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By Ramyar Hassani:
Being an undocumented migrant in Greece involves the risk of any kind of violent attack, arbitrary imprisonment in detention centers for an indefinite period without access to basic needs – or even worse situations before reaching the country, such as being stripped naked at sea and pushed back towards Turkey.
Obviously the Golden Dawn Neo-Nazi movement plays a key role in spreading its message of hatred and violence throughout the country against specific groups, especially migrants and other minority groups such as the LGBT community as one of their MPs confirmed in his interview a few days ago with the Australian 60 Minutes program.
If you land safely, there is a very long walk ahead
The problem is not only in the cities but even in the seas while the migrants try to get into Greece – or better to say get into the European Union. In my conversations with different activists and migrants I heard too many sad stories of what happened in the seas such as Greek coastal guards nailing holes in the boats of migrants, stripping them naked and pushing the boats back into Turkish waters – and also the announcements that any Greek volunteer who helps migrant new arrivals will be breaking the law. The only people in Mitilini island, belonging to Lesvos region, who can help the migrants with some essential basic aid such as food and clothes are some volunteers from the church. Normally migrants have to walk for 10-11 hours to get to a place – such as the church I have visited in Kalloni – for some food and clothes, which is not easy to do, walking in the winter or even in the summer when they are soaking wet and exhausted with torn and destroyed shoes.
Among these migrants there are people from vulnerable groups, for instance unaccompanied minors, women and people with special needs. When they get arrested the categorization process does not take place properly and unaccompanied minors can be imprisoned in the same place as adult men or the people with special needs won’t get access to proper treatment. There are about 10,000 unaccompanied minors all over Greece, according to the info I found out during our meeting with Marianella, the Greek activist with a NGO called Praksis. Unfortunately one of the other difficulties that unaccompanied minors face is deportation if they do not apply for asylum.
Of course, the dilemmas and difficulties are not only for migrants. The Greek people themselves are suffering a lot as well. I was looking at one of the booklets I got in Greece. It is awash with tragic stories and unbelievable statistics related to the economic crisis: for instance 9 out of 10 have lost most of their incomes, 80% have had to cutback on basic food items, 60% live on savings, 83% have cut back on home heating and so on … But the point with the vulnerable groups among migrants is that EU has assigned financial aid to Greece to accommodate the migrants and provide them with very basic needs such as food.
Apparently enforcing the warrants and law is the responsibility of police and the other related departments while the decision-making is the duty of judicial sector, but sometimes the police do both. There have been people kept in temporary detention rooms in local police stations for more than a few months without proper accommodation.
Back to the issues related to the sea and human traffickers, I have heard many stories of people who are under arrest awaiting trial on the charge of human trafficking as boat facilitators. The story is that a smuggler never pilots a boat but instead finds a migrant in the group who can do this, offering him a free trip in return. But if the boat is stopped by the coast guards the facilitator will be arrested as a human trafficker and sentenced to about one year’s imprisonment for each migrant in the boat. One of the upcoming trials will be an Afghan guy whose wife, Pashtun, and kids I met in a camp provided by a group of volunteer activists in Mitilini called Village of All Together.
Pashtun and her children; Photo – Tim Nafziger
Jumping to the topic of detention centers, undocumented migrants can be detained for a period of 18 months without considering basic human rights. Greece gets 25 euros per day per migrant from the EU and, with almost 7500 detainees currently in the detention centers, the budget will be approximately 68 million euros a year. The migrants in these detention centers get just 5 euros per day; a sandwich costs about 3 euros which means having one meal and forgetting about the next one. Almost 80 per cent of the money Greece gets per detainee is kept by the government, so maybe that’s why arresting undocumented migrants and putting them in detention centers for such a long period is taking place so often. And, by the way, when unable to deport those who had been detained for the maximum 18 months, the government has simply created a legal framework to extend the detention by another 18 months.
I met a migrant who had various difficulties in Iran, even with his own community, because of his beliefs and had left Iran to seek a better life in the paradise of Europe but, as soon as he got into Greece he was detained for almost 10 months and he had very tough time in the detention centers. ”It was very hard, I had very tough moments while I was in detention center”, he was sharing with me while shivering as he remembered the horrific days he spent under arrest. Farid* was fairly messed up mentaly and severly depressed, isolated and not willing to socialise much. Now at least he has got a three month’s resident card while his asylum application is being processed.
Luckily migrants in Greece are in touch with Greek people who are mostly people with a sense of hospitality and solidarity. In my time in Greece it was so obvious that a big group of Greek people have good relationships with migrants and welcoming them even though state policies are not in the same direction. Nonetheless the impact of some small groups such as Golden Dawn is given more publicity as, obviously, their hatred and speeches supporting violence, are more visible and demand media attention.
The economic crisis has brought many and various types of dilemmas to Greek people, affected their daily life and caused human rights violations. For instance, those Greeks who work in some sectors do not get benefits from the welfare system and, if they oppose the violation of their rights, they lose their job because there are so many jobless people waiting in the queue. I have heard stories of Greek people working for 3 Euros per hour almost 12 hours a day in hard physical jobs in cafes, bars, shops and so on. Health insurance is another issue Greeks are dealing with and in some cases they get health insurance only after a long while working.
Switching back into the migrants’ issues, one of the common questions among migrants in different countries relates to the type of resident’s card or any kind of ID that they get. In my conversations with Hamid, an Afghan refugee I got the chance to see the old version of refugees’ ID in Greece. This old version was a six-months-valid card which could be renewed and gave the opportunity to the holder to benifit in a few ways such as openning bank account, having a Visa debit card, registering for marriage with a Greek citizen or resident, purchasing and registering a land property under the name of the holder, getting a work permit and applying for a driving license. However, the new version is a three-months-valid white color ID card with none of these benefits.
Whenever human rights issues pop up in conversations among European and American-based activists, more lilkely only a few places in the world will be mentioned, for instance Palestine and some countries in Africa but people rarely happen to talk about somewhere in Europe such as Greece and so the problem remains almost invisible.
At the last day of my trip on the CPT (Christian Peacemakers Teams) delegation, I got into the tram towards the airport and in about half an hour I heard the message of ”Take care of your personal belongings” maybe 20 times which spread anxiety among the passengers. Well, I was able to get my flight out, but the struggle is still ongoing for too many human beings in that beautiful piece of the world.
* Farid is not his real name.
Twitter: @RamyarHassani
Email: Ramyar.hassani@gmail.com
