The transformations of Petrou Ralli Street, or the search for asylum in Greece.

This is a translation of this filoxenoi.wordpress post. More posts on Petrou Ralli str. Directorate for Foreigners here, here and here.

Many thanks to Olga for her help with this.

26/03/2010 by filoxenoi

The “department of foreigners” at Petrou Ralli is a reference point of the “glorious” policies of the Greek state in terms of asylum granting, as all those that follow the developments in the field know.  It consists of humiliating bureaucracy, indecent treatment, endless waiting hours in queues, no sense of rationality, poor or non-existent medical care, assaults, torture and even murders.

This situation has caused some reactions and resistance. When three refugees were murdered while waiting outside the directorate, refugees and sympathizers gathered and blocked the streets, demonstrated and made the events public. After all this, the ever- efficient people in charge there came up with the solution: to transfer the entrance from Petrou Ralli street to Salamina street – “to better serve” the thousands of people that were gathering to make their applications .  With regard to the process and the realities that these people were facing, absolutely nothing changed, apart from the crucial fact that they were now less visible. The Greek police – which, due to another Greek peculiarity, was responsible for the asylum granting – would be able to experiment as much as it wanted on the bodies and souls of the hundreds of refugees that had already started making the now infamous “queue of Salaminias”, hidden from the indiscreet eyes of various “curious” and “unwanted” passers-by.

In any case, one should not forget that those who managed to get to the end of the Salaminias queue all they were granted was a small paper, by which they could claim having an appointment, usually after several months, occasion at which they could file the application and then have their cases examined and decided upon. One  should also not forget that “out of 15.928 asylum applications presented to Greece in 2009, only 0,04% were accepted and the refugee status was only granted to 0,06% of the cases”.

Over the last months, the immigration policy of the Greek state including the policies on asylum have being going through a process of restructuring and remodeling. One part of the restructuring, at least at an institutional level, seems to be the the law regarding the granting of Greek citizenship to second generation immigrants and the further sealing of the country’s borders.

Regarding the asylum policies, there have been up to now –always socialist- proclamations for the improvement of the process of asylum granting by assigning it to an independent commission, staffed with experts on immigration and asylum issues, interpreters etc., and with the role of the police regulated to be less important.

In the meantime, the queue has disappeared. Not because there are no people in Greece that need protection from their own countries’ regimes, but because the responsible body refuses to take more applications. In other words, whoever goes to the directorate of foreigners at Petrou Ralli, will leave empty handed, in an absurd story of Kafkaesque inspiration. As easily as that, the modern “hospitable” Greek democracy, the one springing directly out of the basic principles of the ancient Greek civilisation of Xenios Zeus, refuses to accept and register the applications for asylum (the access to which, according to the 1951 Geneva Convention on the legal status of refugees, should be undisturbed and the mere expression of seeking asylum by the refugee should be enough for its registration).

As easily as that, the hospitable Greek democracy condemns hundreds of people to live in fear and to be helpless in the hands of the cops that they will encounter. They even face torture and death with their obligatory return to their countries, from which they fought so hard to escape, since the controls and the expulsions from the country are still going on -despite the fact that the asylum procedures have stopped…

Testimony from the Petrou Ralli hell

more about the Petrou Ralli in these posts.  Source of the following text: anarxikoiaigaleo.squat.gr article translated at occupiedlondon.org/blog reposted at athens indymedia.

(Testimony from the hell of Petrou Ralli by comrades that were detained in the prison wing for migrant women on P. Ralli St. after the occupation of the Keratsini Town Hall in solidarity to the 22 persecuted in the “Resalto” social space on 5th December 2009).

The scene is the same as if it were a high security prison; the difference is that no one has committed any “crime” here. The cctv’s that are everywhere in the cells, apart from the toilets, are an example of how human dignity is violated in here. The detainees are under 24/7 surveillance, they can’t get a moment of privacy and no personal data protection policy is in effect. Even the cell doors are made of iron bars, from top to bottom, and in order to create a somehow private space the detainees have hung bed sheets. “I cannot bear it that everyone walking up and down the corridor can see me”, an immigrant woman told us. The wings made of cement have electric doors of latest technology, windows (some without pane) that look out on… the rest of the cells and are at a height that you cannot reach in order to see what is happening outside. The cells are equipped with “post-modern” beds made of cement (square ones that remind of benches) with worn-out foam rubber on top, a “soft” blanket that resembles emery cloth (exclusively sponsored by the Greek army) and no pillow whatsoever.

Hygiene conditions are non-existent, which explicitly shows the intention to “decompose” the body and to eliminate any characteristic that reminds detainees that they are human. The medieval-style toilets – which often host cute insects such as cockroaches– are only four and superdirty. The idea in the Petrou Ralli St hell is that cleanness is a fallacy [trans: play on words on a popular Greek saying]… Soaps, shampoo, toothpaste, toilet paper and sanitary towels are considered “small bourgeois residues” and consequently are unnecessary. Instead of a mirror, they use a piece of plastic that reflects like tinfoil the faces of those who live there for up to 6 months (according to the new law): distorted and partial reflections of persons that eventually forget who they are. All adds up in order to forget your very own existence.

Food is transported daily from GADA [trans: police headquarters] and of course it does not contain milk because there is fear that it will go bad during transportation. Everybody is given an instant coffee, a juice and a chocolate croissant. Even children are given the same (from 12-month babies to 10 year-old boys); age and personal needs do not matter. For lunch we were given bean soup, olives and one loaf of bread per cell to be shared by all the detainees, as well as oranges from Arta [trans: Greek city] at preference. The detainees serve themselves in plastic yoghurt-pots. There is no refectory or special room for food to be served, and they are obliged to place their bread on dirty, miserable blankets. Special needs are not taken into consideration, and diseases like diabetes, intestinal dysfunctions, cardiopathies etc do not receive any special alimentary treatment. We heard the detainees complain that they and their children suffered from itching. Cases of dermatological problems, such as mycoses, scabies, allergies and other kinds of dermatitis are frequent; they are mainly due to the sordid mattresses and the horrendous hygiene conditions in the cells and the toilets. They even face serious problems with their teeth, as they are not given enough bottled water and are forced to drink tap water from the toilets.

The women also talked to us about the aggressive behaviour of their underage children. And what is more reasonable for a child that grows up in prison than to develop an “antisocial” and aggressive behaviour. How can it not hate the world, as it is experiencing it from this hell? It has been marked for life by this experience and we better not dare to ask it in puberty why it’s throwing stones. Surely, in any case, the prisons on P.R. St. are an ideal environment for panic crises and psychosomatic conditions. The human being is a part of nature itself, and therefore it cannot survive in an environment made of cement.

Some prisoners have made artistic interventions to their cells in order to make them feel cosier. A Russian detainee has drawn huge cartoons on the walls. My soul is in pain… she misses her baby. She has transformed the cell into a child’s room. Love graven in hearts, and around the beds graven lines that mark days and months that have gone by. Engraved poems, promises, memoirs, names. In other cells the detainees have made an iconostasis; they have hung pictures of Saints everywhere in an effort to keep their hopes and dreams alive. Above their heads Angelina Jolie and Helen Menegaki [trans: Greek television star] next to shampoo labels, anything that can fill the empty walls.

Communication with the outside world is difficult and only those who have the money to buy a phone card have the possibility to make calls. Even the communication between the detainees is difficult as many of them do not speak nor understand Greek. There are no interpreters whatsoever and communication takes place through eye contact and gestures in an effort to exchange information on daily survival. Of course, this means they are deprived of their right to claim their rights or to be informed on their detention status and the date of their release. Complete isolation and loneliness.

Contact with the air, the rain and the sun is simply zero, as there is no yard to go out to. Detainees can only walk in the corridor (1 meter width and 20 meters length) that is outside the cells. They are deprived of a room where they could sit or do physical exercise; as a consequence they can only walk or lie down, in other words they carry around their pestered body. In this decorative background we saw small kids holding dolls, climbing up the iron bars and walking barefoot on filthy water and liquids of unknown origin. Their shoe laces had been taken away from them, thus they cannot even run. Some older children have understood what’s going on and every spark of life in their eyes has disappeared. Who can explain to them how one day they were returning home after school with their mum and suddenly they found themselves behind prison walls?

Event in Athens on Refugee Camps & Petrou Ralli Foreigners Police Station

 

event's poster

BORDERS ARE WITHIN OUR NEIGHBORHOODS

EVENT – DISCUSSION AND VIDEO PROJECTION ON REFUGEE CONCENTRATION CAMPS AND THE PETROU RALLI POLICE STATION TORTURE CHAMBER

T.E.I. OF ATHENS, INFORMATICS HALL, THURSDAY 12 NOV. 19.00

by the Aegaleo Anarchists Inititative

http://anarxikoiaigaleo.squat.gr/

 

Minister of Citizen Protection, gladly surprised by lack of abuse, threatens…

source, adapted from: http://www.enet.gr/?i=news.el.article&id=100563

Improved Detention Conditions promises Minister of Citizen Protection

Deputy Minister of Citizen Protection Spyros Vougias went to see for himself the places of detention for foreigners. The aim of the ministry according to Mr. Vougias is to relieve the overcrowded detention facilities of the Immigration Police Service.

[clandestinenglish note: these facilities ]

Vougias welcomed  the eclipse of violence and abuse at the detention centers, but appeared concerned about the large number, larger than the permitted, of the illegal immigrants concentrated in them.

At the same time, he noted that the detention center in Pagani of Lesvos will reopen when prison conditions improve and in cooperation with the Ministry of Defense, in Mytilene, a new site immigrants, who was destined for housing officers, will be used.

He also said that patrols on land and sea will be strengthened so that traffickers be identified and severely punished.  Mr. Vougias said that he has  informed the EU on the problems of migrant smuggling, and that there should be negotiation with Turkey, so that the centers are in the neighboring country and not in Greece.

Human Rights Watch: Halt Crackdown, Arrests of Migrants

source: human rights watch article

GREECE: HALT CRACKDOWN, ARRESTS OF MIGRANTS

Moving Detained Migrants to North Raises Fears of ‘Pushbacks’ to Turkey

July 27, 2009

Greek authorities are arresting large numbers of migrants and asylum seekers in the country’s cities and islands and moving many of them to the north, raising fears of illegal expulsions to Turkey, Human Rights Watch said today.

Human Rights Watch received reports from a credible source that, in mid-July 2009, police transferred a group of Arabic-speaking people from Chios Island to the Evros border region, where they were secretly forced to cross the border into Turkey. On July 23, local human rights activists prevented authorities from transferring 63 migrants from Lesvos Island to the north by blocking access to the ferry. On July 25, the police took most of them to Athens under heavy police escort.

“These operations and transfers are very worrying,” said Bill Frelick, refugee policy director at Human Rights Watch. “We fear that people are being prevented from seeking asylum, that children arriving alone are not being protected, and that migrants are kept in unacceptable detention conditions and possibly even being secretly expelled to Turkey.”

In another recent episode, in a large-scale police operation from July 16 to 18, police in Athens surrounded what appeared to be several hundred migrants and locked them inside an abandoned courthouse. The police arrested anyone who left the building. It is feared that some of them may have needed protection and did not have a chance to file a claim for asylum, the police prevented Human Rights Watch from speaking to the people held inside, and Human Rights Watch does not know the whereabouts of those who were arrested when they tried to leave.

In a November 2008 report, “Stuck in a Revolving Door: Iraqis and Other Asylum Seekers and Migrants at the Greece/Turkey Entrance to the European Union,” Human Rights Watch documented how Greek authorities have systematically expelled migrants illegally across the Greece-Turkey border, in violation of many international legal obligations. These “pushbacks” typically occur at night from detention facilities in the northern part of the country, close to the Turkish border, and they involve considerable logistical preparation. Human Rights Watch at that time interviewed 41 asylum seekers and refugees – all privately and confidentially – in various locations in both Greece and Turkey, who gave consistent accounts of Greek authorities taking them to the Evros River at night and then forcing them across.

Human Rights Watch also documented how Greek authorities miscategorize unaccompanied children as adults and detain them for prolonged periods of time in conditions that could be considered inhumane and degrading. (See the December 2008 report, “Left to Survive: Systematic Failure to Protect Unaccompanied Migrant Children in Greece.”)

Undocumented Afghan migrant children sleep in a forest on the outskirts of Patras, Greece. © 2009 Moises Saman/Panos Pictures

In yet another recent incident, on July 12, police destroyed a makeshift migrant camp in Patras, on the Peloponnese peninsula. In the days before the camp was destroyed, the police reportedly arrested large numbers of migrants there, and according to credible sources, transferred an unknown number to the northern part of the country. On July 17, Human Rights Watch met with several Afghans in Patras, including 12 unaccompanied migrant children now homeless as a result of this operation, who were in hiding in abysmal conditions out of fear of being arrested.

A 24-year-old man told Human Rights Watch: “We’re living like animals in the jungle … we can’t take a shower and we don’t have proper food … before I lived in the camp, but all of my things and clothes were burned. Now I have a shirt and a pair of pants, nothing else.”

A 14-year-old Afghan boy who arrived in Greece one year earlier said: “The worst situation during the past year is now, in Patras – now that I’m living in this forest …. There’s not enough food and we only eat bread with water.”

Human Rights Watch also observed on July 17 how more than 1,000 migrants lined up all night, largely in vain, trying to file asylum applications at Athens’ main police station. Greece recognizes as few as 0.05 percent of asylum seekers as refugees at their first interview and passed a law at the end of June that abolishes a meaningful appeals procedure, making it virtually impossible for anyone to obtain refugee status. It also extended the maximum length of administrative detention for migrants to 12 months – and under certain circumstances, up to 18 months – from previously 90 days.

“It appears Greece is doing everything it can to close the door on persons who seek protection in Europe, no matter how vulnerable they are,” said Frelick. “The European Union must hold Greece accountable for acts contrary to international and European human rights and refugee law, and it needs to act fast, as the lives of many are at risk.”

http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/07/27/greece-halt-crackdown-arrests-migrants

© Copyright 2008, Human Rights Watch

The asylum crisis and the rise of racist violence in Greece – by Hellenic League for Human Rights & European Association for the Defense of Human Rights

Statement asylum and racist violence in Greece EN – pdf

The asylum crisis and the rise of racist violence in Greece

Open letter to the Prime Minister of Greece, Mr. Karamanlis

and to the Minister of Interior, Mr. Pavlopoulos

HLHR – AEDH joint statement

Brussels-Athens 3rd June 2009

The Hellenic League for Human Rights (HLHR) and the European League for Human Rights (AEDH) express their deep concern about the emergency of the asylum system and the rise of xenophobia and racist violence in Greece. HLHR and AEDH propose policy solutions and immediate remedy action in order to avoid escalation of phenomena of violation of human rights with a highly negative impact on victims and society.

HLHR and AEDH are concerned about a proposed Greek Presidential Decree which will further deteriorate Greece’s asylum system crisis. The proposed amendments to Presidential Decree 90/2008, which incorporates into Greek law the provisions of the EU Procedures Directive include:

– The abolition of the Appeals’ Board as second stage instance for the substantial examination of an asylum application. This leaves asylum-seekers without the right of appeal for a substantial examination of their application at a second instance. In case of a rejection, which is the outcome of the overwhelming majority of asylum applications in Greece (98,62% in 2008), asylum seekers may only apply for a review by the Council of State which only examines the legality of the procedure but does not exercise a full control of all the legal and factual aspects of the cases.

– Decision authority on asylum applications is left to the regional and local Police Directors throughout Greece, without an effective role of non-police bodies and NGOs. Existing Appeals’ Boards, maintained for the pending appeals, will become an advisory body with no decision making power.

In the past years the Greek authorities have abstained from protecting promptly and efficiently the rights of asylum seekers, women, children and elderly. The percentage of granting asylum status have been among the lowest in Europe (1,38% in 2008 for asylum and humanitarian status grants) and admittedly Greek state has been reluctant in providing effective protection of unaccompanied minors against detention and expulsion despite urgent recommendations by national and international bodies [1].

In the same time, large numbers of asylum seekers seek every weekend to submit an asylum application in the Athens police headquarters. During such process and after clashes with the police, 3 asylum seekers have died under undetermined conditions in the last 6 months.

Areas of the historic centre of Athens are inhabited, rented or occupied, by undocumented migrants and asylum seekers under precarious or inhumane conditions, while xenophobic public discourse about ‘ghettos’ and criminality of migrants is on the rise [2].

Day-by-day racist Islamophobic incidents and violence by organised far-right groups against asylum seekers occur in the centre and suburbs of Athens, without effective intervention by the Police in protection of the victims, while official statistics have not ever recorded any racist crime in Greece.  Boat-prisons and military detention camps in the outskirts of Athens are discussed or announced as policy for sweeping asylum seekers and undocumented migrants out of the city centre.

HLHR and AEDH urge the Greek authorities:

• To refrain from any action or legislative initiative that would entail further violation of human rights of undocumented migrants, therefore to preserve second instance substantial examination of asylum applications, to refrain from mass rejections and guarantee effective and transparent first instance decisions for granting asylum status to those entitled to international and humanitarian protection.
• To design policies, which would be guided by a human rights-based approach and would guarantee efficient results for both the undocumented migrants and Greek society.
• To involve fully and as soon as possible civil society, competent NGOs and academic centres and most of all, migrant associations and organisations in migration policy planning and implementation.
• To proceed with full integration and granting rights to migrants, who live for many years in Greece, in order to achieve political participation through public representation, and counterbalance xenophobia in local communities and at a national level.
• To provide effective protection of vulnerable groups, such as women, children and elderly by protecting from expulsion where needed and by providing to unaccompanied minors effective representation, tutorship and social care and protection specific to their needs.
• To reform and to implement an efficient asylum system by endorsing recommendations by the competent international, intergovernmental and national civil society bodies and organisations.
• To proceed as an EU-border member State to the necessary steps for the activation of the European Directive 55/2001 about mass influx of displaced persons for those ethnic and vulnerable groups needing humanitarian protection for fleeing their countries under war and turmoil. This could cover those persons that according the Greek state are not entitled to asylum status but yet they need provisional protection.
• To provide a reasonable path to regularisation of status for those migrants already employed into the widespread Greek informal economy.
• To provide effective protection and assistance to racism, discrimination and hate crime victims by activating and efficiently implementing existing anti-racist and anti-discrimination law provisions.
• To refrain from any comments, political action or discourse that could further boost and provide fertile ground for dangerous, rapidly escalating and social cohesion threatening xenophobic trends and violence.

[1] According to the comments of Greek authorities to the report by Thomas Hammarberg Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe, Strasbourg, CommDH(2009)6 (4.2.2009) ‘the Aliens Law has not included an individual provision for the exclusion from arrest and detention for deportation of unaccompanied minors who violate the migration legislation. Besides, the prospect of an opposite provision would increase the problem of the “children of traffic lights” and child labour in general.’ (Appendix, p.23). The Greek Ombudsman has proposed the abolition of detention and expulsion of unaccompanied minors since October 2005.

[2] According the Greek National Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia – RAXEN NFP (HLHR-KEMO) The increasing trend of racist violence and Islamophobic incidents have been alarming since the election of a far-right political party in the Parliament in autumn 2007. The Greek RAXEN NFP is leaded by HLHR http://www.hlhr.gr

Pierre Barge, President AEDH

Miltos PavlouDirector, HLHR-KEMO RAXEN NFP

Dimitris Christopoulos, President HLHR

Fax : 0030-210-6990258 hlhr-kemo@hlhr.gr, hlhr@hlhr.gr, http://www.hlhr.gr

Pierre BARGE, président
AEDH, Association Européenne pour la
défense des Droits de l’Homme,
Membre associé de la FIDH
33, rue de la Caserne
B- 1000 Bruxelles
Tél : +32(0)25112100
Fax : +32(0)25113200
aedh@aedh.eu ; http://www.aedh.eu

Miltos Pavlou, Director HLHR-KEMO RAXEN NFP
Hellenic League for Human Rights (HLHR)
HLHR-KEMO-National Focal Point on Racism and Xenophobia
Bohali 63, Athens 11524
Tel : 0030-210-6990258
0030-697-4545689

Event by the Initiative of Immigrants, Refugees and People in Solidarity in Athens

[…] A video made by members of the initiative concerning the sinister events in the largest concentration camp of immigrants at Petrou Ralli and a text on  the anti-immigrant policy but also the lure and the difficulties of solidarity with immigrants are the infrastructure for a debate on these issues […]

An event by the Initiative of Immigrants, Refugees and People in Solidarity, on Tuesday at 20.00 at Lofos tou Strefi, Exarcheia, Athens.

http://filoxenoi.wordpress.com/

Text at the “back-end” of Salaminias Street – by the Initiative of refugees, immigrants and solidarios

Here is the text in Greek and English at the Initiative’s blog.  Background info here, here and here.

clandestinenglish

 

 

Text at the “back-end” of Salaminias street

While they were waiting here in Petrou Ralli boulevard for the asylum application, like you do right now, three people got killed by the police. Mohamed -aged 24- from Pakistan in October, Mazir -aged 24- from Pakistan in December and Hussein –aged 26- from Bangladesh in January. The police claim that these were accidental incidences but all of you who experience here this situation every Friday know the truth. The police beat the people who wait in the line during the night to put them in order or during the dawn in order to break them up since only few of them will manage to make the asylum application. Many times people get injured from the police night-sticks or get trampled during the chase. This situation is not accidental though.