More than 90 immigrants were sent back to their home countries on Wednesday, police said.
Some 78 migrants from Pakistan, Iraq, Morocco and Nigeria were repatriated on charter flights while 16 Albanian nationals were transported to the Balkan state that borders northern Greece by bus, police said.
All the repatriated individuals had been arrested on charges of “illegally” entering the country.
information with, about and for refugees in Greece
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Since Thursday and the beginning of the pogrom in the centre of Athens the Greek police has taken 2.000 migrants into custody of which 420 were arrested. In total 234 persons were arrested for being undocumented being issued an administrative deportation.
Another 63 migrant women have been arrested for prostitution.
The fascist medial campaign against migrants will be continued on Sunday with a press conference of the ministers of citizen protection and health. Fear has been already effectively spread among migrant communities through the media showing endless arrests, controls and models of the new detention centres. The public discourse is dominated by the construction of migrants as a threat to the Greek society repeating mainly words such as: “illegal immigrants”, “contagious diseases”, “criminals”, “clean the city centre”, “dangerous” etc. This pre-election campaign is obviously aimed to distract the society from the economical measures that are being imposed by the government and to spread fear among migrants.
On March 30th, 2012 17 sans-papiers from Afghanistan and Pakistan were found at distress at sea and transferred to Kerkyra. They had tried to cross from Albania to Italy as they said.
Another two dead migrants were found near by Tyhero in Evros.
82 migrants and refugees were deported on March 28-30 from Athens Airport mainly to Islamabad and Kabul based on the “voluntary return programme” of IOM. Among the returned were: 70 persons from Afghanistan and Pakistan, one from Bangladesh, one from Iraq, four from Algeria, one from India, one from Lybia, two from Morroco, one from Rumania, one from Moldovia. Since there were no capacities to return the Afghanis and the Pakistanis with commercial flights a charter was rented for the deportation.
Sources:
NewsIT (in Greek)
Ethnos (in Greek)
The announced “pogrom in Athens” started yesterday with massive police forces in the centre of the capital. More than 200 migrants were arrested near by Omonia Square, from the streets, squares, houses and shops. Police forces invaded more homes also in Kipseli and arrested street vendors near the university buildings in Patission street and elswhere. This massive sweep operation and its promotion in the Greek news as top issue of the pre-election campaigns is the most publicised repression against migrants of the last period. 
The police has aimed to raid approx. 140 buildings where migrants live, because they perceive them as “hygiene bombs” and a “threat to public health”. The police raids will also focus on empty old houses where migrants found provisory shelter.
As the Minister of Citizen Protection said: “This attempt for the
η προσπάθεια που γίνεται για την ελάφρυνση του κέντρου της Αθήνας, για την αποκατάσταση της τάξης, για την προστασία της κοινωνικής ειρήνης στις γειτονιές του κέντρου της Αθήνας, είναι μία ολοκληρωμένη επιχείρηση.
TV News top issue these days is the pre-election propaganda concerning “illegal migration”. See video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AB4IpcpBHko
The Minister of Citizen Protection is planning to “clean” the city centre of the Greek capital from the immigrants and “host” them in the new detention centres he has announced to create in all over Greece in the near future.
Today he had a meeting with the Greek Police and announced massive sweep operations starting tomorrow. We already see a massive police presence in public space and daily arrest all over Athens. The question is, how can the police raids we already observe every day become more huge and worse?
A young sans-papiers collapsed when the people were trying to enter the aliens police
While an increase in the numbers of asylum recognition rate are proudly presented refugees have no access to asylum in Greece.
Continue reading ‘No access to asylum in Greece’
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.
by Enri Canaj and Γιάννης Παπαδόπουλος