It is now commonly accepted that the previous months saw an immense increase in racially motivated violent attacks in Greece. Relevant reports in printed and electronic media reveal that racist attacks have become an almost daily occurrence. According to reports by migrant and refugee organizations, the number of known racist violence incidents does not represent the real extent of this phenomenon in the country.
Continue reading ‘Racist Violence Recording Network Findings (1.1.2012-30.9.2012)’
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One month ago the village Parenesti near Drama was chosen to become the location of one of the “new type” detention centres of Greece where the masses of arrested during the permanent sweeps are being transferred to. Today a number of 150 sans-papiers is detained in the former army camp. There are about 40 persons crowded in each cell while capacities have been largely ignored as usually.
The former army camp has been turned into a detention centre of the new kind.
There is not enough food, basic hygiene is not secured while there is no access to leisure time outside for the detainees until today. Since their mobile phones have been taken away by the police detainees have no access at all to the outside world, i.e. to family, friends or lawyers. Most of the detainees have no money to buy telephone cards instead.
The provisory detention centre for sans-papiers was opened about four months ago in an overnight action by the Ministry of Citizen Protection and Public Order. It is one of three mass detention centres – the others are located in Xanthi and in Komotini – which were set up by the new government in the summer to fit the thousand arrested sans-papiers captured during the Xenios Dias sweep operation. There have been repeated protests by the mayor of Corinth against the creation of this detention centre. He even reached the point to cut off the water supply.
Corinth provisory detention center in a former army camp
The building was originally an army camp at the outskirts of Corinth city. Sans-papiers were arrested in massive sweeps and were brought from various places, such as Corinth and Patras, to this detention centre. A couple of NGOs have tried ever since to enter the prison in order to monitor the situation, screen the detainees and offer legal aid, but access has been denied. They could only see a hand full of detainees of whom they had their names in advance.
Yesterday, solidarity groups from Patras and Corinth but also from other places hold a protest in front of the detention centre. A delegation of seven persons entered the detention centre (with 2 parliamentarians of Syriza, a doctor, a lawyer, interpreters and members of the Movement for the Support of the Rights of Refugees and Migrant of Patras as well as the Antirascist Initiative of Corinth) More than 650 persons were detained in the overcrowded detention centre for the reason of “illegal entry”, “illegal stay” or “illegal exit” to/in/from Greece.
Detainees reported to the delegation that they were lacking warm water, they have insufficient food, no access to information and lawyers and seldom visits of doctors always without any interpreters, many lack medicine they need to take and thus remain sick in their cells.
Among the detainees were many minors, there were family fathers whose families upon their arrest were left behind without anyone to take care, there were persons who wanted to apply for asylum but could not manage and others who had applied 4 months earlier but were not released within the legal maximum period of detention for asylum seekers (3 months). Others had managed to apply for asylum but received during detention the rejection and lacked any information and legal aid to appeal within the given period of 15 days, therefore, falling out of the asylum system.
Reportedly, there are also many cases of ill-treatment by the authorities.
No concentration camps!
Never and nowhere!
see also older articles:
zougla tv (in greek)
letter by the syndicate of the police concerning hygiene in the detention centre of Corinth, October 17, 2012 (in greek)
read also the press release of the NGO AITIMA, September 13, 2012 (in greek)
Fifteen people arrested in Athens says they were subjected to what their lawyer describes as an Abu Ghraib-style humiliation
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/
Fifteen anti-fascist protesters arrested in Athens during a clash with supporters of the neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn have said they were tortured in the Attica General Police Directorate (GADA) – the Athens equivalent of Scotland Yard – and subjected to what their lawyer describes as an Abu Ghraib-style humiliation.
Members of a second group of 25 who were arrested after demonstrating in support of their fellow anti-fascists the next day said they were beaten and made to strip naked and bend over in front of officers and other protesters inside the same police station.
A protester shows his injuries
Several of the protesters arrested after the first demonstration on Sunday 30 September told the Guardian they were slapped and hit by a police officer while five or six others watched, were spat on and “used as ashtrays” because they “stank”, and were kept awake all night with torches and lasers being shone in their eyes.
Bruising on the protester’s leg
Some said they were burned on the arms with a cigarette lighter, and they said police officers videoed them on their mobile phones and threatened to post the pictures on the internet and give their home addresses to Golden Dawn, which has a track record of political violence.
Golden Dawn’s popularity has surged since the June election, when it won 18 seats in parliament; it recently came third in several opinion polls, behind the conservative New Democracy and the leftwing party Syriza.
Last month the Guardian reported that victims of crime have been told by police officers to seek help from Golden Dawn, who then felt obliged to make donations to the group.
One of the two women among them said the officers used crude sexual insults and pulled her head back by the hair when she tried to avoid being filmed. The protesters said they were denied drinking water and access to lawyers for 19 hours. “We were so thirsty we drank water from the toilets,” she said.
One man with a bleeding head wound and a broken arm that he said had been sustained during his arrest alleged the police continued to beat him in GADA and refused him medical treatment until the next morning. Another said the police forced his legs apart and kicked him in the testicles during the arrest.
“They spat on me and said we would die like our grandfathers in the civil war,” he said.
A third said he was hit on the spine with a Taser as he tried to run away; the burn mark is still visible. “It’s like an electric shock,” he said. “My legs were paralysed for a few minutes and I fell. They handcuffed me behind my back and started hitting and kicking me in the ribs and the head. Then they told me to stand up, but I couldn’t, so they pulled me up by the chain while standing on my shin. They kept kicking and punching me for five blocks to the patrol car.”
The protesters asked that their names not be published, for fear of reprisals from the police or Golden Dawn.
A second group of protesters also said they were “tortured” at GADA. “We all had to go past an officer who made us strip naked in the corridor, bend over and open our back passage in front of everyone else who was there,” one of them told the Guardian. “He did whatever he wanted with us – slapped us, hit us, told us not to look at him, not to sit cross-legged. Other officers who came by did nothing.
“All we could do was look at each other out of the corners of our eyes to give each other courage. He had us there for more than two hours. He would take phone calls on his mobile and say, ‘I’m at work and I’m fucking them, I’m fucking them up well’. In the end only four of us were charged, with resisting arrest. It was a day out of the past, out of the colonels’ junta.”
In response to the allegations, Christos Manouras, press spokesman for the Hellenic police, said: “There was no use of force by police officers against anyone in GADA. The Greek police examine and investigate in depth every single report regarding the use of violence by police officers; if there are any responsibilities arising, the police take the imposed disciplinary action against the officers responsible. There is no doubt that the Greek police always respect human rights and don’t use violence.”
Sunday’s protest was called after a Tanzanian community centre was vandalised by a group of 80-100 people in a central Athens neighbourhood near Aghios Panteleimon, a stronghold of Golden Dawn where there have been many violent attacks on immigrants.
According to protesters, about 150 people rode through the neighbourhood on motorcycles handing out leaflets. They said the front of the parade encountered two or three men in black Golden Dawn T-shirts, and a fight broke out. A large number of police immediately swooped on them from the surrounding streets.
According to Manouras: “During the motorcycle protest there were clashes between demonstrators and local residents. The police intervened to prevent the situation from deteriorating and restore public order. There might have been some minor injuries, during the clashes between residents, protesters and police.”
Marina Daliani, a lawyer for one of the Athens 15, said they had been charged with “disturbing the peace with covered faces” (because they were wearing motorcycle helmets), and with grievous bodily harm against two people. But, she said, no evidence of such harm had so far been submitted. They have now been released on bail of €3,000 (£2,400) each.
According to Charis Ladis, a lawyer for another of the protesters, the sustained mistreatment of Greeks in police custody has been rare until this year: “This case shows that a page has been turned. Until now there was an assumption that someone who was arrested, even violently, would be safe in custody. But these young people have all said they lived through an interminable dark night.
Dimitris Katsaris, a lawyer for four of the protesters, said his clients had suffered Abu Ghraib-style humiliation, referring to the detention centre where Iraqi detainees were tortured by US soldiers during the Iraq war. “This is not just a case of police brutality of the kind you hear about now and then in every European country. This is happening daily. We have the pictures, we have the evidence of what happens to people getting arrested protesting against the rise of the neo-Nazi party in Greece. This is the new face of the police, with the collaboration of the justice system.”
One of the arrested protesters, a quiet man in his 30s standing by himself, said: “Journalists here don’t report these things. You have to tell them what’s happening here, in this country that suffered so much from Nazism. No one will pay attention unless you report these things abroad.”
This video was made by the police for the purpose of their propaganda. Unfortunately the police was not brave enough to show us also the sound! Easy to guess why…
Yesterday, October 5, the police invaded again the centre of Athens during “Xenios Zeus” operation. 1.537 persons were temporarily arrested and transferred for further controls to police stations. 339 of the were finally arrested and detained because they were lacking valid residence permits. 11 house searches were conducted. The police held the operation in the area from Syndagma up to Patissia.
press release of the greek police October 6 (in greek)
see also an older video (subtitled in english) of the “xenios zeus” operation in the railways station, which reminds of other times:
Press release of the United African Women Organisation, Greece
We women, involved in United African Women Organization, Greece, express our deep concern, protest and anger for any type of clean – up actions that are in progress in the centre of Athens and other Greek regions.
Manny of us, years ago, have taken the road of exile, had in mind a distant country, Greece, where people honoured and respected the “stranger” as a holy person. Than, we became this “stranger” and during our evening classes, after work, we learned that there is an old god, to assist us in the difficult struggle for survival: the “Xenios Zeus.”
Today we hear that the old god he changed his mind and doesn’t want to protect us anymore.
We have always tried to build bridges between immigrant communities and the Greek society.
To seek what unites us, rather than what divides us and to highlight it.
To struggle with the Greeks, both men and women against poverty, absurdity as a single, dynamic community that claims their lawful rights.
In spite of those who cut the bridges, we want to continue to fight for the natural right of every person to safety, dignity and peaceful coexistence.
Each “sweep” that was preceded, allegedly as a clean-up, (like people are garbage and need to be swept). we women of Africa who live in Greece, want to turn it into a sweep against hate speech, pogroms, violence and fascist beliefs.
We do not want to be defeated by racism.
We do not want to loose all hope.
We do not want to start again from scratch a fight that should have been finished.
http://www.africanwomen.gr/
africanwοmen@yahoo.com
Posted by clandestina on 2 October 2012
In the evening of Sunday, Sep 30th the third anti-fascist motorcycle patrol spotted nazis in the area of Amerikis Square in Athens and clashed with them. Soon thereafter, the anti-fascists were brutally attacked by the police. Many antifascists were injured and 23 arrested. Next day, approximately 300 people gathered in the courthouse of Athens in solidarity with the arrested. When the imprisoned anti-fascists exited the building to to be transferred back to the police HQ, the police attacked the gathering, chasing people inside the courthouse’s yard and then in the nearby streets. Approx. 20 more people were detained during the police operation. In total, 4 people were arrested and they will appear in the court on Tuesday morning.
Continue reading ‘Police protects fascists, more racist attacks, more police pogroms, more clashes with fascists, by clandestina’
In total the Greek police anounced that in the months of August and September 2.135 foreginers have been returned to their countires of origin of which 1.259 were deported by the Greek police (459 Pakistanis, 272 Bangledeshis, 187 Albanians). 876 persons returned with the IOM voluntary return programmes. All returns are funded by the European Return Fund.
In July the police had anounced that there had been 819 returns without any differenciation on „voluntary“ of „involuntary“.
see press releases of the greek police (in greek):
of October 1, 2012
of August 1, 2012
In the early morning hours of Monday Okctober 1, 2012 the authorities of Patras together with police from other areas started one of the biggest police raids that the town has seen. As the media wrote, the arrested might get transferred into the detention centre of Korinthos, in Patras and other cities/ villages around.
busses wait to transfer the arrested into detention centres
The currently 320 provisory arrested are closed up until now in one building of the Patraiki Peiraiki Factory in Patras were the police register them. As reported among them 208 have no legal residence in Greece- The ones who have no valid papers will be transferred with busses into detention.
The police sweep is still not completed and might be continued also tomorrow.
the arrested persons were transferred and registered inside the factory of Patraiki Peiraiki
read (in greek):
patras times (in greek)
the best news (in greek)
press release by the greek police
Read the Press Release of the Solidarity group of Patras from 03.10.12 (in english)
Following a police crackdown in Evros region since August 2012 the influx of undocumented immigrants into the country from the land border with Turkey has virtually stopped. Meanwhile the number of refugees and migrants entering the country via the Aegean has skyrocketed, with some 60 percent of total arrivals coming from strife-torn Syria.
In the Aegean dozens of refugees and migrants are arriving on the islands every day. Local authorities there are complaining of a lack of personnel, infrastructure and funding to deal with the people.
Meanwhile statistics released by the Greek police show that 60 percent of immigrants detained in the Aegean and in the northeastern port of Alexandroupoli, in Evros, since the beginning of September are from Syria. In the same period last year, only 1.5 percent of detained migrants were Syrian.