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.

Seggregation and manhunts in Igoumenitsa

In gateway-to-Italy Ionian Sea town of Igoumenitsa (see here for previous reports) the situation gets harsher. Immigrants are seen searching for food and clothing in rubish cans. The nearby area of Ladochori has been turned informally into a containment area by the police, which guards there immigrants not allowing them even to walk through to the town of Igoumenitsa. Locals now demand that immigrants leave their village because they “steal and cause trouble”. At the same time the local branch of the DIA supermarket brand denies entry to immigrant customers for security reasons. The politics of seggregation have given rise to a culture of xenophobia.

There are also reports of an immigrant head injured by a track driver at the port area.

What’s more, the police thugs of DI.AS. force, infamous for their tactic to raid demonstration lines on their motorbikes and injure people, have arrived in Igoumenitsa town. They can now be seen on their bikes hunting immigrants.

On Tuesday, July 27, people in Igoumenitsa will gather to offer immigrants clothing and other needed stuff in solidarity.

info: http://ditiki.squat.gr/

Immigrant child drowned in the river Evros

The dead body of a young child was discovered yesterday in the river Ebros, near the village of New Cheimonio.
The unlucky boy was probably one of the sans papiers immigrants, who were carried away from river waters and found dead in the region of Dilofoy – Marasion, a few days ago. The corpse, in advanced decay, was discovered by a fisherman, who notified the Police.

EUROSTAT Q1 2010 Asylum Statistics for EU27 Countries

EUROSTAT released updated data on 15 July for the First Quarter of 2010. The report is entitled: Asylum applicants and first instance decisions on asylum applications in Q1 2010 (Doc. 32/2010).

Notable statistics include reductions of over 50% in the number of asylum applicants in three countries, Malta, Italy, and Greece, relative to the First Quarter of 2009. Malta had the largest reduction of approximately 95%.

The reductions in Malta and Italy are almost certainly due to Italy’s push-back practice. Though the first migrant arrivals in Malta in 2010 occurred this past weekend, 17 July, when 55 migrants on a sinking vessel were intercepted by Maltese and Libyan patrol boats. The Times of Malta reported that the migrants were “shared out” between the Maltese and Libyan patrol boats. 28 migrants were brought to Malta and 27 were apparently taken to Libya.

Click here for the full EUROSTAT document.

Click here for Times of Malta article.

http://migrantsatsea.wordpress.com/2010/07/19/eurostat-q1-2010-asylum-statistics-for-eu27-countries/

EU information management instruments

21 Jul, 2010
The Commission presents today a clear, comprehensive and transparent summary of instruments regulating the collection, storage or cross-border exchange of personal data for the purpose of law enforcement or migration management, setting out at the same time the core principles that should underpin the evaluation of information management instruments in the area of freedom, security and justice.

These same principles will be followed in the future development of instruments for data collection, storage or exchange: (pdf at statewatch.org)

http://euro-police.noblogs.org/post/2010/07/21/eu-information-management-instruments

Beijing starts gating, locking migrant villages

BEIJING – The government calls it “sealed management.” China’s capital has started gating and locking some of its lower-income neighborhoods overnight, with police or security checking identification papers around the clock, in a throwback to an older style of control.

It’s Beijing’s latest effort to reduce rising crime often blamed on the millions of rural Chinese migrating to cities for work. The capital’sCommunist Party secretary wants the approach promoted citywide. But some state media and experts say the move not only looks bad but imposes another layer of control on the already stigmatized, vulnerable migrants.
So far, gates have sealed off 16 villages in the sprawling southern suburbs, where migrants are attracted to cheaper rents and in some villages outnumber permanent residents 10 to one.
“In some ways, this is like the conflict between Americans and illegal immigrants in the States. The local residents feel threatened by the influx of migrants,” Huang Youqin, an associate professor of geography at the University at Albany in New York who has studied gating and political control in China, said in an e-mail. “The risk is that the government can control people’s private life if it wants to.”
The gated villages are the latest indignity for China’s migrant workers, who already face limited access toschooling and government services and are routinely blamed by city folk for rising crime. Used to the hardship of the farm and the lack of privilege, migrants seem to be taking the new controls in their stride.
Jia Yangui said he accepts the new system as a trade-off for escaping farm work in the northern province of Shanxi. He arrived in Beijing less than two months ago and lives with a relative in one of the gated villages, Dashengzhuang. He sells oily pancakes just inside one of the gates.
“Anyway, it’s not as strict as before, when we migrants would be detained on the way to the toilet,” said Jia’s relative, a middle-aged woman who gave her family name as Zheng.
“Sealed management” looks like this: Gates are placed at the street and alley entrances to the villages, which are collections of walled compounds sprinkled with shops and outdoor vendors. The gates are locked between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m., except for one main entrance manned by security guards or police, there to check identification papers. Security guards roam the villages by day.
“Closing up the village benefits everyone,” read one banner which was put up when the first, permanent gated village was introduced in April.
But some Chinese question whether problems arising from growing gap between the country’s rich and poor can be fixed with locks and surveillance cameras.
“It’s a ridiculous idea!” said Li Wenhua, who does private welfare work with migrant workers in Beijing. “This is definitely not a good long-term strategy. The government should dig up the in-depth causes of crime and improve basic public services such as education and health care to these people.”
Crime has been rising steadily over the past two decades, as China moved from state planning to free markets and Chinese once locked into set jobs began moving around the country for work. Violent crime in China jumped 10 percent last year, with 5.3 million reported cases of homicide, robbery, and rape, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences reported in February.
“Sealed management” was born in the village of Laosanyu during the Beijing Olympics in 2008, when the government was eager to control its migrant population. The village used it again during the sensitive 60th anniversary of Communist China last year. Officials then reported the idea to township officials, who decided to make the practice permanent this year.
“Eighty percent of the permanent residents applauded the practice,” said Guo Ruifeng, deputy director of Laosanyu’s village committee. He didn’t say how many migrants approved, though they outnumber the locals by 7,000 to 700.
“Anyway, they should understand that it is all for their safety,” he said. Guards only check papers if they see anything suspicious, he said.
Gating has been an easy and effective way to control population throughout Chinese history, said Huang, thegeography professor. In past centuries, some walled cities would impose curfews and close their gates overnight. In the first decades of communist rule, the desire for top-down organization and control showed in work-unit compounds, usually guarded and enclosed.
As the economy has grown, privately run gated communities with their own security have emerged in the biggest cities, catering to well-to-do Chinese and expatriates, offering upscale houses and facilities like pools and gyms.
The new gated villages in Beijing are very different.
“To put it crudely, gated communities in the city are a way for the upper middle-class and urban rich to keep out trespassers, whereas gated villages represent a way for the state to ‘keep in’ or contain the problem of ‘migrant workers’ who live in these villages,” Pow Choon-Pieu, an assistant professor of geography at the National University of Singapore who has studied the issue, said in an e-mail.
Jiang Zhengqing, a supermarket owner in the gated compound of Laosanyu, told the China Daily newspaper in May that he doesn’t even know if he’ll be in business next year because of the drop in customers.
“Before, the streets were crowded with people in the afternoon but now the village is deserted,” he said. “I can’t understand why the government has invested such a large amount of money into putting up these useless fences, rather than repair our dirty public restrooms and bumpy roads.”

By CARA ANNA (AP)

170 immigrants on hunger strike in the Samos detention camp

According to ANA-MPA, 170 migrants detained in the Samos detention camp started a collective hunger strike. trying to stop their deportation.
They demand an end to the transfers to detention centres close to the greek-bulgarian land border in the north.
Such transfers happen between two and three times a month in Samos, the last one happened last week, when 50 migrants were taken.

Turkey sets out Dikili as migrants’ readmission port

During last week’s meeting of Greek and Turkish officials on irregular migration in Athens, the Turkish side agreed to set out the port of Dikili, about 15 miles off Lesvos island, to serve the readmission of irregular migrants in Turkey.
Turkish authorities estimate that the port will start operating
within the present month of July.

(Ethnos, 5 July)

Two more immigrants found dead in the Evros river

July 6 2010
Two more immigrants were found dead in the Evros river.
In the first half of 2010, 50 sans papier immigrants, trying to cross the greek borders from the Evros river, have been found dead…

3.7.2010 – Mass deportation transport from Samos detention center

50 migrants hade remained in the detention center of Samos.
Last Monday they started a hunger strike requesting their freedom. They striked for 3 days. In the evening of Wednesday 30.06.2010 the guards told them they will be set free.They where taken away with a prisoners’ transport bus. Then, they where separated in groups and sent to different police stations of Samos. The following morning they were reunited again, handcuffed. They were taken to the port. Nobody told them where to.
Finally, they were transported to Pireus and from there to the detention center of Aspropirgos. Among them is a 15 year old minor. His age has been changed from the authorities (police and Frontex) and he is in a bad psychological condition.