Mr. Chrysohoidis, Minister of Citizen Protection, announced today the creation of thirty new type detention centres for immigrants in cooperation with the Ministry of Defense. They are called “reception centres” or “centres of hospitality” in the dominant discourse although they are clearly to become huge prisons.
The minister had a meeting with the governors of 10 Greek prefectures to ask them if they agree to build detention centers in their areas and if they have specific facilities to offer for this purpose. Anyway, as he said, these prisons will be build even without the agreement of the prefectures. Throughout the last days and since the announcement of the creation of such a prison in Kozani the local politicians and the society had protested against these plans.
He also assured that the EU funding for these centers will be 250 million euros for the three following years.
For each detention centre a new independent police department will be created with personnel of 150 new police officers and also 70 private security men for every 250 immigrants detained.
According to the plan, each new detention center will be divided into four sectors with a capacity for 250 detained immigrants, if there are 1,000 immigrants in each of the 30 prisons announced it makes up a total of 30,000!
The new detention centres have become one of the main issues of concern today in Greek news which was dominated by a racist propaganda on “the problem of illegal immigration” constructing immigrants as a threat to security, public health etc.