(Update on) Illegal deportation of refugees.

UPDATE JAN 22

After a week of illegal detention at the old detention space of the Elliniko Airport premises, and much pressure at media and the parliament and legal struggle the Iranian refugees were released.

source: http://athens.indymedia.org

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source: athens indymedia

6 Iranian political refugees were transported illegally from the refugee detention center of Samos island to Athens Airport(El Venizelos) where they were  in custody until yesterdaypending their  illegal deportation.

On Thursday, January 14, 24 people (among them 6 Iranians, 10 Afghans, 1 Palestinian) were transferred from the Samos refugee detention center by boat to Piraeus and then to El. Venizelos airport where they were until yesterday (Friday 15), pending their eventual deportation.   They had no information on where  they were being transferred.

The 6  Iranians had requested to file asylum applications at the Samos center but their request was rejected by the Samos police.  Refugees are entitled to appeal on an appeals committee and must be given a margin of one month to do so.  Expulsion in a period less than that is illegal.

The Iranian refugees spent at least one month under imprisonment and incommunicado conditions at the detention center on Samos and they were not informed about their rights.

Mass hunger strike at Athens Airport since Sunday

source in Greek: http://www.tvxs.gr/v21898

About 150 immigrants detained at the airport “Eleftherios Venizelos” began a mass hunger strike on Sunday.  The immigrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh and India had been living and working  for years in Greece.  When they went for a visit at their country, they received the necessary documents from the pertinent municipalities, which would allow them to return.  Upon return, though, the authorities did not allow them to leave the area of the airport, claiming that their documents had been forged.

At the beginning of the hungerstrike, some already had been held for one month, awaiting the decision to deport them.   In addition to their claims for release, the migrants ask for improved detention conditions;  one of the prisoners reported to tvxs, «we are offered food once a day, we have no access to shower facility, but most importantly we can not drink the water because it comes from the single  toilet used by all prisoners’

Athens Airport: death, redundacies, corruption and the pretext of economic crisis

just a fancy deathtrap for workers

An athens indymedia article, translated roughly by clandestinenglish.

The J&P-ΑΒΑΞ Α.Ε. business group operating at the Eleftherios Venizelos Airport has sacked 42 people, both Greek and immigrants, who had been employed by the company in cleaning services. They were dismissed with summary procedures on the pretext of the economic crisis, of course.  They all had completed three years at the job and were all anticipating the increase in wages  the law foresees. Instead , they were made redundant en masse.
Now the German holding company, which is infamous for bribing officials to undertake the project of cleaning services at the airport, Hochtief, is about to make recruitments of new unspeacialised workers from the pool of unemployed. So much for the pretext of the economic crisis making people redundant.

At the same airport, 7 people have lost their lives in the construction site for the new shopping mall. At the same airport workers are intimidated and humiliated by corporate bosses. For those who do not know it, one day before the criminal assault against Kuneva, a worker from Albania lost both his legs, his left hand and his genital organs, because J&P-ΑΒΑΞ Α.Ε. forced him to clean up the suburban railway lines at the airport without first turning off the power line. The company prevented workers by reporting the incident through intimidation and blackmail.
At the airport everyday crimes are commited.

We must not leave our fellow workers alone.

Solidarity.