The exploitation and violence of agricultural farmers in Manolada against their migrant workers continues. On May 12, 2012 the workers of the strawberry harvest started a strike demanding higher wages now. The police supports the farmers with sweep operations arresting migrants in the area. On May 16, 2012, the third day of the workers strike the protests resulted again in the arrest of about 10 workers – mainly migrants.
information with, about and for refugees in Greece
Tag Archive for 'police raids'
The government continues with its’ pre-election campaign against migrants and refugees. Publicised sweep operations and a medial discourse on “illegal migrants as hygiene bomb” have built the grounds for a racist agenda. These racist measures and medial games are used as much as the opening of the new detention centre near by Athens to win votes for the elections.
Continue reading ‘Racist discourse and police operations go on in Athens’ centre’
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.
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:
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?
In the last months police sweep operations take place every day: on the streets and public squares, in the homes of refugees and wherever they stay homeless.
The police invades regularly the private space of people, proceeding to arrests and sometimes beating people or also stealing their properties. 
Today in one more sweep operation, they arrested the 60-70 homeless refugees staying in the old fabric Columbia. Among the homeless are asylum seekers and vulnerable persons such as mentally sick. Instead of providing them with reception conditions according to law and instead of protecting the vulnerable the only answer to this issue by the government remains to arrest them.
Citizen Protection Minister Papoutsis said that 25.000 migrants have been returned either by force or voluntarily within the last months from Greece to their home countries. The last deportation flight took place on thursday of January 19. Among the 56 deported were: 2 Egyptians, 23 Bangladeshi, 29 Chinese, one Pakistani and one Indian. The deportations take place from Athens airport.
Police raids and sweep operations have become harsher and more frequent. According to Papoutsis the Greek police controls daily an average of 400 migrants.
Meanwhile the construction of the anti-migratory “wall of shame” fence in Evros is being proceeded. The construction is planned to be finished in the next 5 months.
While migration policy is harshening, the racist pogrom continues unhindered in the centre of Athens. Daily migrants get beaten, stabbed and insulted in the areas close to Attiki and St. Panteleimon Church without any reaction from the police. Today an African migrant was stabbed nearby Panteleimon Church. The police reacted by asking the stabbed who was lying on the ground bleeding for his papers.
On January 5, 2012 in the early morning hours the police raided the old redundant textile factory of Peiraiki Patraiki where a group of sans-papiers has found a provisory refuge. 40-50 persons were arrested, clothes and other personal belongings were burned and Red Cards (temporary residence permits for asylum seekers) torn apart.
People from Afghanistan, Sudan, Eritrea, Morocco, Algeria, Greece and many other countries demonstrate today against the police repression in Patras. Reason for the protest is the recent accident of a 16-year-old Afghan who while trying to escape the police fell of a building. He is still severely injured in the hospital.
Stop police assaulting us, we have to live in security, we need human rights!
Such kind of “accidents” are no exception in Patras the main transit port city for sans-papiers who try to leave Greece. Sans-papiers have to confront daily police and coast guard brutality, police raids and traffic accidents while trying to escape the police forces who chase them down, arrest, beat and arrest them.
read a recent article about the situation in Patras (in french)
Dans l’enfer des immigrants clandestins, by Jean-Simon Gagné
In the early morning of December 20, 2011 the police stormed the building of a former fabric where a couple of Afghans have set up their provisory shelter. Most of them are underage. In this atmosphere of panic one of the minors while trying to escape the police raid fell of the second floor of the building. He was severely injured.
The other Afghan sans-papiers later told to the Solidarity Movement for Migrants and Refugees of Patras, that the police saw the young boy falling but did not call an ambulance or react in any other supportive manner.
One of the Afghans called the ambulance. The hospital denied to send an ambulance in the beginning. In a second call he told the hospital that the boy was severely injured and might have even died. Then an ambulance came and brought him to St. Andreas Hospital of Patras.
Later in the evening the Solidarity group visited the boy in the hospital and talked to the doctors. The boy had been operated in order to remove blood from the inner of his head. The boy was in intensive care and in coma being held alive with machines.
Nobody knows if things would have been better if he would have been transferred sooner to the hospital. Anyway, both police who did not help while witnessing the accident, and the hospital who only reacted in a second stance are unacceptable. Lets hope that the young Afghan will pay with his life.
Press Release of the Solidarity Group of Patras
Salata TV (news in greek)
Clandestina
- First migrant detention center opens despite protestsA detention center for undocumented immigrants in Amygdaleza, northwest of Athens, started operating on Sunday, despite vehement protests by local residents and rights groups, with the transfer of dozens of migrants detained over the past few days in police sweeps in central Athens. Police said they transfered a group of 56 migrants in the […]
Group of Lawyers – Athens
- Joint call to protest on Friday 30 March 2012For the sixth consecutive week, the undersigning entities and organisations hereby issue an open invitation to attend our solidarity protest outside the Attica Aliens Directorate at Petrou Ralli, from Friday evening, 30 March 2012 until dawn Saturday, 31 March 2012 (05:00- 06:00 am). The police authorities in Attica- following their usual practice of the pas […]
the border is the problem
- “Walls of Shame”Accounts from the Inside: The Detention Centres of Evros new report by Pro Asyl Obviously, Europe’s main concern is the creation of »walls« in order to hinder or to prevent the access to its territory. Physical walls like the fence, the moat and border controls in Evros but also invisible walls that are constituted by […]