400 immigrants on hunger strike in Orestiada detention center

The morning of Wednesday, August 28, around 400 immigrants detained in the concentration camp of Orestiada (near the Greek-Turkish land border) staged a hunger strike.
The reason is that yesterday, the detention center authorities announced that the immigrants’ detention time will be extended to 18 months. The prisoners expressed their intense discomfort as many of them are in the camp for over a year without having committed any crime, without even having been in trial in any court of any kind.
Soufian, a refugee from Syria, is on a hunger strike for one week. This morning he fainted and was transferred to hospital. Alois, from Iran, last nigh sewed his lips. They all ask only one thing: freedom.

Senegalese street vendor died during police operation in Athens

An immigrant from Senegal died falling from a height, on the rails of the subway in Thiseio station in central Athens, during an operation of Municipal Police to remove peddlers from tourist area.

A big operation of Municipal Police started on Friday afternoon on the touristic area of Thiseio, in central Athens, to remove immigrants from the streets, who work as peddlers to live. During this operation Cheikh Babacar Ndiaye a 37 years old immigrant from Senegal, was chased and he died falling from a height, on the rails of the subway in Thiseio station. From the blood seen on the pictures possibly his death resulted from the fall.
Subway metro services were disrupted for at least two hours. First aid assistants removed the body of the immigrant from the rails. Meanwhile his friends gathered at the station, together with other people from Senegal.
Some of them mourned, but when they saw the stretcher with the dead body they began to shout and protest. Some of them they shouted that Police is racists. Riot police arrived immediately and attacked the gathered people, and cleared the area around the station. At the same moment of the attack the dead body of immigrant was moved to an ambulance and left the area, for an unknown and undeclared direction, in spite of the questions made ​​on this.

Source & photos: http://www.demotix.com/news/1765476/immigrant-dies-during-police-operation-athens#media-1765433

 

 

Human Rights Watch report: Xenophobic Violence in Greece

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.

Read the Press Release

Read the Report

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.