Human Rights Watch: “2009 a Bad Year for Migrants – Deaths, Labor Exploitation, Violence, and Poor Treatment in Detention”

source: human rights watch website

(New York) – Many governments’ policies toward migrants worldwide expose them to human rights abuses including labor exploitation, inadequate access to health care, and prolonged detention in poor, overcrowded conditions, Human Rights Watch said today in advance of International Migrants Day, on December 18, 2009.  A 25-page roundup of Human Rights Watch reporting on violations of migrants’ rights this year, “Slow Movement: Protection of Migrants’ Rights in 2009,”  includes coverage of China, Cuba, Egypt, France, Greece, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Malaysia, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Thailand, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States.

Complaint submitted to the European Commission: Greece violates EU asylum right

SOURCE: http://www.proasyl.de/en/

Greece violates EU asylum right

Complaint submitted to the European Commission

On November 11, 2009, PRO ASYL, along with fellow refugee organizations Dutch Council for Refugees, Finnish Refugee Advice Center, and British Refugee and Migrant Justice, filed a complaint with the European Commission against Greece. Twenty other European refugee organizations support the complaint.

PRO ASYL demands that the European Commission immediately initiates an infringement procedure in the European Court of Justice based on Greece’s failure to abide by fundamental European asylum policy. Greece provides for asylum protection within its laws, however it falls short of its legal obligations in practice.

COMPLAINT & REPORT available at NGO complaint against Greece. The report includes many testimonies.

Unwelcoming shores

Source: http://www.independentworldreport.com.

21 NOV 09

Simone Troller of Human Rights Watch describes the plight of migrant and refugee children in Greece and how Greek authorities are doing the dirty work for other members of the European Union – giving them the opportunity to get rid of migrants, including potential refugees.

“We were one group of twelve persons they took out from the detention centre. They drove us in a car, for maybe one and a half hours. We arrived in the forest around 9 PM. They kept us there until midnight, they told us not to move, otherwise the Turkish police would find us. It was next to a small river. This side was Greece, the other side was Turkey… The boat was a metal boat, a long metal boat. Inside the boat there was one policeman. He started the engine and after we arrived to the other side he told us to get out quickly and the boat went straight back. When the Turkish police arrived two of us explained what happened. We were, for twelve days, in Turkish detention. They beat me too much… When the Turkish police beat me they said I should call my family to send me money to return to Afghanistan. I asked them not to send me back to Afghanistan, because I had problems. I asked them to keep me. But they did not care.”

This was how a seventeen-year-old Afghan boy described his secret expulsion from Greece to Turkey and ultimately back to Afghanistan. Unfortunately, his experience is typical of the fate of thousands of migrants and asylum seekers who have been expelled from the European Union at the hands of Greek authorities. As a result, many people who need protection are sent back to danger, abuse or inhuman detention conditions.

In 2008 and 2009, Human Rights Watch investigated the treatment of migrants and asylum seekers, including unaccompanied children, in Greece and published its findings in three reports. In late 2008, when we first presented our findings to the Greek government about systematic illegal expulsions of migrants, asylum seekers and refugees to Turkey, we were given the cold shoulder – they ignored our findings.

When we presented them to EU policymakers in Brussels and also described the total absence of protection for migrant children who arrive without a parent or caregiver, there was recognisable disbelief and even shock in people’s faces. When I summarised in a meeting with a policymaker in Brussels that an unaccompanied migrant child who enters Greece is either detained or left to survive on the streets, I was told: “I don’t believe this.”

It may be hard to believe that such callous and illegal acts are taking place in the heart of Europe that has long committed itself to respect basic human rights standards. It may also be hard to believe that Greece offers no safety net for unaccompanied children. Those who are not expelled are either detained in filthy and overcrowded conditions or released onto the streets where they face a miserable struggle for survival and exploitation, including as child labourers.

Yet, ignoring the reality on the ground means such acts will continue to take place. Greece’s treatment of migrants and refugees, including these children, violates binding European Union directives for asylum seekers.

Despite the shocked reactions in Brussels when we described what we had found, our call to the European Commission to take Greece to the European Court of Justice for these violations has so far gone unheeded.

We also expected a stronger signal from other EU member states. In late 2008, in a meeting with EU member state delegations, we urged them to stop sending migrants and asylum seekers back to Greece under the so-called Dublin II regulations, because of the ill-treatment, detention and unfair asylum procedures. They told us, in the words of one diplomat: “If we stop doing that, more migrants will arrive to our country.”

There is no doubt that Greece is on the frontline of migration to Europe and that it carries a heavy burden for the rest of the EU under the Dublin II rules. But that reflects a wider failure of Europe’s asylum and migration policy that puts pressure on countries at its borders instead of ensuring equitable burden-sharing across the continent.

Under Dublin II regulations, the country where a person first enters the EU is generally held responsible for examining that person’s asylum claim, though for unaccompanied children the rule applies only if the child has made a claim there. The regulations are premised on the notion that all EU member states have comparable asylum and migration practices. Yet, there are wide disparities, with countries like Greece effectively offering no protection at all.

Greece gives refugee status to 0.05% of asylum seekers after a first interview and recently abolished meaningful appeals. This prompted the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to withdraw from a formal role in Greece’s asylum procedure. Yet, EU member states continue to return migrants, asylum seekers, and even unaccompanied children to Greece, simply pretending that everything is perfectly fine.

It is hard not to get the impression that these EU member states are perfectly happy with Greece doing the dirty work for them – giving them the opportunity to get rid of these migrants, including potential refugees among them. In mid-2009, six months after we brought our findings to both Greek and EU attention, the Greek government began a new crackdown against migrants – arresting hundreds across the country, bulldozing a make-shift camp in Patras, evicting them from run-down dwellings in Athens, and detaining new arrivals on its islands.

Human Rights Watch returned to Greece in September 2009 and collected evidence that Greek authorities have arrested persons all over the country, and summarily expelled some of them across the river to Turkey, though previously it only sent those who had just entered from Turkey back that way. This means that no part of Greece is now safe for anyone in need of protection.

While the EU has largely remained silent on Greece’s abusive record or has focused on blaming Turkey for refusing to take migrants back, there are some encouraging signs from the newly elected Greek government. It announced in mid-October that Greece would no longer be a hell pit for migrants. The government also pledged to release 1,200 migrants from detention, where most are held in inhuman conditions, and to create a special police unit to investigate allegations of abuse.

Fixing the system will be a tall order, though. The new government inherits an asylum system that no longer deserves that name, a police force that commits abuses against migrants both in broad daylight and in secret nighttime operations, and detention facilities that are a hazard for detainees and staff alike. Fixing this will require more than promises and symbolic acts.

Despite the overwhelming agenda, there are obvious priorities. The Greek government can protect the most vulnerable migrants, especially unaccompanied children, and get rid of the stark alternatives in the current system of either detaining them or abandoning them to the streets and to exploitation. Greece should give them decent shelter, food, clothing, health care, and, of course, protection from traffickers.

Not all of the more urgent reforms even require more resources. An unambiguous commitment to stop the illegal expulsion of migrants to Turkey is essentially a matter of political will to operate according to the rule of law. The new police unit should immediately investigate these secret expulsions and levy sanctions against those responsible. Accountability for these acts is paramount for meaningful police reform.

Greece also needs to come to terms with the reality that many undocumented foreigners, adults and children alike, left their countries because their lives were in danger and have a legitimate claim for protection. The government needs to put its broken asylum system back on track, take the asylum procedure away from the police, create a special body that assesses claims fairly and promptly and institute a fair, workable appeals process. Otherwise, the adults and children the Greek government releases from detention now will end up again in a dead-end situation: unable to leave Greece, unable to return to their countries, and unable to be recognised as refugees.

Halting human rights abuses that have gone unchecked for too long should be urgent priorities both for Athens and for Brussels. The European Commission should make clear to Athens that unless the new government takes steps to bring its laws and practice in line with EU and human rights standards, the commission will refer the matter to the European Court of Justice. In addition, the EU needs to ensure that EU member states are held to account when they fail to respect their obligations under EU law, and ultimately to reform the Dublin system. Only then can the EU take meaningful steps toward creating a common European asylum system that offers equal level of protection across the continent and supports the countries on the frontline.♦

Simone Troller is Researcher, Human Rights Watch. For more on migrant and refugee children in Greece, see: Greece: Unsafe and unwelcoming shores and Left to survive: Systematic failure to protect unaccompanied migrant children in Greece, available at http://www.hrw.org

Released from Pagani, now trying to survive Athens…

Published on 13. November 2009 at lesvos.antira.info

We have to sleep in 3 hour shifts

M. is an Afghan unaccompanied minor who was released from Pagani.
He was in the group of 130 refugees released the last day and who left for Athens with the boat and since then he is in Athens trying to survive. Actually M. like most other minors in Pagani,got released with a paper saying that he is staying in the villa Azadi the minors house in
Mytilini. But he has never been informed about this ,he has never been brought up to the villa and he doesn’t know his right to be protected as a Minor. Most minors that have been in Pagani the last two months have been release with this paper without having been informed about their right to be taken to the minors house.

We met in the centre of Athens . He came with a little Afghan boy of about 7 years with whose family they share a room. We sat in a coffee place and orders something to eat. M. eat very little and very slowly and explained to me that he had not eaten since two days and that when you have no money for food ,but you get food you have to be careful to eat little otherwise your stomach is hungry soon again because it got used to food. He also mentioned that he doesn’t go out from the place he stays,one room shared by 36 persons among them two families. They have to sleep in a 3 hours shifts on the mattresses. They are lucky that the family of one of them gives them shelter. Most others from Pagani are sleeping in the scare in Athens in the park. He doesn’t go out because when you are in the treats you all he time see people eating and drinking and this makes you even more hungry and thirsty. I asked him if he could speak about the situation after they came out of Pagani:

What happened when you arrived in Athens?

M: When we arrived we were 190 persons ,we went to the ministry and the ministry told us go to the gsr (Greek council of refugees) but gsr did not pay attention to us. After that we come to Attiki park and we pent two days there.

After those two days we find some relatives we are living together we are sleeping 36 persons, four families are with us and twelve boys, minors,like us.
All people from Pagani. All refugees.
We are just sitting after one, two days we are eating little bread. Its bad for people. That they pay not attention the government to us.

I told them in the GSR. I said they want to give us food? They said no!

We don’t have enough home to give you If you want you can only be in the Pagani. We said no! we don’t want to be in the Pagani! We want to live in the centre. Because of that we are here.

What do you think to do now?

I am thinking that after two days I want to left this place but I cant because I don’t have money I don’t have anything to go.

Where do you want to go?

I want to go to Germany,all the people want to go to Germany you ask them where you want to go all of them want to go to Germany. There was a family here they where deported from Austria they where deported. They where with us in the church . So one day we go to the church and eat something the other day we don’t go. Because the police is coming taking our papers,we have a lot of problems,they beat us.

You know their are places you can go to eat?

Yes! the church.But the police is beating us saying :go! its finished food! Its a lot of problem.

They beat us when we go for food!

The Greek government is not giving attention to any refugee. Some guys have been here 4 months 6 months. So they have red card. But the Greek government don’t give attention to them they just leave us like this and our families don’t know where we are, they are saying if we are alive or we are dead they don’t know. Its very  difficult.

A., also a unaccompanied minor in Greece is in Athens six  since  months, trying to get out of Greece. He is registered by the Greec police about five or six times now.

A. is trying since half a year ,M. just starts now, thousand others unaccompanied minors who should be protected and families, single men and women are only wishing to be able to leave Greece as soon as possible and to arrive in some european country where their rights being refugees are respected.

But Greece doesn’t let them go!!!!!

Testimony from Pagani (and Athens after it)

source: lesvos09.antira.info

“We really didn’t feel like refugees!”

Athens, 25th of October 2009 | Reflections on Lesvos two months after Noborder:

Hello, my name is Milad. I am 17 years old. I was for 23 days imprisoned in Pagani in Mitilini and first I want to define how was the situation inside this prison and how was the behaviour of police and doctors with us.

Some guys were sick for weeks, they were calling for a doctor, but nobody was ready to listen to our voices. There was no treatment for sick persons and the drinking water had a bad smell. If we asked for a doctor, for clean water or anything, mostly nobody was even listening.

They also did not have a good behaviour to the families with the small kids. One day I saw the kids had their ten minutes time to go out. They were playing football and one policeman was beating a small kid, he was about 8 years old, his mother was crying.

UK: Refugee and Migrant Justice Lawyers call on the UK Government to stop removing asylum-seekers to Greece

>>> SOURCE/READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE AT http://refugee-migrant-justice.org.uk <<<

10 November 2009

RMJ asks UK to stop removing asylum-seekers to Greece, following international complaint to European Commission against Greece

Refugee and Migrant Justice (RMJ) today calls on the UK Government to stop removing asylum-seekers to Greece until conditions there improve.

Fifteen European refugee NGOs, led by Refugee and Migrant Justice and the Dutch Refugee Council, are calling for the Greek Government’s treatment of asylum-seekers to be referred to the European Court of Justice. The complaint will be presented to the European Commission today, 10 November, and will be heard at the end of November 2009.

Many asylum-seekers travel by sea to Greece. The Greek authorities often try to prevent them from entering Greek territory by turning boats back at sea or sometimes puncturing inflatable rafts. Life threatening situations have occurred in the process. When asylum-seekers do make it to Greek territory, many of them are detained upon arrival. Conditions in some of the detention centres are appalling – most of them are warehouses that are severely overcrowded and lack adequate sanitation and cooking facilities.

There is a severe shortage of reception facilities and no specialist social care for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. Many migrants end up sleeping rough where they often experience ill-health.

The Greek authorities make it very difficult for asylum seekers to gain access to the Greek asylum procedures, a clear violation of EC law, as well as international human rights instruments. In 2008 22,100 asylum applications were lodged in Greece, yet less than one per cent of asylum applicants were granted refugee status or other forms of protection, compared with 31 per cent in the UK.

The Greek authorities regularly deport asylum-seekers back to Turkey from where they may be removed to their countries of origin.

Caroline Slocock, Chief Executive of Refugee and Migrant Justice, says

“The inhumane conditions facing asylum-seekers in Greece are a scandal. Greece’s system is not just unfair to asylum seekers, it places unreasonable burdens on other European countries, like the UK, that have more respect for European and international obligations to identify and protect those who fear persecution.. . Many asylum-seekers end up travelling across Europe to France and the UK because they cannot get a fair hearing in Greece. We are appealing to the European Commission to put this right but in the meantime the UK Government should stop returning asylum-seekers to Greece under EU laws, as their safety cannot be guaranteed.”

Case studies

RMJ has collated witness statements of asylum-seekers who have come to the UK via Greece…

>>> SOURCE/READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE AT http://refugee-migrant-justice.org.uk <<<

UN chief at the 3rd Global Forum on Migration & Development, on the “poor migrant asylum record” of Greece

source: earth times

 

UN chief hopes Greece’s will address its poor migrant asylum record

Athens – UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon expressed hope on Wednesday that Greece will address its poor migrant asylum record in accordance with human rights laws. “I know that all states, including Greece have the right to determine the stay of migrants but I sincerely hope that this will be addressed with the settlement of human rights and laws,” Ban said during 3rd Global Forum on Migration and Development.

“As the host organizer, Greece may have the moral and political responsibility in seeking a settlement of the issues,” Ban told journalists.

Palestinian minors and other refugees tortured in Greece

A long report on the situation by The Palestine Telegraph

SOS Palestinian minors and other refugees tortured in Greece – 5 women 3 children drowned in Aegean

Greece, October 27, 2009 (Pal Telegraph) –

The photo is from the 17 year old Palestinian victim (from "Eleytherotypia" newspaper)

A 17 year old Palestinian has accused his guards of brutally beating him, in the Pagani “detention center” for immigrants without papers, in the island of Lesvos, close to Turkey. The incident happened just a few hours after the vice minister of the newly named “Ministry of Protection of the citizens” has visited the place and expressed his indignation over the living conditions of hundreds of immigrants stuffed in an old depot transformed to a nasty prison. The vice-minister left, the newspapers wrote articles about how much the new “socialist” government cares about human rights, and the policemen punished the immigrants and refugees that dared to denounce their ill treatment to the vice-minister by torturing them even more!

“As the Vice Minister turned his back” – Pagani Update

source and more photos here

A few days ago, news arrived about the vice Minister visiting Pagani, describing it with the words “Dantes Inferno”. Today, our faithful source in Mytilini reports about new revolts in the Detention Center of Pagani.

Today the revolts in Pagani started again. After the Vice Minister of internal affairs visited Pagani two days ago, the violent habits returned to Pagani. Prisoners reported about a huge police brutality after the visit. Some of the prisoners where calls out, one after the other, to the prison Jard. There they where badly beaten by the police. The prisoners felt save, telling the vice Minister about there situation, but in the end there where punished for there statements in front of the visitor. A complain against the police was made by the prisoners.

A group of estimated 70 people was freed today. It was upsetting for some who are imprisoned in the detention Center of Pagani for more then 25 days. Another revolt started. on one point one of the cells was set on fire. for a long time none, aside from the prisoners,reacted in direction of turning off the fire. Not the Gard not the police. Fireman arrived around one hour after the fire started.
The Atmosphere in the detention Center is very tense. The people inside are serious about there demand to be freed. They will continue with there protest for freedom until the Detention Center is finally closed.

Also, a little video.

UNHCR delegation visits Pagani, Lesvos, urges closure

source: http://www.unhcr.org/print/4ae1af146.html

PAGANI DETENTION CENTRE, Greece, October 23 (UNHCR) – A UNHCR delegation has called for a crowded migrant detention centre on the Greek island of Lesvos to be closed after visiting the facility with a senior government official.

More than 700 men, women and children are packed into the Pagani centre, which lacks space and adequate hygiene and sanitation facilities to cope with such a large number of people, many of whom might be asylum-seekers and thus of concern to the UN refugee agency.

“Freedom, freedom, freedom,” the detainees chanted, as Deputy Citizens’ Protection Minister Spyros Vougias and the UNHCR delegation, led by Giorgos Tsarbopoulos, visited the facility on Thursday.

Both men condemned the poor conditions, which included about 200 women and children living in one ward with just two toilets and one shower. They saw damp mattresses soiled by water leaking from the toilets.

Deputy Minister Vougias, visiting Pagani during his first week in office, apologized to the detainees, who are mainly from Afghanistan and Somalia. “What I have seen today is a human tragedy, with conditions in which no human being should be kept,” he said.

“There is an urgent need to release vulnerable groups,” the minister stressed, while pledging that the government would improve the processing of new arrivals and work to ensure better living conditions.

Tsarbopoulos, head of the UNHCR office in Greece, said Pagani “should be shut down,” adding that the situation there reflected the impasse of policies applied at entry points, which led to people being detained.

He said UNHCR recommended that appropriate reception facilities, with screening mechanisms and expert staff, should be established at entry points, including islands like Lesvos which faces Turkey. These would help identify people in need of international protection and afford them special care.

“In parallel, drastic changes to the asylum system should be immediately introduced and the relevant responsibilities should be removed from the police and transferred to a political body,” Tsarbopoulos said, adding that he hoped the government’s commitment to improvement would result in concrete action.

Some 5,500 irregular migrants and asylum-seekers were detained in Lesvos during the first eight months of this year after crossing from Turkey, compared to more than 13,000 in 2008 and 6,100 in 2007. Most originated from conflict-torn countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia.

By Ketty Kehayioylou in Pagani Detention Centre, Greece