Human Rights Watch says: Comprehensive Action Needed to Tackle Wave of Racist Violence
DECEMBER 12, 2011
The prosecution of this vicious attack sends an important message, but it is the tip of the iceberg. If the authorities responded properly to racist violence, this trial would be one of many instead of a rarity.
Judith Sunderland, senior Western Europe researcher
Link (english)
Continue reading ‘Greece: Rare Hate Crime Trial Opens’
Two refugee boats that had departed from the Greek coast towards Italy were saved on monday by the Italian Coast Guard. The approx. 80 refugees were mainly from Afghanistan. They had been one week on the sea. Most of them were dehydrated, without food and water when they were found.
50 Syrian sans-papiers who had been arrested in Crete and are currently detained in the police station of the islands city Iraklio started a hungerstrike on the 3rd of December protesting against the inhuman and degrading detention conditions. Three of them had to be transferred already to hospital. According to the detainees they suffer from hunger, lacking medication, they have no right to go outside even for using the toilette. Reportedly, they have become victims of police violence.
The Greek police arrested a refugee who is main witness of a murder case, where a coast guard officer from Igoumenitsa is being accused of murdering another refugee.
Sali is a Kurdish Refugee with serious health problems (he has only one lung) and he is the main witness for a murder case, where Greek coast guard shot Arivan, another migrant, to death in the port city of Igoumenitsa. He has to participate in the court case as witness on the 16th of December. Anyway, he was arrested on the 2nd of December in Crete. Originally the police was called to his place by neighbours for some small argument, but when they found the call to the court in his flat which clearly says that he is a witness against the coast guard he was immediately arrested, badly beaten and brought to the public prosecutor who ordered an administrative deportation for Sali. This police action was clearly a revenge. Sali was released on the 3rd, while his brother and another sans-papiers, both arrested together with Sali, remained in prison with the aim of their deportation.
Sources:
Indymedia Athens in August 2011 (in greek)
Indymedia Athens August 2011 (in greek)
Indemedia Athens December 2011 (in greek)
A charter plane carrying 33 Pakistani and 43 Afghani nationals left Athens for Lahore and Kabul, police said on Thursday (December 1, 2011), noting that deportation orders had been issued for the immigrants.
A similar deportation took place on November, 10, 2011.
A 16-year-old boy from Syria, trying to enter Greece from Turkey, lost his life in a police pursuit in the border region of Evros on Thursday, December 1, 2011. The boy was found dead when the vehicle driven by a smuggler lost control and was overturned in the area of Makri, Evros.
The incident happened when Greek border policemen and officials of FRONTEX tried to immobilize two vehicles carrying sans papiers immigrants, moving on Egnatia Odos towards the city of Komotini. The smugglers speeded up and managed to escape.
After a while there was a second attempt by the police to stop the vehicles, at the Makri junction. One of the vehicles crashed, while the second managed to escape. In the vehicle, policemen found a 36-year-old smuggler, two injured immigrants and the dead 16-year-old boy from Syria.
The new port in Patras has attracted sans-papier who were trying to move on to Italy and were living already in Patras to move their provisory housing closer to it. The “migration map” in town has changed together with the port of Patras. Now, the new housing areas for sans-papiers near to the new port become the battlefield where the police and other anti-immigrant groups repress and attack them. They beat them, they burn their belongings – clothes and blankets, they take away their temporary residence permits without any reason and they expulse them from the ruins where they found provisory shelter under humiliating living conditions.
A local TV-Channel that had been taking an anti-immigrant position since the early years of Patras as transit hub for migrants reported about one of the new shelters of sans-papiers in Patras. The propaganda made is overestimating the numbers of sans-papiers in town and creating a new target by showing one specific place of shelter.
The sans-papiers in Patras fall victim to racism and police violence on a daily basis. They suffer from cold and rain being homeless. There is a need in creating sustainable and human solutions instead of targeting and punishing the sans-papiers in town.
The bodies of two immigrants were discovered yesterday in Peplo area – one on the bank of the Evros river and the other in a rural area of Thymaria village near the town of Alexandroupolis.
According to the announcement of the General Police Department of Eastern Macedonia – Thrace, the two young men, of afro-asian origin and chinese origin, tried to cross the Evros River in order to enter Greece from Turkey.
The first one was probably swept away by the rushing waters and drown – the second died due to freezing weather.
While improvements in the asylum system are very few, deportations and programs of voluntary return are strengthened. On the 21st of November the Greek Citizens Protection Ministry announced that another deportation-Charter has been completed for 66 Afghans from Athens airport. From the beginning of the year another nine flights have deported refugees to their countries of origin. All of them are financed by the European Return Funds.
In total forcedly and voluntary returns have included 2.412 persons this year. Additionally, 1.097 persons have been returned by IOM voluntary return programs.
