A Big Fat Greek Mess

by Shahla

Refugees in Greece are in danger. Though the United Nations’ 1951 Refugee Convention grants asylum seekers protection, recent regulations and the Greek government’s bureaucracy are putting lives in jeopardy by illegally deporting refugees with pending asylum cases.

Greece’s long shorelines and eastern border with Turkey have made it a common entrance point for refugees fleeing Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan. On February 18, 2003, the European Union (EU), Iceland, and Norway adopted the Dublin II Regulation, allowing states to send asylum seekers back to their country of entrance and into the EU.

As a result, Greece has become flooded with asylum claims, with more than 20,000 new cases filed in 2007 and 2008 alone. Part-time asylum board hears only about 60 cases a week and grants less than one percent of applicants refugee status. Most recently, Greek President Karolos Papoulias made police officers responsible for interviewing asylum seekers, even though these officers have no training in asylum law.

Last October, the Norwegian Helsinki Committee, Norwegian Organizations for Asylum Seekers and Aitima, put together a magnificent report, Out the Back Door: The Dublin II Regulation and illegal deportations from Greece.  The report includes interviews with refugees who were illegally deported by Greek authorities. Here are excerpts from the report:

We were transported in a truck. We were three Iranians and the rest were Iraqis. In all, we were about 30 persons. They collected our cell phones and threw them in the river. There was a commander who beat us with a stick while we climbed into the truck. There were 7-10 persons who escorted us to the border with three or four cars. Two of them were commando soldiers, the others were in civilian clothes, but they carried automatic weapons. They used binoculars to look over to the Turkish border. When all was clear, they forced us to cross the border into Turkey.

Police in the Evros region systematically arrest migrants on Greek territory and detain them for a period of days without registering them. After rounding up a sufficient number of migrants, the police take them to the Evros River at nightfall and forcibly and secretly expel them to the Turkish side.

I didn’t apply for asylum because I heard from friends that Greece doesn’t grant asylum to refugees and doesn’t treat them well.

One night after dinner the policemen took 150 people and put us inside a police bus for detainees. There were many policemen carrying a stick and commando soldiers carrying machine guns. They told us not to look at them, to look down and not to talk. The bus took an unpaved road for about an hour, then stopped in a place with trees by the river. We got off. It was very cold and we didn’t have clothes to keep us warm. We were shivering. The policemen and the commandos made sure that nobody was at the other side of the river then started putting the detainees into a big wooden boat.

These people are in danger and, because Greece does not have the resources to review thousands of cases in their backlog, authorities are taking illegal measures.