UPDATE on racist attack in Corinth: Suspect detained

TEXT: ANDRÉS MOURENZA // PHOTO: ALESSANDRO PENSO
Finally, on Monday morning (2 days after the incident) the suspect of the racist attack to migrants in Corinth was arrested by the police. Also one of the two hospitalized migrants was able to leave the medical premises and return to the train station, with the other migrants. Nabi is still in hospital, well treated, and although with difficulties, he is recovering as photographers Alessandro Penso and Giorgos Moutafis were able to confirm this Monday after visiting him. Also journalist Antonio Cuesta visited the migrants at the train station this Monday.

Racist attack in Greece: 3 wounded, 2 disappeared

Nabi, a 20-years old Moroccan, is lying on the ground. He looks dead.

Twenty minutes earlier we were sitting in the recovered-from-garbage chairs and furniture, smoking cigarettes and chatting in one of the abandoned wagons of the old train station of Corinth (Greece). Nabi lives there with about other 50 migrants from Afghanistan, Iraq, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Yemen. Nasir—a polyglot, art lover Afghan interpreter—asks Nabi, another art lover, to draw something. The young Moroccan sketches the boat of the Hellenic Seaways moored just 200 meters down in the bay. They all are waiting the lucky day in which they will be able to catch the ferry; climbing to it, or hidden in the load of the trucks that the boat carries to Italy. And then… go further North in search for a job, a future, a safe and normal life. Crisis-hit Greece has become a nightmare for them. There is not the slightest possibility for work in a country with rocketing unemployment figures. Greeks don’t want them, neither they want to stay in Greece, but they are stuck here because European Union treaties allow third countries to return them to the state where they first entered the EU. And Greece has been the gate to Europe in the last years for 90 % of migrants.

Now, Nabi is lying on the ground.

Denouncement by African immigrants

Message by the union of African nationals (refugees in Ermioni) in Greece…

We, African refugees resident in Ermioni, have the honour to bring to your knowledge the perpetual threat of our security.

We send out this alarming and disgraced message to all national and international organisations defending the cause of refugees and all persons of good will who can defend us from this insecurity and racial segregation, and restore and recognise our international human rights as no one wishes to be a refugee.


Amnesty International: Greece continues to violate asylum-seekers’ human rights

While over a year has passed since the landmark ruling by the Grand Chamber of European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in the case of M.S.S. v. Belgium and Greece, Amnesty International remains profoundly concerned about the treatment of asylum-seekers in Greece.

The organization is deeply concerned that asylum-seekers are routinely detained for prolonged periods of time that can reach up to six months. In particular, the detention of unaccompanied or separated asylum-seeking children continues. Such children are held routinely for prolonged periods while a place is found for them in a reception centre for minors.

European Court finds a Turkish migrant was tortured by one of the Greek coastguard officers supervising him

In the Chamber judgment of January 17, 2012, in the case Zontul v. Greece, the European Court of Human Rights held, unanimously, that there had been a violation of Article 3 (prohibition of torture and inhuman or degrading treatment) of the European Convention on Human Rights.

The applicant, Necati Zontul, is a Turkish national who was born in 1968 and lives in London (United Kingdom).
On 27 May 2001 he and 164 other migrants boarded a boat in Istanbul which was bound for Italy. On 30 May the vessel was intercepted by Greek coastguards and escorted to the port of Chania (Crete). The migrants were placed in a disused merchant navy training school. According to Mr Zontul, the conditions of detention there were poor and several detainees were deliberately attacked by guards. He alleged that, between 1 and 6 June 2001, several detainees had been taken into a room from which they had emerged with injuries and, in some cases, unable to walk. There had also been reports of mock executions and Russian roulette.

On 5 June 2001 Mr Zontul reported that two coastguard officers had forced him to undress while he was in the bathroom. One of them had threatened him with a truncheon and had then raped him with it. One of the applicant’s fellow detainees had helped him back to the dormitory after the officers had left. In protest at that incident, the detainees had decided to go on hunger strike the following morning. Some of the coastguard officers had then burst into the dining room and gathered the detainees together, before beating them with truncheons and splashing them with water and a product resembling eau de cologne. One of the detainees had been made to “jump like a rabbit”.

The Court reiterated that the rape of a detainee by an official of the State was to be considered as an especially grave and abhorrent form of ill-treatment.

Under Article 41 (just satisfaction) of the Convention, the European Court held that Greece was to pay the applicant 50,000 euros (EUR) in respect of non-pecuniary damage and EUR 3,500 in respect of costs and expenses.

Read European Court’s decision here.

50 immigrants on hunger strike

On Saturday, December 3, 2011, 50 immigrants held at the Alikarnassos Police department in Heraklion, Crete, started a hunger strike. They did this to protest against their imprisonment conditions: they are let to starve, with no medical care. They leave their prison cells only to go to the toilets. When they protested about these conditions in the past, they got beaten up by police officers. So their only solution was the hunger strike. Most of them are refugees from countries like Syria, where the repressive regimes force them to migrate seeking for a better life. The hunger strike ended on Friday, December 9.

Second pogrom against foreign workers in Lakonia, Peloponnese

On Tuesday, July 22, around 2 a.m., ”indignant citizens”, nationalist thugs that is , assaulted Afghan workers at the district Sotiras or Kouskouni near Areopolis in Lakonia Prefecture, Peloponnese.   According to the police report around ten people wearing hoodies broke and entered in the Afghans’ house and beat them with clubs.  Then they fired a gun on the air and left with their cars.  Four Afghans were taken to the Health Center of Areopolis and Sparta Hospital, and were allowed to return home in the afternoon of the same day.   The police mentions some small dispute the Afghans had with Greek locals in the previous days.

This is the second major racist incident in Sparta in the last months.  On February 5 2010, a group of 13 adolescents 14-17 years old set the house of Banghladeshi workers on fire.   The workers who were sleeping inside took notice of the fire in the last instance and managed to escape.  The young arsonists posted on the web the video they had shot with their cell phones some hours later.

adaptation of this enet article.

More cases of racist police violence in Igoumenitsa

source: http://athens.indymedia.org/front.php3?lang=el&article_id=1146452, thanx to Ben for his help with this post.

photo from athens indymedia

photo from athens indymedia

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On March 10, Igoumenitsa port police beat an innocent immigrant with their clubs in the port area of Igoumenitsa. The man sustained serious injuries in the attack.

 

This followed a similar incident where police harassed two men seeking assistance at a local health centre. The men were tormented and pushed around by the policemen who informed them that they could not use the services at the health centre and that it was “not a health centre for them”. 

The small town of Igoumenitsa has been known in the past for its racially motivated attacks on immigrants. One such attack occurred on an immigrant with severe health problems who was unable to defend himself when police set their dogs on the man (Police brutality once more in Igoumenitsa: Cops let loose their dog against immigrant).

The attacks continue, and as recently as last Wednesday, when an immigrant disembarked a ferry from Italy and was met by waiting port policemen.  

It is alleged the man had been beaten by both the Italian police and security thugs aboard the ferry, before being handed over to the Greek police for further punishment. His injuries were so severe that his internal organs had been seriously damaged by the repeated beatings. 

The situation in Igoumenitsa is out of control with local police using racially motivated violence in a display of abuse against these people’s basic human rights. The Igoumenitsa police continue to raid the immigrant settlement near Ladochori and on March 4 violently attacked six immigrants and left them with serious injuries.  

Igoumenitsa may be an isolated provincial town and the local police may believe their crimes will remain unknown, but they are wrong. Those people in solidarity with immigrants from Western Greece now monitor the situation and speak out against the abuse of innocent people. As the protests on March 2 have shown, nothing will remain in darkness.  

One more case of incrimination against immigrants

Source of this article athens indymedia

- many thanks to Ben for his help with this translation

On March 10, a Sans Papier from Guinea found himself in Amerikis Square in downtown Athens. He had arrivied in Greece one week earlier and was looking for a better life.

He, like the countless number of refugees before him, was seeking refuge from a country torn apart under colonialism.

The man came to Amerikis Square on March 10 to meet with fellow compatriots and learn from them about life in Greece, to learn about life as an unwelcomed guest. He would soon learn this difficult lesson the hard way, he would learn that rather than assist these people in need of help, the police hunt for those without papers and those seeking asylum.

Coincidently, the police launched an anti-drug operation in Amerikis Square on March 10, against the drug dealing, of course, the police themselves are not involved in.

After seeing the police conducting their “anti-drug operation”, the man from Guinea panicked and fearing arrest, he ran, only to be caught and handcuffed moments later.

The man’s compatriots searched for him tirelessly for two days, checking local police stations and elsewhere.

He was eventually located but had been charged with a criminal offence relating to a bag of hash found by the police under a bush in Amerikis Square during their raid.

The police, looking to declare their anti-drug operation a success, charged the man for the bag of hash, even without proof it belonged to him.

The man came to Greece seeking a better life but thanks to the Greek police was now a “drug dealer”. This just goes to show that asylum seekers in Greece will, as the racist slogan goes “never be Greeks”.

Assembly for Solidarity to Immigrants

THERE IS AN INFO EVENT AND A SOLIDARITY GATHERING AT ATHENS COURT, INFO AT THIS POST.

Police brutality once more in Igoumenitsa: Cops let loose their dog against immigrant

Yesterday night between 9 and 10 pm cops in Igoumenitsa some cops patroling along with a police dog came across an Iraqi immigrant, who was known to them, since he had been hospitalised at the local hospital.  The Immigrant has lost one lung due to exposure to poisonous gases in Iraq and suffers from heart dislocation.  When the cops saw him started making fun of him and then let loose their dog, which assaulted the immigrant, bite him at then knee and injured him, before the cops took it away.

The immigrant’s condition is not severe but he is still at the hospital.  People in solidarity are there with him.

Last Tuesday a solidarity demonstration took place in Igoumenitsa.    Police’s attitude was very much provocative, in continuity with their repeated assaults against the settlement of immigrants who try to pass to Italy through the town’s harbour.

Source of the info above http://athens.indymedia.org

More about Igoumenitsa’s police hideous precedent here.