Tag Archive for 'korinthos'

“Confined like animals”, no water or heating: so is the Greek Guantanamo / Delta World about Corinth

Cramped, without warm clothes, no hot water, no heating, in appalling hygiene conditions, malnourished, without barely access to medicines, in a legal situation uncertain and subject to harassment and occasional beatings.

They are the conditions in which Greece maintains several thousand immigrants and undocumented refugees, in the so-called”detention for foreigners”, which are so degrading to inmates of one of them, of Corinth, ironically call it with the same name of the notorious us base: Guantanamo.

“They kept us locked up like animals. We don’t have rights”, complains Ali Hasan, an Afghan fleeing from their country and who remains detained for two months along with 800 others in the center of Corinth, a former military barracks.

Continue reading ‘“Confined like animals”, no water or heating: so is the Greek Guantanamo / Delta World about Corinth’

Solidarity poster for the struggle of migrants in Corinth and Komotini detention centres

Solidarity poster for the detained migrants in Corinth and Komotini whose protests against imprisonment and detention conditions were violently cracked down by riot police with tear gas and beatings. In Corinth 24 of the protesters and in Komotini 55 of them were criminalised for their protests and brought to the court.

– This poster is spread in Patras by the Initiative against the statal, social and civil fascism.

2012: Solidarity poster (in greek)

Hunger strike in Corinth Detention Centre – Riot police and tear gas…..

Today on 18th of November 2012 the detainees of Corinth detention centre started a hungerstrike to protest against the long detention periods (some of them are already more then three months detained) and against the degrading detention conditions (see: older post in infomobile).
Continue reading ‘Hunger strike in Corinth Detention Centre – Riot police and tear gas…..’

Protest at the detention centre in Corinth reveals inhuman and degrading detention conditions

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!

best news (in greek)

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)

The new detention regime in Greece

Instead of rights protection of refugees and migrants Greece is investing in a new detention regime. See some of the new detention centers.

Amigdaleza detention center

The greek government is constructing a new detention landscape since the opening of the detention centre of Amigdaleza near by Athens. Only recently, in August 2012, a massive police lead pogrom (in Athens but also Korinth and elsewhere) resulted in the arrest of more than 2.500 migrants and refugees.

Amigdaleza detention center

Due to the lack of detention capacities the government turned to ad hoc solutions turning i.e. former police academies in Xanthi and Komotini or military camps in Korinth into provisory detention camps. Continue reading ‘The new detention regime in Greece’

UPDATE on racist attack in Corinth: Suspect detained

link: noticia desde grecia

TEXT: ANDRÉS MOURENZA // PHOTO: ALESSANDRO PENSO
Finally, on Monday morning (2 days after the incident) the suspect of the racist attack to migrants in Corinth was arrested by the police. Also one of the two hospitalized migrants was able to leave the medical premises and return to the train station, with the other migrants. Nabi is still in hospital, well treated, and although with difficulties, he is recovering as photographers Alessandro Penso and Giorgos Moutafis were able to confirm this Monday after visiting him. Also journalist Antonio Cuesta visited the migrants at the train station this Monday.
Continue reading ‘UPDATE on racist attack in Corinth: Suspect detained’

Racist attack in Korinthos/ Greece: 3 wounded, 2 disappeared

Posted on febrero 19, 2012 in noticias de grecia
TEXT: ANDRÉS MOURENZA // PHOTO: ALESSANDRO PENSO

Nabi, a 20-years old Moroccan, is lying on the ground. He looks dead.
Twenty minutes earlier we were sitting in the recovered-from-garbage chairs and furniture, smoking cigarettes and chatting in one of the abandoned wagons of the old train station of Corinth (Greece). Nabi lives there with about other 50 migrants from Afghanistan, Iraq, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Yemen. Nasir—a polyglot, art lover Afghan interpreter—asks Nabi, another art lover, to draw something. The young Moroccan sketches the boat of the Hellenic Seaways moored just 200 meters down in the bay. They all are waiting the lucky day in which they will be able to catch the ferry; climbing to it, or hidden in the load of the trucks that the boat carries to Italy. And then… go further North in search for a job, a future, a safe and normal life. Crisis-hit Greece has become a nightmare for them. There is not the slightest possibility for work in a country with rocketing unemployment figures. Greeks don’t want them, neither they want to stay in Greece, but they are stuck here because European Union treaties allow third countries to return them to the state where they first entered the EU. And Greece has been the gate to Europe in the last years for 90 % of migrants.
Now, Nabi is lying on the ground.
Everything happened so quickly: a group of 4 or 5 locals drive their two cars to the old train station claiming that a migrant has stolen some money at the open air market this Saturday morning. They hit the first migrant they find, an old man cooking in an improvised fireplace. The locals try to do the same with other migrants, but the cries raise the alarm and more migrants appear from the old wagons with sticks and stones to expel the assailants. The locals go back to their cars, although one stops and punches another migrant in the face, just before getting in his black Renault Megane. The migrants try to stop the black Renault but the driver makes a U-turn knocking down a migrant, a 35-years old Algerian. He stops the car, its back aiming at us, and hits the gas at full speed in reverse gear. I jump on a small wall, as does the photographer Alessandro Penso and some migrants, to avoid being knocked down by the black car. Others run, but Nabi cannot beat the speed of the vehicle and gets hit. His body flies some meters away in front of our astonished eyes. The insane driver hits the gas and escapes leaving Nabi lying on the ground.
We all run to check his health. He has been badly hit, bleeding his face, but he is alive (later we will know that he got some bones broken). The police arrive and later the ambulance, considerably late since there is no ambulance driver working that day in Corinth (because of the austerity measures cuts) and has to come from a neighboring town
The migrants are in anger and despair. Some cry and claim that two of their Algerian friends –one about 50-years old named Ibrahim and the other a 20 years-old named Hassan- have been kidnapped and put into the first car. They call them on their cell phones, but nobody answers.
“This people come every now and then, with truncheons and sticks. If they find someone alone they beat him till he is almost dying,” denounces a 30-years old Tunisian, too afraid to give his name. “We don’t do anything wrong, we even eat from what we find in between the rubbish not to mess with the local people,” says Abduljalil: “We are only waiting here for the good weather to be able to escape from this country.” “Ten days ago –explains Ahmed, an Algerian- they came and fired me with a plastic-bullet gun. They were driving a white four-wheel drive Toyota”. However, these migrants cannot go to the police station.
“If they come to report something, I have to arrest them as they are living here illegally. I am sorry, but that is the law”, excuses himself a police inspectors of Corinth. Even now when a group of journalists –Italian photographer Alessandro Penso, Greek photographer Giorgos Moutafis, Spanish journalist Antonio Cuesta and myself- have witnessed the attack, the police officers try to downplay the incident.
-“You know… the car owner has some psychiatric problems. We have got him before. He has been at the hospital”, says the police inspector.
-“Maybe… but do his friends also have mental problems?”–we ask him.
-“This morning, the migrants robbed some money in the market…”- justifies the inspector.
-“But even if that happened, this does not give them the right to go and try to kill the migrants” –I complain.
-“Yes, that is your opinion”- says the inspector.
-“No, officer, that is not my opinion. That is the law.”
This happened today, February 18th 2012 in Corinth, Greece at about 3.45 p.m.
UPDATE: At 10.00 pm of Saturday, we had news about any suspect arrest had been made