Tag Archive for 'police violence'

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Senegalese street vendor died during police operation in Athens, by demotix

An immigrant from Senegal died falling from a height, on the rails of the subway in Thiseio station in central Athens, during an operation of Municipal Police to remove peddlers from tourist area.

A big operation of Municipal Police started on Friday afternoon on the touristic area of Thiseio, in central Athens, to remove immigrants from the streets, who work as peddlers to live. During this operation Cheikh Babacar Ndiaye a 37 years old immigrant from Senegal, was chased and he died falling from a height, on the rails of the subway in Thiseio station.1359782980-immigrant-dies-during-police-operation-in-athens_1765433 From the blood seen on the pictures possibly his death resulted from the fall.
Subway metro services were disrupted for at least two hours. First aid assistants removed the body of the immigrant from the rails. Meanwhile his friends gathered at the station, together with other people from Senegal.
Some of them mourned, but when they saw the stretcher with the dead body they began to shout and protest. Some of them they shouted that Police is racists. Riot police arrived immediately and attacked the gathered people, and cleared the area around the station. At the same moment of the attack the dead body of immigrant was moved to an ambulance and left the area, for an unknown and undeclared direction, in spite of the questions made ​​on this.

Source with foto reportage: demotix (in english)

The tourists held by Greek police as illegal migrants, By Chloe Hadjimatheou / BBC

Greek police have stepped up efforts to catch illegal immigrants in recent months, launching a new operation to check the papers of people who look foreign. But tourists have also been picked up in the sweeps – and at least two have been badly beaten.

When Korean backpacker Hyun Young Jung was stopped by a tall scruffy looking man speaking Greek on the street in central Athens he thought it might be some kind of scam, so he dismissed the man politely and continued on his way.
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A few moments later he was stopped again, this time by a man in uniform who asked for his documents. But as a hardened traveller he was cautious.
Continue reading ‘The tourists held by Greek police as illegal migrants, By Chloe Hadjimatheou / BBC’

Hellas pour nous – video

Le Réseau de Solidarité et d’Information pour l’Action Antifasciste et Antirépressive en Grèce présente une … (Télé-)Réalite:

L’Aube Dorée, sa promotion par les Médias, sa collaboration avec la police et la lutte anti-fasciste en Grèce.

http://vimeo.com/54319309#

Ministry investigates racist violence against migrants by Greek police

Internal Affairs is currently investigating a number of charges against law enforcement officers, who allegedly tortured migrants in 2012. The accused officers in many cases seem to be closely co-operating with fascists of Golden Dawn party. The criminal behaviour of the officers includes charges of insult, ill-treatment and theft and even torture. The public prosecutor has ordered to crackdown any relation between the police and golden dawn.

21/10/2012 – Municipal Theatre Pieraeus
According to to the complaint, police officer took her out of detention wards two prisoners, struck them with fists and kicks and put another prisoner to beats them. In response to the reaction of another prisoner to the event, the police officer took him out of the ward as well and bate him with punches in the face, while he was also routinely insulted them with racist expressions.
Continue reading ‘Ministry investigates racist violence against migrants by Greek police’

Racist Violence Recording Network Findings (1.1.2012-30.9.2012)

It is now commonly accepted that the previous months saw an immense increase in racially motivated violent attacks in Greece. Relevant reports in printed and electronic media reveal that racist attacks have become an almost daily occurrence. According to reports by migrant and refugee organizations, the number of known racist violence incidents does not represent the real extent of this phenomenon in the country.
Continue reading ‘Racist Violence Recording Network Findings (1.1.2012-30.9.2012)’

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 Guardian: Greek anti-fascist protesters ‘tortured by police’ after Golden Dawn clash Inbox x

Fifteen people arrested in Athens says they were subjected to what their lawyer describes as an Abu Ghraib-style humiliation

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/

Fifteen anti-fascist protesters arrested in Athens during a clash with supporters of the neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn have said they were tortured in the Attica General Police Directorate (GADA) – the Athens equivalent of Scotland Yard – and subjected to what their lawyer describes as an Abu Ghraib-style humiliation.

Members of a second group of 25 who were arrested after demonstrating in support of their fellow anti-fascists the next day said they were beaten and made to strip naked and bend over in front of officers and other protesters inside the same police station.

A protester shows his injuries

Several of the protesters arrested after the first demonstration on Sunday 30 September told the Guardian they were slapped and hit by a police officer while five or six others watched, were spat on and “used as ashtrays” because they “stank”, and were kept awake all night with torches and lasers being shone in their eyes.

Bruising on the protester’s leg


Some said they were burned on the arms with a cigarette lighter, and they said police officers videoed them on their mobile phones and threatened to post the pictures on the internet and give their home addresses to Golden Dawn, which has a track record of political violence.

Golden Dawn’s popularity has surged since the June election, when it won 18 seats in parliament; it recently came third in several opinion polls, behind the conservative New Democracy and the leftwing party Syriza.

Last month the Guardian reported that victims of crime have been told by police officers to seek help from Golden Dawn, who then felt obliged to make donations to the group.

One of the two women among them said the officers used crude sexual insults and pulled her head back by the hair when she tried to avoid being filmed. The protesters said they were denied drinking water and access to lawyers for 19 hours. “We were so thirsty we drank water from the toilets,” she said.

One man with a bleeding head wound and a broken arm that he said had been sustained during his arrest alleged the police continued to beat him in GADA and refused him medical treatment until the next morning. Another said the police forced his legs apart and kicked him in the testicles during the arrest.

“They spat on me and said we would die like our grandfathers in the civil war,” he said.

A third said he was hit on the spine with a Taser as he tried to run away; the burn mark is still visible. “It’s like an electric shock,” he said. “My legs were paralysed for a few minutes and I fell. They handcuffed me behind my back and started hitting and kicking me in the ribs and the head. Then they told me to stand up, but I couldn’t, so they pulled me up by the chain while standing on my shin. They kept kicking and punching me for five blocks to the patrol car.”

The protesters asked that their names not be published, for fear of reprisals from the police or Golden Dawn.

A second group of protesters also said they were “tortured” at GADA. “We all had to go past an officer who made us strip naked in the corridor, bend over and open our back passage in front of everyone else who was there,” one of them told the Guardian. “He did whatever he wanted with us – slapped us, hit us, told us not to look at him, not to sit cross-legged. Other officers who came by did nothing.

“All we could do was look at each other out of the corners of our eyes to give each other courage. He had us there for more than two hours. He would take phone calls on his mobile and say, ‘I’m at work and I’m fucking them, I’m fucking them up well’. In the end only four of us were charged, with resisting arrest. It was a day out of the past, out of the colonels’ junta.”

In response to the allegations, Christos Manouras, press spokesman for the Hellenic police, said: “There was no use of force by police officers against anyone in GADA. The Greek police examine and investigate in depth every single report regarding the use of violence by police officers; if there are any responsibilities arising, the police take the imposed disciplinary action against the officers responsible. There is no doubt that the Greek police always respect human rights and don’t use violence.”

Sunday’s protest was called after a Tanzanian community centre was vandalised by a group of 80-100 people in a central Athens neighbourhood near Aghios Panteleimon, a stronghold of Golden Dawn where there have been many violent attacks on immigrants.

According to protesters, about 150 people rode through the neighbourhood on motorcycles handing out leaflets. They said the front of the parade encountered two or three men in black Golden Dawn T-shirts, and a fight broke out. A large number of police immediately swooped on them from the surrounding streets.

According to Manouras: “During the motorcycle protest there were clashes between demonstrators and local residents. The police intervened to prevent the situation from deteriorating and restore public order. There might have been some minor injuries, during the clashes between residents, protesters and police.”

Marina Daliani, a lawyer for one of the Athens 15, said they had been charged with “disturbing the peace with covered faces” (because they were wearing motorcycle helmets), and with grievous bodily harm against two people. But, she said, no evidence of such harm had so far been submitted. They have now been released on bail of €3,000 (£2,400) each.

According to Charis Ladis, a lawyer for another of the protesters, the sustained mistreatment of Greeks in police custody has been rare until this year: “This case shows that a page has been turned. Until now there was an assumption that someone who was arrested, even violently, would be safe in custody. But these young people have all said they lived through an interminable dark night.

Dimitris Katsaris, a lawyer for four of the protesters, said his clients had suffered Abu Ghraib-style humiliation, referring to the detention centre where Iraqi detainees were tortured by US soldiers during the Iraq war. “This is not just a case of police brutality of the kind you hear about now and then in every European country. This is happening daily. We have the pictures, we have the evidence of what happens to people getting arrested protesting against the rise of the neo-Nazi party in Greece. This is the new face of the police, with the collaboration of the justice system.”

One of the arrested protesters, a quiet man in his 30s standing by himself, said: “Journalists here don’t report these things. You have to tell them what’s happening here, in this country that suffered so much from Nazism. No one will pay attention unless you report these things abroad.”

New report on the systematic ill-treatment by law enforcement officers in Patras

On June 15, 2012 PRO ASYL together with the Greek Council for Refugees published a report on the systematic ill-treatment of refugees and migrants by law enforcement officers in Patras.

download the report here

May 9: Police and Nazis in joint operation against migrant traders and anarchists in central Athens, in broad daylight

May 9: Police and Nazis in joint operation against migrant traders and anarchists in central Athens, in broad daylight
On May 9, 2012, only days after the election day in which 1 in 2 police voted Nazi, the two conducted a joint operation against the migrant street traders around the Athens School of Economics (ASOEE) and the anarchists who joined in their support. Skirmishes of this kind have been taking place for a while now, with riot police attempting to enforce a dogma of ‘zero tolerance’ and a ‘clean Athens’, in a discourse echoing that of the Golden Dawn (the Nazi party) and yet enforced by ‘socialist’ ministers Chrisochoidis (Public Order) and Loverdos (Health).

On Wednesday’s operation the police openly co-operated with members of the Nazi group Golden Dawn. The two have cooperated many times in the past, whether openly or in disguise. In the videos and photos below members of the GD chant ‘Greece belongs to the Greeks’, sway crow-bars and throw stones to the anarchists who chant ‘the tin-cans have yet to rot’, a reference to the execution (even slaying with tin-cans) of members of the Nazi-collaborating Security Battalions by partisans of EAM-ELAS in September 1944, following the battle between them in the town of Meligalas, SW Peloponnese.

by Occupied london

Migrants attacked and beaten by police in Kipseli, Athens

On May 3, 2012 around 18:30 a police patrol walking along the pedestrian in Fokionos Negri in Kipseli, Athens headed towards a group of three migrants sitting and talking on the square. The officers asked the migrants to follow them into a calm side street where they beat the up. They never asked to control their papers.
One Palestinian migrant was hurt so badly that he fainted. One of his friends could escape; the other is not severely injured. The Palestinian 19-year-old was transferred to a hospital at 20. As eye witnesses reported the officers had been directed by a well-known member of the far right party golden dawn to the migrants.

Squat ESIEA Kipseli