot.com/2010/01/blog-post.html).

Death toll reaches 21 in suspected boat capsizing

source: zaman newspaper

The discovery of two more bodies early Sunday brought the death toll of suspected refugees who drowned along the Greek-Turkish border to 21, the Anatolia news agency reported yesterday. The first bodies, believed to be of people who failed in an attempt to cross the Maritsa, or Evros, River into Greece illegally, were discovered last Monday.

It is unclear how large the suspected refugee group was and whether any of them made it across the river safely. Authorities believe the group tried to cross the river in a boat, but died under circumstances that remain unclear.

The area around the Maritsa and the nearby Aegean Sea are popular routes for illegal immigrants trying to access the European Union. Thousands of illegal immigrants from Asia and Africa enter EU-member Greece every year, usually making risky crossings from Turkey in boats that are not seaworthy. Ten people died in October 2009 when a boat carrying Afghan families sank off the eastern Aegean Sea island of Lesvos.

Italy: revolt for life and dignity 2

More texts on the situation in Southern Italy.

“We Are Not Animals!” Italy’s Racial Riots and Their Aftermath

MARIA RITA LATTO (January 11, 2010)

Rage and fear. This is what comes out of the images from Rosarno, a small town near the western coast of Calabria, where violent clashes broke out after two African immigrants were wounded by a pellet gun attack by white youths in a car.

“Those guys were firing at us as if it was a fairground,” one of the men told La Repubblica newspaper. “They were laughing, I was screaming, other cars were passing by but nobody stopped them.”

European Union – Turkey: hard negotiations and tough bargaining for immigrants and refugees

This short post is long due, but still usefull for anyone to understand why Turkey is not Libya, in other words, why the externalisation of Fortress Europe borders to Turkey is a stake in a complex and hard bargaining between the EU and the regional megapower (in which money is not everything for the latter).

According to the Turkish newspaper Hürriyet, the European Union is ready to offer political advantages to Turkey in exchange for signing a readmission agreement. We found out what readmission means for Turkey, when Oktay Durukan, member of the Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly of Turkey, analytically presented (in Greek) Turkey’s policies during the conference “Suspended people”, that took place in Thessaloniki on October 30th, 2009. It is worth pointing out a little known fact that was mentioned in the conference: Turkey can only offer asylum to European Union member state nationals!

Turkey was one of the countries that negotiated about the Refugee Status in the 1951 Refugee Convention, and was one of the first countries to sign it. However, Turkey has retained one of the Convention’s paragraphs, the so-called “geographical limitation”, thus still offering protection only to migrants involuntarily displaced “as a result of events in Europe”. Therefore and according to the aforementioned paragraph, Turkey welcomes only EU member states’ nationals as refuge applicants.

Third country nationals, also referred to as “non-Europeans”, claiming refugee status in Turkey have to apply in a Turkish police station for a “temporary asylum status” regardless of their application to UNHCR, which has to pre-exist. If they are arrested before managing to apply for refugee status, then they reach a dead end: the police will not accept an application for the temporary refugee status and consequently deny them access to any refugee status application at all.

The ”lucky” ones who are recognized as asylum seekers by the UNHCR are then dispersed across the country, hosted in 30 so-called “satellite towns”. There they live in average for two to three years while the final decisions on their requests for asylum and resettlement are pending. They are obliged to find shelter on their own and receive little assistance with regards to daily expenses or health-care. The chances for declared work are minimal thus many of them are forced into illegal work, mainly as sex workers. Last but not least, they are obliged to pay a resident fee in order to obtain a residence permit.

+ the article of last November at the Hürriyet newspaper

EU to grant visa flexibility in return for readmission agreement

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

DÖNDÜ SARIIŞIK

BRUSSELS – Hürriyet Daily News

The European Union is reportedly ready to introduce some visa flexibility if Turkey signs a readmission agreement to tackle the flow of illegal immigrants to Europe.

The European Union and Turkey will discuss the readmission agreement again Dec. 4. Visa flexibility will be introduced once Ankara agrees to sign the agreement to deal with illegal immigration to Europe, a high-ranked official from the European Commission in Brussels has revealed.

“We will start the new round of discussions between [the commission] and Turkey on the readmission agreement in Ankara on Dec. 4,” a senior official from the commission said under condition of anonymity during a meeting with Turkish journalists. “This is certainly a critical issue.”

A significant number of people fleeing their poverty-stricken or war-torn countries of origin seek an opportunity to live in Europe. Turkey is the main route for thousands of illegal immigrants coming from Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Middle East.

The agreement would be binding for the entire union, as no individual solution is envisioned, the official said, adding that the financial burden would be shared. “The EU will grant support to Turkey to tackle the problem. We have expressed our readiness to look into all means to help,” the official said. “Of course we have budgetary limitations, but we are ready to help you.”

EU officials held the first round of talks Nov. 5 in Ankara to convince their Turkish counterparts to sign a readmission agreement. The EU member states, which apply a common asylum policy in line with the Dublin-2 Convention, have been seeking cooperation from candidate countries. According to Chapter 24 of negotiations between the EU and Turkey, Brussels is increasing pressure on Ankara with a call to adopt more deterrence measures or grant asylum to immigrants.

The readmission bargain may result in visa flexibility for Turkish citizens, the official said, adding, “As soon as the readmission agreement is signed, we will offer a lot of new opportunities in terms of visas.”

Some EU member countries set a pre-condition of readmission in order to facilitate visa-free travel, he said. “We cannot consider any visa facilitation with Turkey if we do not have a readmission agreement between the EU and Turkey,” the official said. “Once we have a readmission agreement, we will be very open to negotiate visa facilitation. Journalists, academics, business people and scientists will be able to travel easily to the EU.”

After the European Court of Human Rights granted two Turkish drivers visa-free travel for business purposes, Turkish diplomats kicked off a campaign to widen visa flexibility in cooperation with business associations. Turkey advocates that the court ruling be applied to students, academics, artists, scientists and businessmen under the Customs Union agreement.

Germany has already introduced new regulations in line with the court verdict, but most of the other EU member states are still reluctant to take any further steps.

Last year, Turkey detained some 68,000 illegal immigrants attempting to make their way into the European Union. According to official statistics, up to 18,000 asylum seekers are waiting in Turkey for acceptance to a third country.

Existing Turkish regulations do not allow the country to grant asylum to people from outside the European Council member states.

PS: in April last year, in a case that received widespread publicity, 18 Syrians and Iranian citizens, including 5 recognized as refugees by the UNHCR, were forced by threat of weapons by Turkish soldiers to cross borders swimming through  a non-guarded  part of the river that separates Turkey from Iraq.

This is an example of a unilateral, ‘black’ expulsion of people to a third country they have nothing to do with. 4 of them died, including one Iranian of the recognized ones by the UNHCR . The latter condemned the incident in a press release, based on testimonies received by survivors. To date, however, no serious investigation into the incident has taken place.

Solidarity with the Fishworkers on Strike – event in Thessaloniki, Wed, Jan 20.

SOLIDARITY WITH THE FISHWORKERS ON STRIKE! INFO EVENT JAN 20, 19.00, POLYTECHNIC SCHOOL, THESSALONIKI - by the SOLIDARITY ASSEMBLY

MORE ABOUT THE STRIKE

A brief outline of the solidarity in France with the Vincennes detention center prisoners in trial and against all sort of prisons

• more on this here.
• this is copied from paghere tutto.

A brief outline of the solidarity in France with the Vincennes detention center prisoners in trial and against all sort of prisons

On January 25th, 26th and 27th, ten former detainees of the Vincennes detention centre will be tried for a revolt.

During the first semester of 2008, revolts repeatedly occured in the Vincennes detention centre, a place where undocumented foreigners are locked up pending their deportation. On June 21st, a detainee died due to lack of care. The next day, the centre was burnt during a revolt. Later, a number of detainees were arrested and accused of arson and aggression against police officers. Most of them have been in preventiive jail for eight to twelve month.

A solidarity week is set from January 16th to 24th.

In solidarity with the rebellious of the Vincennes retention center who will be in court on January 25th, 26th, 27th 2010, for burning their prison during a revolt in June 2008. Here is a very brief outline of the solidarity actions (far from complete for reasons linked to translation).

‘Mafia’ Provocation Behind ‘Race Riots’ In Southern Italy

Two texts from the Brighton NoBorders blog.

read also:

• Italy: revolt for life and dignity 2
• Italy: revolt for life and dignity

MONDAY, 11 JANUARY 2010

More details have emerged since the ‘riots’ in Rosarno at the end of last week and it now appears that the attack by local youths on Friday was the final insult in a long line of provocations.

The migrants from sub-Saharan Africa have been a common site in Italy for decades. In southern Italy they move en masse from the grape harvest in Sicily, via the orange, tangerine and kiwi harvests in Calabria and the olive picking in Apulia. Local farmers have relied on them since the ‘native’ agricultural workforce evaporated. Instead, the 8000 or so ‘clandestini’ in Calabria pick fruit and vegetables for 12 to 14 hours a day for 20 to 25 euros and many are regularly forced to pay kickback of up to a quarter of their wages to local gangsters in the ‘Ndrangheta, the regional version of the mafia.

A call by Athens Elementary School teachers in support of colleagues prosecuted for providing immigrant pupils with lessons of their parents’ language

SEE PREVIOUS POST: Teachers prosecuted for providing immigrant pupils with lessons of their parents’ language

A call by the teachers of the 132nd Athens Elementary School
At a time when achieving harmonious conviviality between the children of Greeks and immigrants poses a serious challenge for the Greek society, and has been commanded by the Greek state, Stella Protonotariou, former director of the 132nd Elementary School Athens will face on January 22, 2010 trial at the criminal court of Athens  on charges that she conceded premises of the school for the teaching of the mother tongue to pupils who speak that other languages.  Along with her will be faced with charges the teacher that taught  to schoolchildren their native language.   Mr Gioutlakis, the present director of the 132nd Primary School will be the witness for the prosecution.

We, the teachers of the school, who decided together with the former director the educational interventions implemented in the 132nd Elementary School, we invite all of you and all who fight every day for a better education, to attend the trial court at that day, to confirm with our presence not only that  Stella Protonotariou has our full support, but also our willingness to fight for a fairer world and a school that includes  all our pupils on equal terms.

It is worth noting that on the basis of a second report filed by the same witness, a preliminary examination by the police has been conducted on Stella Protonotariou for alleged misconduct, because along with the teaching of the Albanian mother tongue she also ran along with us Greek lessons to immigrant parents.

Teachers who work or have worked at the 132nd Athens Elementary School

Signatures.

Arson attacks against the Synagogue in Hania, Crete

This is a translation of a  press release by the Forum of Migrants in Crete.  More about the arson attacks at http://abravanel.wordpress.com/2010/01/16/second-arson-in-hania-synagogue/

Hania, Crete January 18 2010.

Once again racist hate armed the hand of those who target the core of the rights OF US ALL.

The synagogue was for the second time in a few days engulfed in the flames of hatred.

We immigrants of Chania, with different religions, languages, places of origin, condemn all acts of racial hatred and all acts of violence and violation of religious rights. At the same time we fight for those things that are yet to be done  in our area (eg a Muslim cemetery).

Xenophobic, racist messages have been sent throughout Greece recently by both obscure circles and official parliamentary and political spheres, in response to the economic crisis or the new bill on immigration and citizenship; these have become the “official” ideology alibis of the fascist gangs in Chania and all over the country, as well as their political coverage for inciting crimes against immigrants and Greek people who act in solidarity, as well as for attacks on social spaces of resistance, or “different” religions.

They are the same political wings, of course, who despite the ideological alibi they offer for the burning of a Synagogue, they have not a single word to say about the massacre of hundreds of deaths in Gaza, one year ago; not a word for the on-going crime against the people who for so many years are imprisoned and are being murdered in their very homeland due to the criminal aggression of the Israeli ARMY.

We immigrants active in the Forum of Immigrants in Crete, we are determined to stand side by side with every Hania resident who does not want these phenomena to grow roots here; we will struggle to keep our town humane.

Update on the Nea Michaniona fishworkers strike.

• previous updates
• info event call
• source of the article below: athens indymedia article

The case of the employers against the strike of the fishworkers was brought anew to court yesterday.

The fishworkers are now on strike under a decision of their own Union. The bosses want the court to decide an injunction against the strike, which means that for each day of the strike the Union and the fishworkers should compensate the owners for the damages.

The arguments of the employers were:

a) notification of the strike was not sent to the pertinent body; they now said that the employers’ body to which the strike was officialy made known to (the Greek Shipowners Union for Middle Fisheries – ΠΕΠΜΑ – is a nationwide body of owners who only deals with … European policies!  The exact reverse of what they had claimed on the first trial, namely that this body – ΠΕΠΜΑ – was the one that the fishworkers should sent the notice for the strike to and not to the local Union of ship owners, as the strikers had done when they first declared a strike. The bosses twist things the way it suits them of course.

b) Some of the strike’s requests, for instance the insurance fund under which they have to be covered for labor accidents and illnesses, is not the business of the ship-owners but of the pertinent government Ministry (of course it had been the ship owners who had lobbied at the Ministry and succeeded in making the unfavourable for the workers insurance fund tranfer).

c) Above all, the bosses claimed, it is the Union of Nea Mihaniona Fishworkers the one legally assigned to be present at the fish auctions, weight the catches and calculate the workers’ share; they also claimed that the Egyptians were never obstructed from exerting partly control to the processes. This shows the central role of that yellow union for the ship owners. What the ship owners try to avoid at any cost is to recognize the collective, autonomous body of the Egyptian workers, and thus lose control, while on n the other hand, the key demand of the Egyptians is just that, that through their Union they have control of the weighting processes and the calculation of shares, since they the yellow union is of course not to be trusted.

The strike does harm the ship-owners a lot: they lose millions.

The Egyptians are determined to continue. The bosses, on the other hand, are probably ready to replace them with the help of the Egyptian embassy.  The most important battle will be done if scabs come, from Egypt or elsewhere.  In that case, there will be blood, since the Egyptians are really steadfast to their struggle.

Whether we like it or not ΠΑΜΕ / the Communist Party is the only one with the power, the networks and the mechanism to support the battle in Mihaniona . Those of us who want to support the struggle and we are outside ΠΑΜΕ / the Communist Party we have to go and really see what we can do: see what small and practical things we can do, such as make the strike known in Thessaloniki, collect money etc.

The court decision about the strike is to be issued tomorrow; the strike continues, tomorrow there is the info event at Thessaloniki Polytechnic.

Greece and France ask for more FRONTEX… on “humanitarian reform” background.

These are only fragments of the way Greek government tries to divide and control immigrants  through integration carrots for long-residing and zero-tolerance-for-illegals stick.

source: http://www.ekathimerini.com

Franco-Greek immigrant plan

Citizens’ Protection Minister Michalis Chrysochoidis and France’s Minister of Immigration and Integration Eric Besson yesterday sent a joint letter to the Spanish government, which currently holds the European Union’s rotating presidency, proposing an upgrade in the powers of the EU’s border-monitoring agency Frontex to crack down on illegal immigration.

The proposals listed in the letter, sent to Spanish authorities ahead of an informal summit of EU interior ministers due to start in Toledo today, include “closer operational cooperation between Frontex and migrants’ countries of origin and transit countries.” The Franco-Greek initiative also proposes “the examination of the possibility of regular chartered return flights at the expense of Frontex.” [...].

source: http://www.ekathimerini.com

Premier heralds new asylum agency

Prime Minister George Papandreou yesterday heralded the creation of a new independent agency for the processing of thousands of immigrants’ asylum claims during talks with visiting United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres.

Papandreou reassured Guterres that the new agency would offer protection to those who need it but stressed that Greek authorities would intensify their crackdown on migrants entering the country illegally for the good of the country and the European Union. “It is certain that the potential of Europe and Greece to receive and integrate [migrants] is limited,” Papandreou said. The prime minister also stressed the importance of the “cooperation of countries bordering the EU… to ensure that those who are really in need are protected while reducing the burden faced by EU member states.” The two men reportedly discussed the role of Turkey in this regard. In a related development yesterday, Citizens’ Protection Minister Michalis Chrysochoidis said that he and his French counterpart Brice Hortefeux would tomorrow unveil a joint initiative aimed at “urging Turkey into respecting the agreements that it has signed.” The premier also briefed Guterres on a government bill, to be submitted in Parliament by next week, that aims to grant citizenship to tens of thousands of migrants living and working legally in Greece and to their children.

Guterres welcomed the news about the bill and the establishment of a new asylum-processing agency, noting that these measures would “secure human rights and social cohesion in Greece.” He added that he understood the need for Greece to conduct tighter border checks but remarked that “migration is a matter of human rights as well as national security protection.”

A working committee – comprising experts from the Citizens’ Protection, Interior and Health ministries, the UNHCR and a string of nongovernmental organizations – yesterday proposed that the separation of migrants meriting refugee status from economic migrants be carried out in special reception centers. These “first stop” centers are to be set up in due course though it is unclear where they will be located.

Apart from the claims for asylum being lodged by new migrants arriving in Greece daily, the new agency has some 44,500 applications that are pending.

Update on the fishworkers strike – solidarity march and concert

solidarity march, Tuesday January 26, solidarity concert Friday, January 29

previous update

sources

• http://athens.indymedia.org/front.php3?lang=el&article_id=1123276
• http://athens.indymedia.org/front.php3?lang=el&article_id=1123423
• http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=231107432&blogId=526758768
• personal communication

After the first court decision that deemed last week the strike unlawful , the second trial’s decision came yesterday and was also against the strike. The strikers go on with their struggle with 24 hour strike decisions.

Trawlers bosses also continue with their effort to bring other Egyptians as scabs. According to Rhizospastis newspaper, “agents” in Athens are into this, and a meeting took place in the trawler owners offices in Michaniona, between the bosses and an “agent” (referred as “smuggler” by the newspaper).

The Egyptians themselves estimate that they will probably be in position to reach some agreement with their compatriots, should any of them be brought as scabs, since it is highly unlikely that the people allured would be aware of the situation.

“If they attemt to bring scabs, instead of 250 strikers they will have 400”. This is one of the things some of the strikers shared with the attendance of the successful Info Event of Wednesday at the Thessaloniki Polytechnic. About seventy people were there.

“The strikers talked in a way that both moved us and strenghtened our conviction that their fight is a fight for us all.  With dignity and determination to go all the way with their struggle, they spoke warmly and directly. In other words, they “forced” everyone to stand beside them and try to put forward solidarity action on even more serious basis. Besides the ultimate goal, the victory of the strike, we can learn from them and get to know each other.  We have to learn how to intervene (or even attempt to do so) on a sound basis, with a view to real links with the people in such struggles, and to the social and not simply the political.  The strikers also talked about how they understand solidarity and made clear two things: they want to avoid at any case extreme conflicts between forces supporting the strike, as well as any action that could endanger their physical presence at the village.  Under current conditions these seem reasonable and understandable. In other words, if one believes that this is the time to resolve disputes with the Communist Party, there is clearly a problem…”.

The further actions decided at the event were

• mass leafleting at the Thessaloniki fishmarket on Saturday
• a solidarity march for Tuesday January 26 at Thessaloniki
• a solidarity concert on Friday, January 29 at Kamara square.

Expulsions From EU Rise Sharply

source: http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=50079 David Cronin BRUSSELS, Jan 22 (IPS) – The number of asylum-seekers and other migrants expelled from the European Union in joint operations between its governments has grown three times in as many years, IPS has learned. At least 1,570 individuals were removed from the EU’s territory in 31 flights coordinated by the bloc’s external borders agency Frontex between Jan. 1 and Dec. 15 last year. This represented a tripling in joint expulsions – involving authorities from two or more EU states – since 2007. Some 428 migrants were flown out in such operations that year, with the figure rising to over 800 in 2008. The data – unpublished until now – indicates that Frontex has rapidly stepped up the pace of its activities in the four-and-a-half years since it was founded. And the involvement of the Warsaw-based agency in expelling people who have been denied permission to remain in the EU looks set to increase further. When the EU’s presidents and prime ministers met in Brussels in late October, they approved a plan to expand the work of Frontex. The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, has been asked to come forward with proposals early this year to beef up the agency’s powers. The plan foresees that the agency will finance a greater number of chartered flights for expulsions and cooperate more closely with countries from which migrants trying to enter Europe originate. Organisations working with asylum-seekers are perturbed that Frontex is acquiring greater resources and responsibility without being required to demonstrate that fundamental human rights are safeguarded during its activities. A recent report by Human Rights Watch drew attention to how Frontex has helped the Italian authorities expel migrants to Libya, without giving them an opportunity to apply for asylum. In June last year, Frontex coordinated Operation Nautilus, in which a boat carrying an estimated 75 migrants was intercepted off the Italian coast. Using a German Puma helicopter, the operation was the first of its kind in which Frontex succeeded in forcing migrants from the central Mediterranean Sea back to Libya. Titled ‘Pushed Back, Pushed Around’, the Human Rights Watch report stated that Frontex was unable to give guarantees that Libya had allowed the migrants to apply for asylum. All individuals are entitled to seek asylum from persecution in a country other than their own under the United Nations’ 61- year-old Universal Declaration on Human Rights. Bill Frelick, a campaigner on asylum issues with Human Rights Watch, said he was concerned that Frontex is being given a bigger role in expulsions and that its future operations will needed to be carefully scrutinised. Bjarte Vandvik, director of the European Council for Refugees and Exile, a group defending the rights of asylum-seekers, said that whenever an individual is removed from the EU, the principle of “non-refoulement” must be respected. A key tenet of international refugee law, non-refoulement means that nobody should be sent to a country where he or she will be at risk of persecution. “Frontex as an EU agency continues to struggle with issues of transparency and accountability,” said Vandvik. “It is not clear how Frontex will put in place procedures for returns (of migrants) that guarantee non-refoulement, that can be independently monitored and are safe, dignified and humane. The mandated powers and allocated budget of Frontex are expanding fast but the systems for accountability and compliance with international and EC (European Community) legal obligations are not.” A Frontex spokeswoman said that it is not the agency’s task to monitor if human rights law is respected. “Our role is limited to coordination,” the spokeswoman added. “The rules that apply on board the plane depend on the (EU) member state owning the plane. There is a system of checks and balances in the member states. For example, Austria always requires that there is a human rights observer on board the plane.” Philip Amaral, a policy officer with the Jesuit Refugee Service in Brussels, said that Frontex staff should be given proper training to ensure that asylum law is upheld in their operations and that the basic needs of migrants are met. “Our primary concern with Frontex is that its activities are quite obscure,” said Amaral. “We’re always strongly arguing for increased European Parliament monitoring over Frontex, especially now that it’s foreseen that its role will be enlarged. There should be a level of monitoring to make sure that asylum- seekers and migrants have access to asylum procedures and that they are not being sent back (to another country) right away.” Frontex previously aroused the ire of human rights workers in 2008 when it emerged that guns were pointed directly at migrants who landed in Italy during an operation in which the agency had participated. Giusto Catania, an Italian member of the European Parliament, described the use of weapons in this way as a “real scandal”. (EU/AF/IP/HD/PR/MI/DC/SS/10) (END/2010)

Antiracist demo attacked by fascists in Athens / Update on the arson attack against synagogue in Chania

source:  libcom article.

for the synagogue incident see this post.

Antiracist demo attacked by fascists in Athens

A local antiracist demo in Ampelokipoi, Athens, came under attack by fascist thugs, leading to the hospitalisation of one woman. More than 40 fascists have been detained. The attack marks a climax of fascist violence which has also led to the torching of Chania’s Synagogue.

On Saturday 23 January an anti-racist demo of the Cultural Centre of Ambelokipoi in Athens was fiercely attacked by a fascist group of so-called “autonomous nationalists”. The demo was organised as a response to continuing disturbance of the functioning of the 50 year old Centre by fascist thugs who tried to burn it down last week. Before the official start-time of the demo, at 12, when only the organisers were in Panormou square, 40 fascist thugs attacked them with sticks leading to the wounding of three people, amongst which a 50 year old woman who has been hospitalised. During the attack riot police forces stationed in the square stood by watching, even moving aside to let the fascists strike. Nevertheless, the demostrators managed to counterattack chasing the fascists, despite police efforts to stop them.

Thr police finally intervened only after it became known that an MP was also amongst the people attacked. The police intervention has led to 44 detentions of fascists, who are being interrogated at the police headquarters.

The attack comes in a climax of similar moves that have been growing ever since the government announced a law that will legalise hundreds of thousands of second generation immigrants giving them the right to vote. The extreme-right has launched a campaign of hate in order to halt the procedure.

Ambelokipoi, the area where the attack took place, has a long record of fascist action, with leafleting at schools of the area coming under frequent attacks, once even at gun-point. This does not however mean that the neighbourhood is fascist as such. In fact, after the 50 year old woman was taken to the near by Red Cross Hospital, doctors and nurses came down to the street to join the demo in protest to the fascist violence. The demo formed a protest march towards the Athens police HQ which is also in the area.

The Coalition of Radical Left MP who participated in the demo has declared that “For one more time fascists are acting in the open with the toleration of the police against any kind of protest against racism and xenophobia. This terrorism will not pass. Fascism will not take root in this country”. The Left wing labour union umbrella “Autonomous Intervention” denounced the “Uncontrollable activity of neofascist groups which are provoking the democratic and anti-fascist sentiments of the people”.

It must be noted that recently Spartakos, the 30 year old “Network of Free Conscripts”, revealed that the Ministry of National Defense has been organising paramilitary training camps in Chalkdiki, where ex-soldiers and other militaristic elements have been trained in “counterterrorist” operations. After the revelations, Spartacus has come under the spotlight of the fascist parliamentary party LAOS, which has demanded from the Ministry the containment of the group. Spartakos has denounced efforts of detaining its members during leafleting, and has further revealed that a secret General Stuff document describing in detail the Network’s totally legal day-to-day activities has come to the Network’s possession.

Moreover, the escalation of fascist violence has inculded the torching of the Chania Synagogue which destroyed thousands of rare manuscripts and books. Regarding the torching (twice in one month), the police has arrested 1 greek and 2 british citizens as part of the anti-Semitic group that perpetrated the attack. The greek has confessed, while the british are denying any involvement in the act; 2 US citizens are also wanted for the same case. However, the police is refusing to follow the link to the torching of the Immigrant Social Centre of the city which occurred within the same time. Swastikas were found painted in the torched Immigrant Centre, while a slate of soap believed to be the group’s signature was found in the torched Synagogue.

The arrests come as a rare incident in a country where fascist action is tolerated by the state to the degree that it is often believed that fascist groups are in fact parastate terror organisations, similar to the ones kept by the state until the end of the junta.

Update: According to the bourgeois media, 35 of the detainees have been declared arrested and will be persecuted for “breach of the peace”. It is indicative of the state’s stance towards the fascists that although one person was hospitalised during their attack, the thugs are not accused for human injuries etc. “Breach of the peace” is the most harmless accusation possible under the circumstances. It is also indicative that, as revealed by photos published on the web, the fascists are not being persecuted under the anti-hood law, though they are visibly arrested while wearing full-face masks. Unlike the usual police brutality towards anarchists and the left, or in fact any common protester, the cops did not even use their batons against their ideological colleagues.

Update2: According to the bourgeois media, the final outcome of the interrogations has been the arrest of all 44 fascists. Apart from the initial charge for “breach of the peace” initially suggested, the state persecutor has also charged them with the anti-hood law, attempt to cause bodily damage, illegal carrying of weapons and illegal use of weapons. Two of the 44 have been also charged with dangerous bodily damage, and one of them with dangerous bodily damage and threat. 8 of them are also accused with insulting the authorities and moral culpability for all the above acts. All 44 remain in custody awaiting their appearance before the state interrogator.

It is estimated by some radical cyrcles that the so-called “autonomous nationalists” are a splinter group of the neonazi paramilitary Golden Dawn which is under the direct control of the state. In this perspective the wave of attacks recently could be part of an inter-fascist antagonism, while the arrest of the 44 could signal a purge of fascists who try to break away from the direct control of the national service of information (EYP).

One step forward, two steps back! Forum of Migrants in Crete event on the new Immigration Bill

This is a translation of a Forum of Migrants in Crete press release.

ANNOUNCEMENT – CALL
for debate on the  immigration bill
1 step forward and two steps back

The Forum of Migrants in Crete considers that the proposed amendments to the Code of citizenship and the participation in elections of local government indeed are in the right direction – at any case we would be saying the same thing, even if it was about a single immigrant obtaining his/her rights.

The proposal to grant citizenship to second generation immigrants puts partially an end to the chronic hostage status of the second generation immigrants.  However the bill requires 5 years of lawful and undisrupted residence of their parents in the country, attendance of the first three classes of the primary school or 6 years of attendance at a Greek school.   So, we ask:

• what about the children whose parents had been legally residing but were at some point unable to renew their residence permits (in most cases because they had not adequate work revenue stamps)?
• what about the children who have no parents (since many minors come on their own)?
• what about the children of parents without legal documents?

Concerning the proposal for the participation of all long-term foreign residents in the local authority elections, we ask why the boll excludes them from being candidates for senior posts?

We respond to xenophobic voices that they should not worry, since in any case the bill concerns to only a very small percentage of people from other countries, those who live lawfully and continuously for many years in Greece.

As for the acquisition of Greek citizenship by first generation immigrants, we actually wait to see the concrete and final requirements of the bill; under the pressure of racist critics. though, we expect them to be harsch.

We will continue to struggle for the legalization of all immigrants (the draft law does not say a single word about sans papiers, and legal documents is a prerequisite for everything proposed by the bill).

We will continue to struggle for citizenship for all children born, live and grown-up in this place.

We call for an info, discussion and recommendations event on Tuesday, January 26, 6:00 pm at Agora Sq. Chania.

Chania, Jan. 24, 2010.
Forum of Immigrants in Crete

NOTE: this call by the Forum of Immigrants in Crete is in the frame of a AN ANTIRACIST DEMONSTRATION CALL BY VARIOUS ORGANISATIONS IN CHANIA.  SIMILAR CALLS AHVE BEEN MADE IN OTHER CITIES AS WELL (Herakleion, Ioannina etc.) This is the Chania demonstrations poster:

Young Albanian got killed trying to avoid police documents check in Lasithi, Crete

A 26 year old Albanian lost his life when he fell from a height in Lasithi, Crete while running from a police check.  The young Albanian who had no residence permit and would be deported took notice of cops in the night of Wednesday, Jan 20, and started running from them, since he had no residence permit and if arrested he would be deported.  He climbed on a house’s roof but due to darkness he lost his balance and fell.

The deceased  had been for some months  working in farms of the Makri Gialos area.

A similar incident had happened in Heraklion, Crete, in September 2009.  A young Albanian had seriously injured himself by falling from a great height to avoid a police patrol.

sources: candia alternatival, http://filoxenoi.wordpress.com/

On the much discussed bill on citizenship

The proposed legislation to grant citizenship to some second generation immigrants puts partially an end to their chronic status of being hostages in the country where they were born and have lived so far their lives .   However, this bill, which is ostensibly  introduced to correct at least partially an injustice,  does hold many pitfalls:

1) Children’s “legalisation” depends on the “legality” of their parents. As has been repeatedly stressed, no sans papiers can benefit from the proposed naturalization process.

2) The proposed conditions for granting citizenship turn the latter into a “certificate of social conscience” [as the one issued by post-civil war police or army authorities certifying that its owner was not a communist – thereof employable in the public sector and entitled to various other rights]; those eligible and finally granted citizenship will be under the constant threat of having their citizenship removed; moreover, one to be eligible for the naturalisation process ”must have not been convicted to a prison sentence of at least one year for a period of ten years prior to the application, must have not been convicted of offences against the state, (…) of resistance to authority [for instance, resistance to arrest], of slander” as well as “of facilitating the transfer or the provision of shelter to illegal immigrants or of breaches of legislation concerning the settlement and movement of aliens in Greece.”

3) Proposed army recruitment of immigrants (a relief for the army ranks in view of the growing reluctance among Greek youth to draft) adds to the exploitative blackmail that makes legal residence dependent on work revenue stamps (immigrant active workforce’s contributions with no pension claims so far have been so far the Greek administrations preferred approach for dealing with the ailing public insurance funds); the unacceptably high fee (1,000 euros per person which means millions of euros for the state ) is maintained.

4) The much debated bill is merely an integration regulation for immigrants mostly from Albania, after two decades of overexploitation and in exchange for votes.  On April 28, 2009 Albania formally applied for EU membership. This prospect might seem remote, but wasn’t it the same with Romania and Bulgaria some years ago? Thus, although it now seems that the naturalization process applies and is of interest for the majority of immigrants in Greece, in a few years, when the Albanians will be EU citizens, the now proposed regulation will only aplly to a very small minotirty of immigrants. In fact, those in the worst position now will be then further devalued. The division into ‘goods’ and ‘bads’, ‘useful’ and ’superfluous’, ‘legal’ and ‘clandestine’ immigrants is being petrified as the global system of exploitation deepens.

Alongside with the proposal of the “benefactory” bill the Greek state has been all the more stressing its commitment to “zero tolerance” policies, the “sealing” of the borders, deportation camps, the Pact on Immigration and Asylum, the Dublin II Regulation, the Schengen Treaty, the Outrageous Directive. Finally, we should remind that the law provision for deporting immigrants charged (not convicted) of minor misdeeds on “public order and security” grounds is still in effect.

Clandestina network, January 2010

What happened earlier today during the third trial of the fishworkers’ strike.

SOURCE: http://asyntaxtostypos.wordpress.com/ post, published in athens indymedia.

most recent update in this post

What happened today in the third trial of the fishworkers strike (the strike was brought anew to court).

The judge of the Thessaloniki Court gave the fishworkers’ lawyers a deadline  to produce by 12 tomorrow (Wednesday, Jan 2010)

noon the necessary documents proving their claims against the trawlers bosses.These documents, according to the legal defence of the fishworkers, prove a series of abuses committed by the trawlers owners, including:

- The illegal practice of inviting other fishworkers, essentially to work as scabs,

- The deception of some Egyptians who were misled to sign a labour agreement in Arabic and in Greek language, which was very different from the original English version [the valid one should disputed occur] which contained onerous labor terms*.

- The fact that “employers unilaterally delegated to “representatives” of a “union of Michaniona fishworkers” (a  union which excludes the overwhelming majority of Egyptian) to calculate the “share”, with no control whatsoever exerted by the workers themselves; thus, the trawlers bosses were in position of paying the fishworkers as little as they wished ” testified today on court by the defence witness Secretary of Thessaloniki Trade Unions  Sotiris Zarianopoulos.

- The fact that the trawlers owners refused to provide the fishworkers with copies of their individual employment contracts, which are necessary for them in order to renew their residence permits, with a view to have them deported and replace them with other, cheaper fishworkers.

For these allegations, a witness for the prosecution said that the she either did not know of those facts or denied them, rousing a storm of protests by tens of strikers who were present in the court room and watched the process. Amid strong protests over allegations and arguments of the trawlers owners’ lawyer (who argued inter alia that “foreign workers shouldn’t be allowed to come here and establish unions at will …”), the procedure was halted until tomorrow for the strikers’ lawyer to produce the required documents.

The trial was attended by the CP MP Sophia Kalantidou (who had submitted interpellations to the parliament  on the issue), the Secretary of Thessaloniki Trade Unions Center Sotiris Zarianopoulos (PAME), the Deputy Secretary of the Thessaloniki Trade Unions Center , Despina Charalambides (Aftonomi Paremvasi –Radical Left Coalition), the President of the Thessaloniki Builders Union  Vassilis Revas (PAME) (last Monday a press conference by the fishworkers and S. Zarianopoulos took place at the offices of the Trade Union of Thessaloniki) and several leftist and independent supporters of the struggle including the Soliodarity Assembly with the Fishworkers’ Strike.

In a gesture of support to the strikers who have found themselves in the recent months in a deplorable financial situation, student unions, anti-racist, anti-capitalist and leftist organizations and the Solidarity Assembly called for today Tuesday at 6 pm a solidarity rally. On Friday Jan 29 the Assembly organizes a Concert at 9 pm at the University “to support the Egyptian fishworkers in Mihaniona”. [SEE RIGHT SIDEBAR ON THIS BLOG]

* The unacceptable “lost in translation” Greek text of  ’agreement’ which misled five (of a total 130) of Michaniona Egyptian fishworkers included the following condition in paragraph 6: “The Egyptian fishworkers should not be involved in any Greek political party or body related to labour obligations and rights “!