Greece blatantly violating rights of asylum seekers

Excerpt from Der Spiegel article: 'Greece Casting off Asylum Seekers'

Reports released this month by Greek and German refugee organisations suggest that the Greek coast guard in the Aegean Sea has been systematically maltreating and obstructing asylum seekers arriving on their shores.

Fact-finding missions conducted in the summer and October of 2007 by the German Working Group on Refugees, Pro Asyl, and the Greek Group of Lawyers for the Rights of Refugees and Migrants found that refugee seekers' boats, often barely afloat, are being forced out of Greece's territorial waters. Some passengers are being set ashore on uninhabited islands on the Turkish Greek border region, provided with no water or food.

The investigative missions visited three detention centers on Greek islands and found the conditions to be "degrading and inhuman." In one case, on the island of Chios, there were reports of electric shock treatments, mock executions and beatings.

In an independent report, the Greek branch of the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), described the detention center on Samos, an island less than two kilometers from the Turkish coast, as being "deplorable" and demanded that the government close it down. Fully 391 people were found living in a room designed for 120. The staff consisted of one doctor, one social worker and a caretaker.

The number of asylum seekers is up dramatically from last year. By September of this year, 3,549 people had been arrested while attempting to cross the border on Samos, up from 1,580 in 2006. Thirty-six had been reported drowned and 34 missing, the highest figures of their kind.

Many of the new arrivals are coming from war-torn Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia. They are often referred to in the media as "illegal immigrants" while in fact most have the right to seek asylum under the Geneva Convention.

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