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Migration and Struggle in Greece

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Private security firms bid on Greek asylum centres

Posted by clandestina on 4 April 2014

Source: http://euobserver.com

BRUSSELS – Private security firms are bidding to guard EU-funded migrant detention centres in Greece amid a report by Medecins Sans Frontiers (MSF), which says poor conditions in some of the facilities are causing disease.

Greek authorities received EU money to refurbish and renovate Fylakio Oresteiadas, a pre-removal detention centre located in a remote area near the Turkish border.

Greece now wants to outsource its security, along with two other pre-removal centres in Corinth and Paranesti Dramas, to a private security firm for €14 million a year.

Fylakio was among others included in a scathing MSF report out on Tuesday (1 April). Read the rest of this entry »

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Migrants saved in Greek boat accident mourn relatives – and dispute claims

Posted by clandestina on 29 January 2014

Survivors say coastguards refused to help them as vessel sank and stamped on hands of those clinging to Greek boat

  • in Athens
  • The Guardian, Monday 27 January 2014 20.14 GMT
    Afghan migrant Fadi Mohamed, who lost his wife and children when the boat sank off Farmakonisi

    Fadi Mohamed, an Afghan who lost his family when the boat sank, describes seeing coastguards kicking a refugee. Photo: Nikolas Georgiou/Demotix/Corbis

    Even now, eight days later, they can both still taste the sea. Just as they can still feel the water slipping through their fingers as they desperately tried to bail out the boat. Read the rest of this entry »

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Pushed Back – refoulement of refugees at the Greek-Turkish land and sea border

Posted by clandestina on 8 November 2013

On the Greek-Turkish land border refugees are systematically refouled with brutal, shocking and systematic violations of human rights: ‘When they left us in the Turkish waters they made waves again and six of us – all men – fell into the sea. The Greeks saw that, but they didn’t help, they just left.’ PRO ASYL documents these systematic pushback in the report “Pushed Back – systematic human rights violations against refugees in the aegean sea and the greek-turkish land border”. With few exceptions, all documented pushback took place in the area of ​​operations of Frontex. PRO ASYL raises the question of the involvement of Frontex on the human rights violations and calls: Frontex must end its operations in Greece.

Report: http://www.proasyl.de/fileadmin/fm-dam/l_EU_Fluechtlingspolitik/pushed_back_web_01.pdf
Summary (in German): http://www.proasyl.de/fileadmin/fm-dam/NEWS/2013/Summary_Faelle_Deutsch_Pushed_Back.pdf

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Doctors Without Borders and Amnesty International: Syria refugees in Greece lack ‘humanitarian’ help

Posted by clandestina on 18 March 2013

Doctors Without Borders and Amnesty International lashed out on Thursday at Greece’s treatment of Syrian refugees fleeing their war-ravaged homeland, with many locked up as illegal immigrants or reportedly facing police brutality.

Source: http://www.globalpost.com/ Read the rest of this entry »

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Fleeing war, Syrians face new misery in Greece

Posted by clandestina on 18 March 2013

(Reuters) – Syrian shopkeeper Osama fled the fighting in Aleppo convinced he would be welcomed in Europe. Five months later, he is stuck in near-bankrupt Greece, where money and sympathy are scarce.

Beaten up and robbed by traffickers when they arrived in Athens, Osama, his wife and two children were arrested as illegal immigrants and thrown into detention when they recounted their ordeal to Greek police. Ordered out of Greece but without any place to go, he rues the day he set foot in the country.

Source: http://www.reuters.com/ Read the rest of this entry »

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BBC: Greek police accused over racism and asylum rights

Posted by clandestina on 26 October 2012

Newsnight’s report on the Greek far-right party Golden Dawn made headlines across Europe last week.

In it, MP Ilias Panagiotaros claimed Greece was “in civil war” and indeed advocated a new kind of civil war, pitting the far-right against migrants, anarchists, etc.

Within 24 hours Mr Panagiotaros had retracted his claim that Greece was “in civil war”, saying instead “there is no civil war” and accusing Newsnight of “paraphrasing” his words. We had simply broadcast them, un-edited and in English.

Now three new reports cast light on the substance of our story – which was: alleged police torture of anti-fascist detainees, Golden Dawn’s influence inside the Greek police force, and its potential influence on the operational behaviour and priorities of the police in the Attica region around Athens. Read the rest of this entry »

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The Guardian: Greek anti-fascist protesters ‘tortured by police’ after Golden Dawn clash

Posted by clandestina on 9 October 2012

Fifteen people arrested in Athens says they were subjected to what their lawyer describes as an Abu Ghraib-style humiliation

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/

Fifteen anti-fascist protesters arrested in Athens during a clash with supporters of the neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn have said they were tortured in the Attica General Police Directorate (GADA) – the Athens equivalent of Scotland Yard – and subjected to what their lawyer describes as an Abu Ghraib-style humiliation.

Members of a second group of 25 who were arrested after demonstrating in support of their fellow anti-fascists the next day said they were beaten and made to strip naked and bend over in front of officers and other protesters inside the same police station. Read the rest of this entry »

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Human Rights Watch report: Xenophobic Violence in Greece

Posted by clandestina on 10 July 2012

Hate on the Streets

The 99-page report documents the failure of the police and the judiciary to prevent and punish rising attacks on migrants. Despite clear patterns to the violence and evidence that it is increasing, the police have failed to respond effectively to protect victims and hold perpetrators to account, Human Rights Watch found. Authorities have yet to develop a preventive policing strategy, while victims are discouraged from filing official complaints. No one has been convicted under Greece’s 2008 hate crime statute.

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‘Greek problem’ at heart of debates on migration

Posted by clandestina on 8 March 2012

Source: “EUROPOLITICS -the European affairs daily”

The member states’ home affairs ministers will meet, on 8 March in Brussels, to debate governance of the border-free Schengen area and in particular the problems they are experiencing with Greece, the main gateway to Europe for 80% of “illegal migrants” (more than 60,000 caught at the border between Greece and Turkey in 2011). Read the rest of this entry »

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The crossing point

Posted by clandestina on 8 March 2012

Source: http://www.economist.com/node/21549012

Would-be immigrants to Europe can go almost anywhere—for a price

IT TAKES a few minutes to cross the Evros river, now the main entry point for illegal immigrants from Asia into Europe, but it can be frightening. On the Turkish side people-smugglers can be armed. In winter the river is fast-flowing and very cold. Groups who pay €300 ($400) a head to cross are packed into rubber dinghies at night. Some migrants get panicky—especially because few know how to swim.

So it is a relief to find friendly faces on the Greek side. Many migrants are briefly arrested, detained or surrender to the police. In most cases they are given a document letting them stay for 30 days. Those who cross near Alexandroupolis go to the railway station, where they may visit the Café Paris and meet a young Moroccan who matches migrants with onward transport. The price for being smuggled from Athens to France in a secret lorry compartment is €4,000. Getting out by aeroplane is “very difficult”. An increasingly popular option is to go via the western Balkans. The rate from Alexandroupolis to Austria, along a route managed by Greeks, Albanians, Serbs and Moroccans, is €2,800.

Most illegal immigrants in Greece have crossed the Evros. In 2009 local police registered 8,800 migrants here; in 2010, 47,000; and in 2011, 55,000. In January this year 2,800 are known to have crossed. The most numerous are Pakistanis, followed by Afghans, Bangladeshis, Algerians and Congolese. By some estimates Greece has half a million illegal migrants. The euro crisis makes it hard for them to find work.

Illegal migrants are like water, says Despina Syrri, a researcher: when one channel is blocked they find another. In the past many immigrants who did not want to stay for long in Greece could find work, at least temporarily. Some procured fake passports with visas for Europe’s Schengen zone. Many smuggled themselves on to lorries heading by ferry to Italy. But these options are all getting harder. That is why thousands now move north through Macedonia and Serbia towards Hungary. Smaller numbers trek through Albania, Kosovo, Montenegro and Croatia.

It is hard to stanch the flow. Polish, German and other policemen from Frontex, the European Union’s border agency, armed with the latest technology, peer over the border into Turkey and help their Greek colleagues to spot columns of would-be migrants, sometimes 100-strong. The Greek police inform the Turks. But on the Turkish side the army is in charge, not the police, and it often arrives too late. Short of a change in Turkish policy, the use of force or a wall, the flow will continue.

The border is some 206km (128 miles) long. All of it is river, except for a 12.5km stretch of land. In 2010 at least 26,000 crossed here, but last year that number had fallen to 900. And early last month the Greeks started building a fence to stop people walking across. The reason for the decline since 2010, says Giorgios Salamangas, the local police chief, is that Frontex’s early warnings have had an effect. More pertinently, Turkish troops seem to have decided to change their policy of “pretending they could not see them at all”.

In Istanbul Murat Celikkan, a civil-rights activist who has worked with refugees, says that Turkey, itself overwhelmed with migrants from Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan and now Syria, wants to get rid of them. However, given the poor state of their relations with the EU, the Turks also see this flow as leverage in talks with Brussels. And they do not see why Turkey should take on the burden of hosting immigrants just to help out the EU.

In a snowbound Banja Koviljaca, on the Serbian border with Bosnia, Anosh, a forlorn young Afghan, has ended up in Serbia’s centre for asylum-seekers. In 2008 51 people applied for asylum in Serbia. Last year the number was 3,134. The true figure crossing into Serbia must be several times higher. Anosh crossed the Evros last year and bought a fake Romanian passport in Athens for €400. He boarded a ferry to Italy, but was rumbled on the Italian side when the police got their Romanian translator to quiz him. Sent back to Greece, he and a group of Afghans paid a guide €500 each to help them walk into Macedonia. There they stayed in a safe house for two days and, after a taxi ride to the border, were shepherded across the hills into Serbia for another €200.

Rados Djurovic, who runs Serbia’s Asylum Protection Centre, says that few of the asylum-seekers want to stay in Serbia. They apply because it gives them a chance to rest, to get medical care, and to move around legally until they work out how to leave and where to go. Most important, they get an identity card that allows them to receive money, via a wire-transfer agency, to continue their journey.

From Bangladesh to Subotica on the Serbian border with Hungary, where groups of Afghans and others live in huts on frozen scrubland, countries play pass-the-buck with these immigrants. In Kosovo, off the main route, police sources estimate that over 1,000 pass through every year. Some say that, when they are caught in Macedonia or Serbia, policemen sometimes take the migrants to the border and tell them to walk across to Switzerland, Hungary or a “Muslim country”.

Most migrants aim to get to Hungary because they can then cross easily into Austria and, thanks to Schengen, get as far as Calais without border controls. “So long as you have got the money,” says Mr Djurovic, “you can get anywhere.”

Read more:Balkan visitors

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