Tag Archive for 'police raids'

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Greek “Hospitality”: 30 new huge detention centres and massive police raids

Published on March 28, 2012 in Uncategorized. Closed Tags: , , , , , .

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?

see in Greek

Police raids in Athens continue: Today in the old fabric of Columbia

Published on January 27, 2012 in Uncategorized. Closed Tags: , , , , .

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.

25.000 thousand migrants deported in the last months while the racist pogrom continues

Published on January 21, 2012 in Uncategorized. Closed Tags: , , , , , , , , .

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.

Police raid in the old redundant textile factory of Peiraiki Patraiki

Published on January 5, 2012 in Uncategorized. Closed Tags: , , , , , .


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.

Indymedia Athens

December 23, 2011: Migrants and Greeks demonstrate together in Patras against police repression

Published on December 23, 2011 in Uncategorized. Closed Tags: , , , , , , , , .

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

Afghan Minor severely injured in Patras

Published on December 21, 2011 in Uncategorized. Closed Tags: , , , , , , , , .

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)

Patras: Migrants suffer from Repression and merely survive in the cold of the winter

Published on November 25, 2011 in Uncategorized. Closed Tags: , , , , , , .

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.

Press Release: Solidarity group Patras, 27th of September 2011

Published on September 28, 2011 in Uncategorized. Closed Tags: , , , , , , , .

Against the repressive measures of the authorities who in the most violent way show their “law and order” approach towards the issue of migration in Patras:

Press Release by the solidarity group in Patras (in English)

The police reacted to the denouncing press release by stating that if there were incidents of police violence against migrants then the solidarity group should file charges against them at the public prosecutor. Meanwhile the authorities are well aware of how difficult this is. However, only documented migrants can file charges while most of the refugees and migrants in Patras are in transit and without legal residence permits. The few among them with valid papers are often too afraid of taking legal measures against the authorities. Another difficulty arises from the long duration of judicial proceedings. Most of the migrant victims and witnesses leave Greece before the date of the court case is reached.

see also news (in Greek)

Fire in refugees’ home in patras

Published on September 12, 2011 in Uncategorized. Closed Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

Around the 8th of September unknown people set fire on a barack where asylum seekers were temporarily living in the transit-port of Patras.

As A., an Eritrean refugee reported:

I have been homeless in Athens. I have been homeless in Patras. I have been homeless in Igoumenitsa. I applied for asylum. Now I am again homeless in Patras. I live on the beach and in ruins. Police is hunting us every day.
A few days ago somebody lit fire on the ruin we were living in. I think it was the racists. Everything burned. All our belongings. My AFM (tax number), my work permit, my clothes. Everything. I am left now only with my Pink Card (asylum seekers temporary residence permit) but what is it worth? What can it do for me? I am still homeless and unprotected.

Transit in Patras


Following a number of police raids in the last months, currently, there are very few sans-papiers and asylum seekers left in Patras. The ones who have remained suffer, as K. from Somalia tells us:

“I only stay here because I don’t have any other place to go! There is no chance to leave from here for Italy. Very very few manage. The new port is very dangerous. Police is hunting and beating us, they even have dogs. My Pink Card got tear up by my former employer who didn’t want to pay me for the work I did. Now it is almost one month that I am only with a copy of my Pink Card. They say, I cannot get a new one if I don’t have an address in Patras, but where should I get it from? Two days ago a police control arrested me. I asked them to go and catch the copy of my Pink Card, but they didn’t let me go. I was in prison for two days. I am understanding more and more about this country. Nothing good to tell!”

After the eviction of the mountain settlement in Igoumenitsa now refugees are threatened by police raids in Patras

Published on August 21, 2011 in Uncategorized. Closed Tags: , , , , , , .

Following the huge eviction of the jungles of Igoumenitsa at the 9th of June, Patras became the second war region in the governments cruel fight against the sans-papiers who are trying to leave the country. The government seems to set a clear sign that the ports of exit towards Italy are now a no-go for refugees and migrants. Will the Apartheid ruling Igoumenitsa come to Patras now? It seems so.

We have no place to stay anymore. We have to sleep at the seaside under the sky. The police is coming everyday to hunt us in order that we leave Patras. We have been hunted in Komunisia before. We have been hunted at the border,in Athens, at work… One by one we get crazy now. Some of us try to leave Greece back to Turkey. But they don´t let us go there too. They hunt us again and again. Now one of my friends got lost in Evros while he was trying to cross the river in the direction of Turkey. We believe he died. In one or two days we will be all crazy!

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