Numbers and causes of migrant deaths in Fortress Europe

A tale of migration to the “free world”

This piece describes a generic journey that (mostly) young males from Afghanistan & NW Pakistan experience on their way to claiming asylum in the EU, and invariably Britain. The details of this blog piece have been taken from second-hand, research, listening to the stories that migrants in Calais have told me, as well as my own first-hand experience.

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The journey they face is little short of a hideous crime and should bluntly rip through our moral conscience. This blog piece tries to describe a generic journey from Afghanistan and NW Pakistan to Britain through the EU – a place that is constructed by NATO as a model for civilized society. The evidence for this blog is based on my time spent working and talking with migrants in Calais, and should therefore before regarded as just a snap shot of some of the stories that are forged along this truly treacherous path.

Read the entire post here. A larger version of the map above can be found here.

Thanks to Babi Badalov for the heads-up.

Published on 13. November 2009 at lesvos.antira.info

We have to sleep in 3 hour shifts

M. is an Afghan unaccompanied minor who was released from Pagani.
He was in the group of 130 refugees released the last day and who left for Athens with the boat and since then he is in Athens trying to survive. Actually M. like most other minors in Pagani,got released with a paper saying that he is staying in the villa Azadi the minors house in
Mytilini. But he has never been informed about this ,he has never been brought up to the villa and he doesn’t know his right to be protected as a Minor. Most minors that have been in Pagani the last two months have been release with this paper without having been informed about their right to be taken to the minors house.

We met in the centre of Athens . He came with a little Afghan boy of about 7 years with whose family they share a room. We sat in a coffee place and orders something to eat. M. eat very little and very slowly and explained to me that he had not eaten since two days and that when you have no money for food ,but you get food you have to be careful to eat little otherwise your stomach is hungry soon again because it got used to food. He also mentioned that he doesn’t go out from the place he stays,one room shared by 36 persons among them two families. They have to sleep in a 3 hours shifts on the mattresses. They are lucky that the family of one of them gives them shelter. Most others from Pagani are sleeping in the scare in Athens in the park. He doesn’t go out because when you are in the treats you all he time see people eating and drinking and this makes you even more hungry and thirsty. I asked him if he could speak about the situation after they came out of Pagani:

What happened when you arrived in Athens?

M: When we arrived we were 190 persons ,we went to the ministry and the ministry told us go to the gsr (Greek council of refugees) but gsr did not pay attention to us. After that we come to Attiki park and we pent two days there.

After those two days we find some relatives we are living together we are sleeping 36 persons, four families are with us and twelve boys, minors,like us.
All people from Pagani. All refugees.
We are just sitting after one, two days we are eating little bread. Its bad for people. That they pay not attention the government to us.

I told them in the GSR. I said they want to give us food? They said no!

We don’t have enough home to give you If you want you can only be in the Pagani. We said no! we don’t want to be in the Pagani! We want to live in the centre. Because of that we are here.

What do you think to do now?

I am thinking that after two days I want to left this place but I cant because I don’t have money I don’t have anything to go.

Where do you want to go?

I want to go to Germany,all the people want to go to Germany you ask them where you want to go all of them want to go to Germany. There was a family here they where deported from Austria they where deported. They where with us in the church . So one day we go to the church and eat something the other day we don’t go. Because the police is coming taking our papers,we have a lot of problems,they beat us.

You know their are places you can go to eat?

Yes! the church.But the police is beating us saying :go! its finished food! Its a lot of problem.

They beat us when we go for food!

The Greek government is not giving attention to any refugee. Some guys have been here 4 months 6 months. So they have red card. But the Greek government don’t give attention to them they just leave us like this and our families don’t know where we are, they are saying if we are alive or we are dead they don’t know. Its very  difficult.

A., also a unaccompanied minor in Greece is in Athens six  since  months, trying to get out of Greece. He is registered by the Greec police about five or six times now.

A. is trying since half a year ,M. just starts now, thousand others unaccompanied minors who should be protected and families, single men and women are only wishing to be able to leave Greece as soon as possible and to arrive in some european country where their rights being refugees are respected.

But Greece doesn’t let them go!!!!!

5 November 2009

EU plans ‘charter flights’ to deport illegal immigrants

Published: Wednesday 4 November 2009

EU leaders have for the first time asked for the creation of joint charter flights to deport illegal immigrants. These flights would be financed by Frontex, the European agency in charge of the EU’s external borders.

Background:

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has been calling for a European ‘Immigration Pact’ since his 2007 election campaign. Migration subsequently became one of the top priorities of France’s EU presidency during the six-month period from July to December 2008 (see EurActiv LinksDossier).

After several recent incidents in both countries (EurActiv 01/09/09), France and Italy sent a letter to the Swedish EU Presidency requesting a debate on immigration issues at the European Council in Brussels (29-30 October).

Frontex is an EU agency tasked with coordinating operational cooperation between member states in the field of border security. Its headquarters are based in Warsaw, Poland. Frontex became operational in 2005.

Last week, the twenty-seven EU heads of state and government called for “the enhancement of the operational capacities of Frontex” and asked for “an examination of the possibility of regular chartering – financed by Frontex – of joint return flights,” according to the summit conclusions .

This decision, the first of its kind at EU level, was taken ten days after the sending back of three Afghans to their home country caused political controversy in France. Paris forged an agreement with London to share a charter flight, as the UK was also seeking to expel illegal immigrants to Kabul.

The French government tried to play down the event, pointing out that no debate had taken place in the media in Britain, where the public accepts such flights. The French authorities claimed that the three Afghans were from Kabul, but the Afghan government said they came from a more dangerous part of the country and so should not have been sent back.

The Council conclusions asked for a “determined European response based on firmness, solidarity and shared responsibility”. Although this request is somewhat vague, the Commission should nevertheless table proposals in early 2010 examining the possibility of financing joint regular return flights via Frontex.

The Council also asked for “clear rules of engagement for joint operations at sea”. This issue is of particular importance for Turkey and Libya, in whose waters migrants from Central Asia and sub-Saharan Africa respectively are often found.

Positions:

After the summit, French President Nicolas Sarkozy declared: “Nobody could have imagined a few years ago that governments of left, right, South and North would agree on the principle that someone who does not respect the rules must be brought back home by plane, train or other means in a worthy manner. It represents considerable progress.”

Sarkozy said he wants the EU to go “further” and expressed his desire for the 27-member Union to “one day have its own border guards”.

French Immigration Minister Eric Besson described the proposal as “a decisive step towards building a true European border police”.

“States should find a balance between security and humanity,” wrote Jacques Barrot, European commissioner for justice, freedom and security, in Catholic newspaper La Croix. “Frontex can coordinate the returns, but we should above all take care that people are reintegrated in their country of origin.”

“We should look at the guarantees given to the deported immigrants,” French Socialist (S&D) MEP Sylvie Guillaume told EurActiv. “First of all, we need to be sure that the lives of the returned migrants are not in danger once they are back in their home country. Secondly, we should check that the immigrant has not asked for international protection. Thirdly, we should check that all the procedures are respected and that Frontex also respects the procedures enclosed in the European Pact on Immigration.”

Jean-Luc Bennahmias, vice-president of MoDem, the French centrist political party, denounced the idea as “outrageous”, arguing that “the European Union, as well as France, has a duty to welcome these people in great danger”.

“I really regret that the EU is working so hard on security measures while it is unable to find solutions to protect these people who are often lost on European territory and who are coming from war-torn countries,” lamented Pierre Henry, director-general of NGO France Terre d’Asile, on French radio station Europe 1.

Migreurop, an NGO bringing together European and African associations, denounced the EU’s “hypocrisy” on immigration and accused it of making its borders more dangerous by increasing checks.

“Rather than drawing the obvious consequences of the countless tragedies that today are part of everyday experience in migration to Europe, the European states are taking advantage of the situation to strengthen checks and thus make it more dangerous to cross borders,” complained Claire Rodier, an official for Migreurop in Brussels.

This is the text Oktay Durukan presented at the Public Event, Open Discussion in Thessaloniki: “People in mid-air: between deportation and asylum”.

Oktay Durukan from the Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly (HCA) in Istanbul, Turkey.

HCA is an Istanbul-based Turkish human rights organization, working on a diversity of issues. Since 2004, protection of refugees and vulnerable migrants in Turkey became one of our priority areas of activity. We run a relatively extensive, specialised program to provide free legal counselling and assistance to individuals who want to seek asylum protection in Turkey. We litigate to intervene in situations involving prolonged arbitrary detention and risk of refoulement. We also monitor state policies and practices, write reports on protection gaps. We organise trainings for lawyers and other professionals.

Who are asylum seekers present in Turkey

HCA: Currently there are about 19.000 refugees and asylum seekers registered with UNHCR in Turkey. About half of them are Iraqis, 25% Iranians, 17% Afghans and 7% Somalis, to name the largest populations. We have seen a sharp increase in the number of new asylum applications from ca. 5.000 in 2006 and 8.000 in 2007 to 13.000 in 2008.

This increase is largely due the growing numbers of Iraqis and Afghans who seek protection in Turkey.

While these are the figures relating to individuals who have actually entered the asylum system, we are extremely concerned that Turkey’s increasingly aggressive and effective interception and border control activities result in the denials of a significant number of refugees from accessing the asylum system.

Turkey: a “a country producing refugees”, “receiving country” or a “transit country”

In fact, Turkey is all of that, and that is the challenge. For the European public, Turkey is best known as a “country of origin” for migrants and refugees. Currently there are about 220.000 Turkish nationals worldwide, who either have some form of refugee status or waiting for a decision on their asylum applications. About 10.000 Turkish nationals seek asylum somewhere each year, with France, Germany and Italy among the leading countries of destination. I think these figures are a pretty good indication of Turkey’s continuing human rights failures.

At the same time, Turkey is a well-known major “corridor to Europe”, both for individuals who escape war and persecution and those who are displaced by extreme poverty and inequalities. Experts estimate the volume of these “mixed flows” over Turkey in hundreds of thousands each year. In our view, only a portion of the refugees who find their way to Turkey choose to apply for protection in Turkey or are given an opportunity to do so.

In this context, Turkey’s role as a “receiving country” becomes more and more critical, as it becomes more and more difficult for refugees to circumvent Europe’s formidable repertoire of migration control tools and policies, which sadly do not distinguish enough between those who have a legitimate need for international protection and those who left their countries for other reasons.

The main characteristics of the asylum system in Turkey

Turkey was one of the negotiators of the 1951 Convention, an original signatory. But it took advantage of a little-known caveat included in the Convention to adopt 1951 with a so-called “geographical limitation”, committing itself to provide protection only to those who were displaced “as a result of events in Europe”. This “geographical limitation” is still in place.

As a result, it is said that individuals who originate from Council of Europe member states are welcome to seek and obtain refugee protection in Turkey under the 1951 framework.

However, all the others – i.e. the so-called “non-Europeans”, which are the vast majority of people who seek asylum in Turkey – are not eligible to stay in Turkey long term as refugees. Instead, the Turkish Government offers them a very inadequate domestic protection status referred as “temporary asylum”, which allows them to stay in Turkey until the UNHCR can find a “durable solution” for them elsewhere. This means that UNHCR is expected to make an effort to resettle these individuals in third countries, which proves a challenging task for the agency.

This means that asylum seekers make two “parallel” applications. They apply to Turkish Government to get “temporary asylum” status. And they have to apply to UNHCR Turkey to get “refugee” status and resettlement assistance. The two determination procedures are based on the same eligibility criteria and generally harmonized, but not necessarily always so, which does occasionally lead to the refoulement of UNHCR-recognized refugees.

Asylum seekers are dispersed around the country in 30 so-called “satellite cities”, where they spend an average of 2-3 years pending determinations on their asylum request and resettlement proceedings. They are supposed to find their own accommodation on their own devices. They get very little assistance in terms of subsistence or healthcare. Legal employment is hardly a prospect, where many of them are forced into exploitative informal work arrangements, including sex work. On top of that they are expected to pay a so- called “residence fee” in order to get a residence permit. Turkey is a tough place to survive for a “temporary asylum seeker”.

The risk of refoulement in Turkey

There is an absolute risk. Our observation is that if a newly arrived asylum seeker  manages to find her way to UNHCR and register, generally speaking she will not  encounter problems registering a parallel “temporary asylum” request with the police.

Once she’s in the system, she’ll be relatively safe from being sent back. That is true for legal entrants as well as irregular arrivals, although we occasionally see UNHCR-  registered – even recognized – refugees fall through the cracks of the highly deficient Government procedure and find themselves at risk of being refouled.

The story is very different if you arrived irregularly and were intercepted by authorities  upon arrival, in the border region to the east or on your way to the west, or you were  arrested for irregular presence in one of the major cities, or apprehended while attempting  to cross to Greece by land or by sea. If you are caught before you had a chance to approach the UNHCR and enter the asylum system, the authorities will deny you access to the asylum procedure. They will simply refuse to process your asylum request.

Following a brief criminal procedure for illegal entry or attempted exit, you will find yourself locked up for deportation without being given an opportunity to argue your claims to be at risk of persecution.

In the rare case where you somehow manage to reach a legal assistance-provider and apply to domestic courts to challenge your deportation, the courts will fail to provide you a proper remedy. There’s a very good chance you shall be sent back to war or persecution.

In this context, the Strasbourg Court, the ECtHR is currently the only effective remedy  available to us to halt illegal deportations of individuals who express fear of persecution.

These arbitrary denials do not only mock Turkey’s international law obligations including those under ECHR, they are also in violation of domestic asylum rules. But this is not simply a matter of border control officials not doing what they are supposed to do. On  the contrary, our observation based on countless cases that came to our attention, and the knowledge we acquired over the course of our legal battles in refugee cases, is that this is a systematic policy instructed and endorsed by Turkey’s Ministry of Interior.

Another issue of serious concern to us in this connection regards the way in which these illegal deportations are carried out. To give you just one example, last year in April, in a highly publicised case, 18 Syrian and Iranian nationals, including 5 UNHCR-recognized refugees, were forced to swim across an unpatrolled stretch of the river that separates Turkey and Iraq. This is an instance of unilateral, “black” deportation of people to a third country they have no relation to. 4 of them drowned, including one of the UNHCR- recognized Iranians. UNHCR condemned the incident in a press release, based on testimony provided by survivors. To date, there has not been a serious investigation on the incident.

The EU integration process and its effect on Turkish asylum and migration policies

The EU accession agenda is the single most important driving force shaping the  direction of Turkey’s policies and practice in the area of asylum and migration. In 2005, the  Government adopted a comprehensive National Action Plan, and pledged to undertake a  series of measures to align asylum & migration policies and practice with EU standards,  including administrative and technical capacity building, training of staff and changes in  legislation. Currently, preparations are underway for a comprehensive asylum law to  replace the existing framework, which is drastically inadequate. At the same time, there  are two ongoing twinning projects for the establishment of six large-scale regional

“Reception Centers for Asylum Seekers” and two more “Removal Centers”, using mainly European money. On the critical  issue of lifting the “geographical  limitation”, the Government emphasises “burden sharing” as a precondition and so far refrains from making a concrete time frame commitment.

While the EU-accession related reform process presents an opportunity for Turkey to improve its deficient asylum system and raise standards, we share the serious concerns of  our ECRE partners regarding the direction of EU-level policies in this area, frommatters related to the operation of Frontex, failures of the Dublin System, and widespread and indiscriminate use of accelerated procedures and administrative detention for asylum  seekers and migrants.

We are also extremely concerned that civil society stakeholders, including the HCA, are  being entirely excluded from the consultations and preparations regarding the ongoing  reform process. In December last year, Turkey’s 10 leading human rights organizations  published a joint open letter to Ministry of Interior to denounce the “black listing” of HCA and several other critical NGOs from the ongoing supposed “NGO Consultation Meetings” organized by the Ministry. To date, there has been no change in the situation, and we continue to be excluded. As a result, the leading rights-based NGO stakeholders in the field collectively veto the process, until all of us are allowed to participate.

The state of negotiations with the European Commission on the “readmission agreement” with Turkey

That is indeed a big issue on the Commission’s agenda. So far, the Turkish Government has been stalling the negotiations on this one. Our impression is that Turkey  will want to keep this one shelved, along with the “geographical limitation” question, until a  time when they feel confident that EU accession is a realistic political prospect. Currently as you know, Turkey’s place in Europe remains controversial among the European political leadership as well as public opinion across the EU.

On a final note, speaking of readmission and the question of migration control generally, I  wish to refer back to my earlier comments regarding Turkey’s extremely worrying interception practices. It is vital to understand that the EU accession process provides the context in which we observe Turkey getting more and more effective and aggressive in its pursuit to stop irregular migration flows to Europe. By that I do not only refer to the “bad example” effect of what’s going on in Greece, Malta, Italy and so forth. I also refer to the ways in which Turkey as an accession country is being motivated and geared up to become a formidable partner in Europe’s so-called “battle against illegal migration”.

April 2008 “Unwelcome Guests” report on the detention of refugees in Turkey: http://www.hyd.org.tr/?pid=610 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Introduction

As European countries bordering the Mediterranean have introduced increasingly harsh measures to stem the flow of irregular migration across their frontiers, Turkey has become the main crossroads for flows of migration from Africa, Asia and the Middle East into Europe. At the same time, as part of Turkey’s accession process, the European Union has stepped up pressure on Turkey to prevent the movement of migrants, asylum seekers and refugees into Europe.  As a result of Turkey’s efforts to limit irregular migration flows, thousands of foreign nationals without travel documents, refugees among them, are detained while attempting to either enter or exit the country illegally.  They are primarily held in detention centers, which are officially referred to as  “foreigners’ guesthouses.”

Until now, no report has been published regarding the conditions faced by detained refugees in Turkey. This, in part, is due to the fact that Turkey’s Ministry of Interior (MOI) has prevented international and domestic NGOs from entering guesthouses, whether for the purpose of carrying out monitoring activities or providing assistance to detainees. As Turkey continues its efforts to stem the flow of irregular migration, it is critical that its practices regarding the detention of foreign nationals, and in particular, refugees, are transparent, and comply with international standards.

Of all the foreign nationals detained in Turkey, a certain critical proportion are refugees – that is, as defined in this report, anyone who intends to apply, has applied for, or has been granted “refugee status” by a decision-making body, which in Turkey, is either the UNHCR or MOI. Most refugees who are detained are initially criminally charged for either illegal entry or exit from the country, or failure to comply with requirements of the “temporary asylum” system. However, for the majority of their time in detention, refugees are typically held for administrative purposes, including to have an asylum application reviewed or to be processed for deportation.

Summary of Findings

The interviewees reported a range of limitations with regard to their ability to access their procedural rights in detention.  In particular:

• Refugees reported being detained for the duration of the temporary asylum process, rather

than being transferred to a “satellite city” upon notifying police of the intention to apply for asylum.

• Detained refugees face barriers to applying for asylum, including:

o a lack of information about asylum procedures; and

o refusal by police to take asylum applications.

• Those held in airport transit zones are barred from applying for asylum altogether.

• Inability to access asylum procedures has led to instances of illegal deportation, or refoulement.

• None of the interviewees were informed of the reasons for their arrest or their rights in detention.

• Many faced indifference or aggression from the police when they asked for this information.

• No interviewees were given information about the expected length of their detention, leading to feelings of hopelessness and depression.

• Refugees have no practical recourse to judicial review to challenge the legality or the length of their detention.

• Detained refugees have only very sporadic access to lawyers and are not able to receive visits from other NGOs or advocates at all.

• Refugees held in transit zones in Turkey’s airports have no access at all to lawyers, the UNHCR or other agencies or advocates.

• Those who apply for asylum while in detention tend to be detained for longer periods (usually more than six months) than those who have applied beforehand (averaging one to three months).

The interviewees also reported significant deficiencies regarding conditions in detention. In particular:

• Adults and minors, as well as convicted criminals and non-criminals, are regularly housed in the same areas. Only men and women are segregated.

• Overcrowding is common, often leading detainees to sleep on the floor with inadequate bedding.

• Facilities have windows, but are cold in winter and hot in summer.

• Overcrowding exacerbates poor ventilation, especially where smoking is permitted.

• Bathrooms and sleeping areas tend to be dirty and insect-infested.

• While most guesthouses contain showers, hot water is not always available.

• Detainees regularly have to pay for their own toiletries and towels at inflated prices. Some must buy cleaning supplies to clean living areas.

• Meals are lacking in nutritional and caloric value. Some facilities do not serve food on the weekend.

• Safe drinking water is not freely available.

• Detainees, who can afford to do so, are forced to get food delivered—at highly inflated prices—from local shopkeepers.

• Generally, no exercise or recreation is available to detainees.

• Books are unavailable.

• Medical services in guesthouses are universally inadequate.

• Barriers to receiving medical and mental health treatment include:

o the outright denial of services by police;

o the high cost of treatment and medication; and

o a lack of available interpreters.

• Outside communication is limited due to:

o the high cost of using public telephones;

o the inability to receive calls;

o a lack of privacy; and

o minimal access to visitors.

• Detainees universally witness or are subject to varying degrees of verbal and physical  abuse by police officers.

• Interviewees generally reported that police officers are indifferent to refugees, and at

worst, they engage in unjustified physical violence, including beating and slapping.

• The most serious allegations of police mistreatment include falaqa—beating the soles of the feet—and being forced to stand naked in front of other detainees and officers.

• Unaccompanied minors are regularly detained in adult guesthouses until their age has been confirmed and they can be sent to detention facilities for minors.

• Age determination procedures do not account for margins of error, or the psychological maturity of the applicant, and do not provide the minor the benefit of the doubt regarding  his or her age.

• Children of refugees are regularly separated from opposite sex parents or guardians.

I was baptized, for the 2nd time in my life, at the cookout.

In the Spring and Summer of 2006, I was a volunteer after-school tutor for the Sudanese refugee community in Binghamton, a neighborhood here in Memphis. The church I was attending at the time was having a cookout one Saturday about 45 minutes away in Mississippi at one of the church member’s houses. I offered to take 3 of the refugees along with me. I picked them up in my car, one was 6 yo., the other two were 11 yo., and they were all beautiful young ladies. The 6 yo. was named Suhanda, and the 11 yos. were named Naymouch and Kany. I had been volunteering with them for a few months now. I want to say they had all been in the states at least a year by this time, possibly two.

We rode down I-40 towards Jackson, then took 385 to the exit at Hacks Cross. While we were headed east on 385, specifically along the overpass above Riverdale (just south of Quince and north of Winchester), the girls were looking right to the south onto the parking lots of Home Depot, Babies-R-Us, and whatever ole Joe’s Crab Shack/Don Pablo’s restaurant was at that time. They were captivated by all the shiny cars. Hundreds maybe thousands. It was a Saturday afternoon so everyone was out running errands. I was surprised how impressed they were at all the parked vehicles, I glanced for only a moment—as I was carrying precious cargo—and regressed back in my existence to a time when I too would have been enamored by this seemingly arid view and perspective of a bunch of parked vehicles. I believe it was Kany who quietly said,

…look at all the cars…

Actively seek to perpetually diversify any and all perspectives on every level vs. using that energy and time calibrating only one.

Keep in mind, these are little girls going on an adventure so they were quite hyper and very chatty. They had never been to Mississippi and it was very exciting.

Once we exited at Hacks Cross and were probably just past Holmes if not State Line, the road was obviously more narrow with just two lanes and with less traffic compared to the interstate. The trees on either side were as green and full as they ever get through the year, as it was July and they were lushishly full. The great spans of grass were alive and softy dancing in the low winds. The sun was shining through the spaces between the leaves, as it does in the afternoons when the sun is at such that angle that causes photographers to stop in his or her track and bust out the

Not photoshopped...the colors were really that vibrant.

camera…perfect lighting.

Naymouch turned to me and said,

I have never seen so much green.

I keep her words close with me always as a reminder to be grateful. For everything.

Fast forward to fall of 2006, I had left Memphis and moved to New Haven, Connecticut for graduate school at Albertus Magnus College, a Catholic liberal arts school down the street from Yale University. I was accepted into the MAAT program, Master of Arts in Art Therapy. I flew up there with my life stuffed into three suitcases…not knowing a soul.

A couple weeks before I left, I knew I wanted to continue being involved with refugees so I googled “refugee+New Haven, CT” and found Interfaith Refugee Ministries (IRM). Their office was conveniently only .7 mi. away from the apartment I had rented. I went up there and expressed my desire to volunteer. There is a large Afghan refugee community in New Haven, but there are many families from all over the world as well e.g.: Iraq, Congo, Cuba, Ethiopia, Iran, Somalia, Sudan, and other countries.

Bahar & I

I could write a book about the year I spent volunteering at IRM, but I am just going write a snowflake of an avalanche for this post.

Of the many children that touched my heart during this time, I became the closest with Bahar. Bahar was 10 yo.  and she was from Afghanistan. She really liked bright colors, as she expressed this through many bracelets, necklaces, earrings, and hair accesories…many of which she made herself. Her parents invited me over to visit one day. I drove over to their neck of the woods, a neighborhood her father described to me as “no good”. The house they were living in was the epitome of Queen Anne revival in her hay day, but now was but a wisp of a ghost of her former glory. I took my shoes off in the living room as her mother supplied me with ornately decorated house slippers. They sat me in a chair and proceeded to place a tv tray next to me with a bowl of yogurt covered peanuts. I looked down and realized I was sitting on a fleece throw, probably purchased at a thrift store. It had a red, white, and blue color palette but was not an American flag.

This was the pattern on the throw.

I visited for the rest of the afternoon and evening. I ate dinner with her family and spoke to her father and mother for a long time. Her father was born and lived in Afghanistan for most of his life. He was probably 45-50 yo. at the time. He is fluent in five languages: Dari, Pashto, Arabic, Russian, and English. He explained to me that his family spent five years in Russia residing at a refugee camp awaiting placement in a host country such as America. I cannot recall what all was entailed in their journey prior to waiting in Russia, but I have no doubt it was intense. Refugee status is not delved out upon request…

He is a very intelligent man and was a professional in his field back home.

At one point he said to me,

We finally make it here to America, and my very educated daughters  who are still learning this new English language, can only get jobs at Dairy Queen making very little.

I see the way Americans look at us as though we are criminals. It is no good. I want more for my family.

He said a lot of things to me as I did to him. He had several large world maps on the walls and we shared what we knew about geography as well as war history.

Breathtaking New Haven, "The Elm City"

When I met people in New Haven, including the transplanted Yale students from all over the world, “Yallies”, I would often times hear,

Why would you want to move to New Haven, Connecticut? This city sucks.

My grandmother Doris's drawings/writings. She grew up in midtown.

Not so unlike the things I have heard people in Memphis say. I was born here, my great-great-grandparents, the Shields, both died of  tuberculosis sometime after the yellow fever epidemic swept the midsouth after c.1878. They are buried at Elmwood cemetary. Their two daughters, my great-grandmother Julia Shields Melton and her sister Viola Shields, were taken to an orphanage downtown and were raised by nuns. Julia’s daughter, my grandmother Doris, is the author of the hundreds of handwritten poems on the sheets of paper that are photographed in my blog header at the top of the page behind the words Pulled Before the Push. She was also an artist.

I know a lot about this part of the world and I have met so many incredibly gifted creative genius minds. Writers, musicians, artists…there is so much creativity in this city. True artists are compelled to create…and I see it everyday here.

I hate Memphis.

It’s a black hole.

A vortex.

I could go on and I know you could too. We are witnesses to an era where it is cool to bash the city you live in. Grass is greener. It’ s the geography and the people right? If you lived in another city, your life would be better. You would be better. You think a change of scenery would take away your pain? People are different elsewhere right? They are better. Less idiots. Perhaps. However if you take the time to study humanity objectively through the recorded centuries, it is crystal clear that human nature transcends time and space by remaining innately stagnant. What changes is the overt shit.

Go read the book of  Ecclesiastes. Chasing of the wind.

³ What do people get for all their hard work under the sun? ⁴ Generations come and generations go, but the earth never changes. ⁵ The sun rises and the sun sets, then hurries around to rise again. ⁶ The wind blows south, and then turns north. Around and around it goes, blowing in circles. ⁷ Rivers run into the sea, but the sea is never full. Then the water returns again to the rivers and flows out again to the sea. ⁸ Everything is wearisome beyond description. No matter how much we see, we are never satisfied. No matter how much we hear, we are not content.

⁹ History merely repeats itself. It has all been done before. Nothing under the sun is truly new. ¹⁰ Sometimes people say, “Here is something new!” But actually it is old; nothing is ever truly new. ¹¹ We don’t remember what happened in the past, and in future generations, no one will remember what we are doing now.

The book is thought to have been written by King Solomon, son of King David, c.~250 BC (~2,260 years ago.)

In conclusion, if you don’t like living in my city, my Memphis, then you should get the fuck out.

For your own benefit as well as mine. Go live your life where you believe it will be the fullest.

Why are you here? Why are you living in a place you hate? That does not make sense. Why do you stay and pour hate and negativity into MY city?! WHY? Money? School? Job? Family? Put together a plan of escape…it is not impossible and yes it may hurt your head at times. Don’t make me list all the suffering of those less fortunate than you around this world who make it happen as I am positive you are well aware. Grass can also be yellower.

This ain’t no dress rehearsal. Where there is a will there is a way. You know this.

Google “Memphis sucks” and see how many hits you get. Google “___any city___ sucks” and see how many hits you get.

Memphis is horrible. Memphis is terrible. Memphis sucks. Memphis is stupid. Memphis is hot. Memphis is humid. Memphis is miserable. Memphis is ugly. Memphis is fat. Memphis is dangerous. Memphis is boring. Memphis is primitive. The University of Memphis is bad. The University of Memphis sucks. Tigers suck. You suck. White Memphis sucks. Black Memphis sucks.

-posted by Mike Lang, a Memphian, June 23rd, 2007

I pulled this quote from here: http://www.topix.com/forum/city/memphis-tn/T53288VL28M6K60K4/p3

On a positive note, Google “I love Memphis”…I am happy to say there are hits for this phrase as well…and not just for the basketball team.

There are countless songs with Memphis in the lyrics…

(copied from http://fivebestlist.blogspot.com/2008/02/ten-bestmemphis-songs.html)

#10. “Cities” by Talking Heads

Did I forget to mention, to mention Memphis?
Home of Elvis and the ancient Greeks
Do I smell? I smell home cooking
It’s only the river, it’s only the river.

#9. “Music Makin’ Mama from Memphis” by Hank Snow

She’ll play a little rhythm, do the boogie up right
A Tennessee polka, maybe blues in the night
Ever’body travels from near and far
To hear her when she picks it on that old guitar
My Music Makin’ Mama from Memphis, Tennessee

#8. “Memphis Soul Stew” by King Curtis

Today’s special is Memphis Soul Stew
We sell so much of this, people wonder what we put in it
We gonna tell you right now
Give me about a half a teacup of bass
Now I need a pound of fatback drums
Now give me four tablespoons of boiling Memphis guitars
This goin’ taste alright
Now just a little pinch of organ
Now give me a half a pint of horn
Place on the burner and bring to a boil
That’s it, that’s it, that’s it right there.
Now beat, well.

#7. “Memphis, Tennessee” by Chuck Berry

The last time I saw Marie
She was waving me goodbye
With hurry homedrops on her cheek
That trickled from her eyes
Marie is only six years old
Information please,
Help me get in touch with her
In Memphis, Tennessee

#6. “All the Way from Memphis” by Mott the Hoople

Now it’s a mighty long way down the dusty trail
And the sun burns hot on the cold steel rails
And I look like a bum, and I crawl like a snail
All the way from Memphis

#5. “Memphis Beat” by Jerry Lee Lewis

I’m going to Memphis where the beat is tough
Memphis, I can’t get enough
It makes you tremble and it makes you weak
It’s in your blood, that Memphis Beat

#4. “Honkey Tonk Woman” by the Rolling Stones

I met a gin soaked, bar-room queen in Memphis,
She tried to take me upstairs for a ride.
She had to heave me right across her shoulder
‘Cause I just can’t seem to drink you off my mind.

#3. “Proud Mary” by Creedence Clearwater Revival

Cleaned a lot of plates in Memphis,
Pumped a lot of ‘pane down in New Orleans,
But I never saw the good side of the city,
‘Till I hitched a ride on a river boat queen

#2. “Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again” by Bob Dylan

Well, Shakespeare, he’s in the alley
With his pointed shoes and his bells,
Speaking to some French girl,
Who says she knows me well.
And I would send a message
To find out if she’s talked,
But the post office has been stolen
And the mailbox is locked.
Oh, Mama, can this really be the end,
To be stuck inside of Mobile with the Memphis blues again.

#1. “Back to Memphis” by Chuck Berry

I’m going to leave here in the morning and walk down to the station
I’ve got just enough money to pay my transportation
I’m going back to Memphis, back home with my Mama
If I have to ride that bus barefooted in pajamas
Back home in Memphis, no moaning and groaning
I know everything will be all right in the morning

I have been meaning to write a post discussing these concepts for several months now. These are my life experiences and opinions. I encourage you to leave a comment if you want to say something in response…but only if you do not hold anything back.

Thank you.

ζ

Report from Lesvos antira ‘09.  Links to posts of this blog with frequent updates and photos on Lesvos situation are on the right sidebar.

10 people survived boat accident

Published on 27. October 2009.

A boat with 18 refugees drowned tonight close to Lesvos, Greece. This is what the Media reports about.

18 refugees crosed the sea between Turkey and Greece with a Boat. The sea was very stormy tonight. The boat crashed against a rock and the boat drowned. Some fisherman rescued them, for eight people the rescue came to late.

The Media makes it look like there has been a storm tonight. But in fact the sea was very calm around Lesvos.

Our source in Lesvos reported that some of the survivors are still in the hospital, the minors are accommodated in a Hotel in Mytilini, Lesvos and one man is in Pagani.

My name is Arif Khani Soldier. My wife, my daughter and me survived the accident. My family is in the hospital but they brought me here to the prison. I can not see or talk to them.

source: associated press

8 Afghan immigrants drown as boat sinks in Greece

By NICHOLAS PAPHITIS
Associated Press Writer

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — A small boat loaded with Afghan families smashed onto the rocks and sank off an island in the Aegean Sea on Tuesday, causing three immigrant women and five children to drown.

The deadly accident highlighted the plight of thousands of migrants who risk their lives every year to reach the European Union.

Athens accused neighboring Turkey, from where the vessel set off, of doing little to stop thousands of illegal immigrants from arriving in Greece. Human rights groups, however, urged Greece to improve its treatment of migrants and its handling of asylum applications.

The coast guard said high waves swept the flimsy boat with 18 on board onto a rocky shore on Lesvos. Seven men, a woman and a child – all Afghans – swam ashore and were hospitalized for observation.

One of the 10 survivors, only identified as a Turkish man, was arrested on smuggling charges.

Under Greece’s tough immigration laws, traffickers involved in fatal accidents face life terms and a minimum euro500,000 ($750,000) fine.

Later Tuesday, the coast guard rescued another 45 illegal immigrants found abandoned on an uninhabited islet off the island of Anafi in the southeastern Aegean.

Lying only five miles (eight kilometers) from Turkey’s western shore, Lesvos is one of the main points of arrival for illegal immigrants, who use rickety boats to slip through a porous sea border dotted with hundreds of islands.

Deputy Citizen’s Protection Minister Spyros Vougias said the incident merited an official complaint to Turkey.

“We need a solution to the problems Turkey causes by tolerating the actions of human traffickers,” he said. “There must be an end to this slave trade.”

Greece also wants more support from other EU members and has begun receiving assistance from the bloc’s new border protection agency, Frontex.

“Every day, Greek authorities have to handle the security of 300-400 people seeking a safe destination in Greece,” Citizen’s Protection Minister Michalis Chryssochoides said. “We lack sufficient infrastructure, funds and cross-border cooperation.”

Some 5,500 people were detained on Lesvos in the first eight months of this year, compared to more than 13,000 in 2008.

Often fleeing war zones in Asia and Africa, the migrants pay thousands of dollars to smuggling gangs for a long and perilous journey to the west. Accidents at sea are frequent, while migrants trying to enter by land from Turkey face border minefields that have claimed at least 82 lives since 1994.

A spokeswoman for the United Nations refugee agency said Tuesday’s drownings showed that migrants from war-torn countries are not deterred by strict anti-migration policies.

“As long as there are wars and violations of human rights, people will continue to be desperate and risk their lives,” U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees spokeswoman Ketty Kehagioglou said.

Kehagioglou urged the government to improve the screening process for asylum seekers and create better migrant holding facilities.

She said UNCHR officials who visited the Pagani center on Lesvos last weekend saw some 700 people held in “appalling, outrageous” conditions.

“In one ward, there were more than 200 women and children with only 2 toilets,” Kehagioglou said. “Their mattresses were soiled with water from the toilets and the smell was unbearable.”

The Socialist government, elected three weeks ago, has pledged to improve migrants’ rights.

—

Associated Press Writer Costas Kantouris in Thessaloniki contributed to this report.

http://www.hrw.org,

http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/10/09/greece-unsafe-and-unwelcoming-shores,

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH

Greece: Unsafe and Unwelcoming Shores

October 12, 2009

Between August and September 2009, Human Rights Watch interviewed 16 migrants who had been arrested on Samos, Symi, and Chios Islands, and the port towns of Patras and Igoumenitsa. The Greek authorities transferred them to detention centers close to the land border with Turkey and held them in the border police stations of Soufli, Tichero, and Feres, as well as in the Venna and Fylakio-Kyprinou (Fylakio) detention facilities. Two detained migrants described to us how Greek police forcibly pushed them across the river into Turkey from where Turkish authorities sent them back to Afghanistan.

One of them is a 17-year-old unaccompanied Afghan boy who told us over the phone that he was arrested on Symi Island, transferred to Fylakio detention center, and expelled with 11 other persons to Turkey:

We were one group of 12 persons they took out [from the detention center]. They drove us in a car…. for maybe one and a half hours. We arrived in the forest around 9 p.m.; they kept us there until midnight…. They told us not to move, otherwise the Turkish police would find us. It was [next to] a small river…. This side was Greece, the other side was Turkey.

The boat was a metal boat, a long metal boat. Inside the boat there was one policeman; he started the engine and after we arrived to the other side he told us to get out quickly and the boat went straight back. When the [Turkish] police arrived two of us explained what happened. The Turkish police came back to that place with us and said we should sit and that more persons might be coming. But the Greek police didn’t send more people.

We were for 12 days in [Turkish] detention. They beat me too much….  When the Turkish police beat me they said I should call my family to send me money to return to Afghanistan. I asked them not to send me back to Afghanistan, because I had problems. I asked them to keep me. But they didn’t care.

Near our house are Taliban; they are close…. I’m scared all the time. I’m a tenth grade student but I can’t go to school.[1]

The other person pushed back told us he was arrested on Samos Island, transferred to Fylakio detention center, expelled in a group of 45 or 50 persons, arrested by Turkish police, and taken to a detention center in Edirne: “I stayed for one week in Edirne. There were a lot of persons who had been deported from Greece. There were Afghans, Pakistanis, and Sri Lankans.”[2] Human Rights Watch visited that detention center in 2008 and found conditions there to be inhuman and degrading.[3]

Another eight people said they witnessed Greek police taking migrants out of detention centers at nightfall in trucks or vans. Four of them told us that those taken from the detention centers later got in touch with detainees who stayed behind and told them that the Greek police had expelled them. One Afghan boy who was arrested on Symi Island described the scene he witnessed from his cell at Fylakio detention center:

Forty three persons were taken away from my group [of 91 persons]. One Iraqi had a friend among those [taken away]. He called Iraq from the detention center, and that friend said he had been deported. That Iraqi was part of our group. We were all in the same cell.

First [Greek police] asked them to sign something. … it was around the evening time, around 6 p.m. maybe. Then they searched them… the police took away everything they had: toothpaste, papers written in Greek, they took it from their pockets… After that they were taken into a truck without windows. It was completely closed, an army-colored truck. People entered from the back. I saw the truck with my own eyes and I saw how people entered.

Each time a new group [of detainees] arrived the truck came…. 67 persons arrived in one group and they took away 57 persons from that group….  Six or seven times new groups arrived…. For a small group the white van came, for a big group the truck came.[4]

Another person told us he had been arrested in Patras ahead of the authorities’ destruction of a large makeshift camp and then transferred with a group of 120 persons to Fylakio detention center. He told us that four of his friends had been deported from there: “They asked us, ‘Do you have relatives or friends?’ I said I had an uncle. Four friends of mine said they didn’t have family and they were deported. One of them called my friend and told him he was in Afghanistan…. They deported them after about two weeks. They were taken away in a small white car.”[5]

Greece’s Dysfunctional Asylum System

Greece effectively has no asylum system. It recognizes as few as 0.05 percent of asylum seekers as refugees at their first interview. A law adopted in July abolished ameaningful appeals procedure. The effect of the new law is that a person who is in need of international protection as a refugee in Greece is almost certain to be refused asylum at the first instance, and having been refused has little chance of obtaining it on appeal. The new law leaves asylum seekers with no remedy against risk of removal to inhuman or degrading treatment, as required by article 39 of the EU’s procedures directive and articles 13 and 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights. As a result of this legislative change, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) withdrew from any formal role in Greece’s asylum procedure.

Many of those we interviewed said they did not want to apply for asylum in Greece because they had heard that Greece rejects everyone. Some believed mistakenly that they could apply for asylum in other European countries. Access to legal counsel or interpreters is virtually impossible in detention centers in the north and those in need of protection may be unable to access asylum procedures. An Afghan detainee held in Soufli border police station, for example, was informed about her rights in English, a language she does not understand.

Apart from sporadic visits by a lawyer from the Greek Council for Refugees operating under a government agreement, no lawyers or organizations offer pro-bono legal aid in Greece’s northern region. Athens-based lawyers who offer pro-bono legal aid told us they are not able to access and speak to detainees in the north unless they present to authorities the names of persons detained. Even when they have the names of detainees, police in the Evros border region might ask them to obtain an additional permit from central police authorities to see persons detained; or police may not respond to their query whether a certain detainee is still held there. Conversations between lawyers and detainees furthermore are rarely confidential and lawyers said that police interrupted their talks and asked them to finish their conversations with detainees.[6]

Even those with access to legal aid and wanting to apply for asylum are not necessarily able to access the minimal procedures that do exist. According to the Greek Council for Refugees, on July 30, Greek police handed over 40 Turkish citizens, among them 18 asylum seekers, including four unaccompanied children, to their Turkish counterparts under a bilateral readmission agreement. Police on Crete, where the group initially arrived, refused to receive their asylum applications despite interventions by local lawyers. The asylum seekers were deported even though the Greek Council for Refugees intervened with the responsible Ministry.[7] In addition, on July 17, Human Rights Watch saw more than 1,000 asylum seekers lined up all night at Athens’ main police station trying to file asylum claims, largely in vain.

Greece is bound by the international legal principle of non-refoulement not to expel or return a person to a place where he or she would face persecution, torture, or inhuman or degrading treatment. This obligation applies not only to direct returns into the hands of persecutors or torturers, but also to indirect returns to countries from which persons are subsequently sent to a state where they face such threats. The circumstances of what constitutes inhuman or degrading treatment for an unaccompanied child may differ significantly from that of adults and Greece is obliged to take “measures and precautions” against such treatment when returning a child.[8]

Inhuman and Degrading Detention Conditions

Greece is also bound under European and international law to protect migrants from inhuman and degrading treatment while in Greece.  Persons held in detention centers in the north described to us conditions that would violate these obligations. Furthermore, unaccompanied children were detained jointly with adults across detention centers in the north, itself a violation of binding international standards.

People detained at the Soufli border police station, for example, told us that two detainees have to share one dirty mattress and that they are never allowed to go outside. One detainee, a 16-year-old girl in the company of her husband, told us that she felt constantly intimidated in a cell with more than 20 adult men.[9] People detained at Tichero border police station told us they slept on dirty mattresses or on the floor without blankets, and that the bathroom was filthy, with an unbearable smell.[10] Those held in the Venna detention facility said the place was infested with cockroaches and mice, and they complained about a lack of enough warm clothing. Those detained included a disabled man who had lost one arm and could not fully use his other arm but was subjected to the same regime. With the exception of Fylakio detention center, the conditions were compounded by a lack of access to medical care. Except for those held at Venna, those interviewed said they received only two meals per day, which they said was insufficient.

Detainees held at Fylakio detention facility spoke of comparatively better, albeit overcrowded, detention conditions. All persons who had been held there, however, said they experienced or witnessed violence and ill-treatment by guards. Two described an incident in which guards allegedly beat up an Arabic-speaking detainee after he tried to escape.

I saw an Arab who tried to escape. Police caught him and beat him up badly. They took him to the telephone room and covered the window with black plastic. Afterward I went to make a phone call and saw that guy with blood on his head and in handcuffs.[11]

Police also allegedly used violence when intervening in fights among detainees or to punish those who did not stay quiet at night:

I saw once with my own eyes that three policemen beat one person. They beat him in the corridor because he quarreled [with others]. They beat him for a short time with batons, with their hands, and they also kicked him.[12]

We received additional allegations of police violence from persons detained at Tichero and Feres border police stations, and from a person held at an unknown location near Komotini.[13]

Several persons interviewed said it was forbidden to make phone calls from Soufli and Tichero border police stations. One detainee at Soufli told us: “One detainee said if you have a lawyer you might get released but we don’t have a telephone so how can we contact our family to get us a lawyer?”[14] Another person said that although detainees held at Fylakio detention centers were permitted to make phone calls on Mondays and Thursdays, no calls were allowed during the first ten days.[15]

Asked whether they tried to file a complaint, one detainee told us: “I never complained to anybody. We didn’t complain. It wouldn’t have helped if we’d said anything. The captain would have told us to stay quiet.”[16] Although the police chief in charge of the Fylakio detention facility assured us he would investigate any allegation of ill-treatment brought forward by detainees, he added that he has never received any complaints.[17]

The EU’s Failure to Hold Greece Accountable

Human Rights Watch has repeatedly called on the European Union to hold Greece accountable for its violation of European asylum standards, including while recent arrests and transfers were still ongoing. Yet, despite having a mandate and a duty to enforce member states’ implementation of EU legislation, the European Commission  has not spoken out against Greece’s effective abolition of the right to seek asylum or to appeal rejected asylum claims, or its abusive detention and expulsions of migrants, including children. In fact, Jacques Barrot, vice-president of the European Commission responsible for justice, freedom, and security, was on an official visit to Greece when the new presidential decree was published that effectively eliminated the appeals procedure in violation of binding EU standards.

The European Commission’s failure to call publicly for Greece to remedy these serious violations of EU standards and European and international human rights and refugee law sends a worrying signal that abuses may go unchecked. It is vitally important for the Commission to take the opportunity of a new administration in Athens to press in the strongest terms for immediate and fundamental reform of Greece’s asylum system, meaningful access to protection, and an end to abuse.

The Commission should without delay issue a reasoned opinion on Greece’s current breaches of EU standards on asylum and migration, identifying the steps needed to bring Greece back into conformity with EU and human rights law. It should also make clear to Athens that unless the new government takes those steps, the Commission will refer its failure to uphold EU standards to the European Court of Justice.

In two reports published in 2008, Human Rights Watch further called on European governments to stop sending migrants and asylum seekers, including unaccompanied children, back to Greece under the Dublin II regulations. We concluded that Greece violated both EU standards and international human rights law by holding migrants in unacceptable detention conditions, by preventing persons in need of protection from seeking asylum, and by failing to protect unaccompanied migrant children.

Under the European Union’s Dublin II regulations, the country where a person first entered the EU is generally held responsible for examining that person’s asylum claim, whether or not the person applied there. While the Dublin II regulations are premised on the notion that all EU member states have comparable asylum and migration practices, there are wide disparities, with some countries like Greece effectively offering no protection at all. This disparity underscores the importance of reforming the Dublin system while at the same time ensuring that EU member states are held to account for their failure to respect their obligations under EU law.  Only then can the EU take meaningful steps toward creating a common European asylum system.

New Greek Government Should Take Urgent Action to Stop Abuses

Human Rights Watch calls on the new government in Greece to take urgent steps to end abuses against refugees and migrants, including children. We reiterate the recommendations we made to the-then Minister of Interior in August:

Issue a public statement committing the government to treating migrants apprehended in Greek territory in a humane and dignified manner. Guarantee all migrants unhindered access to the asylum procedure and protection from refoulement.

Immediately ensure that the practice of illegal expulsion across the Evros River be stopped; carry out an investigation leading to identification and levying of appropriate sanctions of officials involved in such illegal acts.

Rescind Presidential Decree 81/2009, create a functioning asylum system in which trained staff assess asylum claims on the basis of confidential and private interviews, and allow for a fair and independent review of appeals.

Refrain from detaining unaccompanied migrant children and from summarily deporting them without prior assessment of the risks they face upon return. Create sufficient number of care places for all unaccompanied migrant children in Greece. Consider the granting of temporary residence for unaccompanied children on humanitarian grounds, as provided for in article 44(c) of Law 3386/2005, to protect them from repeated arrest and detention until a durable solution in their best interests is found.

Close substandard detention centers and open new facilities ensuring adequate space, cleanliness, recreation, access to health care, and legal and family visitation necessary for humane conditions of detention. Migrants should only be detained as a last resort, when actual proceedings for their deportation are ongoing, and when it is the only method necessary to secure persons’ lawful deportation, and when the necessity of detaining them is subject to regular review, including by the judiciary. Asylum seekers should not be detained.

Ensure full access for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Human Rights Watch, and other reputable organizations to all migration detention facilities, Coast Guard vessels and facilities, and to entry and border points and the border region.

[1] Human Rights Watch telephone interview (S-15-09), September 28, 2009. (name withheld)

[2] Human Rights Watch telephone interview (S-16-09), September 29, 2009. (name withheld)

[3] Human Rights Watch, Greece/Turkey: Stuck in a Revolving Door: Iraqis and Other Asylum Seekers and Migrants at the Greece/Turkey Entrance to the European Union, November 2008, ISBN 1-56432-411-7, http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2008/11/26/stuck-revolving-door-0, p.6.

[4] Human Rights Watch interview (S-3-09), September 8, 2009. (name and place withheld)

[5] Human Rights Watch interview (S-5-09), September 8, 2009. (name and place withheld)

[6] Human Rights Watch interview with Marianna Tzeferakou and Danai Angeli, Athens, September 6, 2009.

[7] Email correspondence from Greek Council of Refugees to Human Rights Watch, August 21, 2008.

[8] Mubilanzila Mayeka and Kaniki Mitunga v. Belgium, (Application no. 13178/03), October 12, 2006, available at http://www.echr.coe.int/, para. 69.

[9] Human Rights Watch interview (S-11-09 and S-12-09), September 10, 2009 (names and place withheld). Human Rights Watch interview with (S-13-09), September 11, 2009 (name and place withheld). The European Court of Human Rights held in a recent judgment that detention conditions at Soufli border police station amounted to inhuman and degrading treatment. S.D. v. Greece, (Application no. 53541/07), June 11, 2009, available at http://www.echr.coe.int/, paras. 53-54.

[10] Human Rights Watch interview (S-2-09), September 7, 2009 (name and place withheld). Human Rights Watch interview (S-6-09), September 9, 2009. Human Rights Watch telephone interview (S-14-09), September 28, 2009 (name and place withheld).

[11] Human Rights Watch telephone interview (S-1-2009), August 20, 2009. Another detainee referred to the same incident (S-4-09).

[12] Human Rights Watch interview (S-3-09), September 8, 2009 (name and place withheld).

[13] Human Rights Watch interviews (S-2-09) September 7, 2009 (name and place withheld). Human Rights Watch interviews (S-6-09, S-7-09, S-8-09), September 9, 2009 (names and place withheld). Human Rights Watch interviews (S-11-09, S-12-09), September 10, 2009 (names and place withheld).

[14] Human Rights Watch interview (S-13-09), September 11, 2009 (name and place withheld).

[15] Human Rights Watch interview (S-3-09), September 8, 2009 (name and place withheld).

[16] Human Rights Watch interview (S-5-09), September 8, 2009 (name and place withheld).

[17] Human Rights Watch interview with Giorgos Salamagas, chief of police Orestiada, Fylakio detention center, September 10, 2009.

© Copyright 2008, Human Rights Watch

Relaxed: Refugees from the boat that exploded off the coast of Broome arrive in Adelaide yesterday. (Photo: Brenton Edwards)

The eight men were well dressed, sporting sunglasses, carrying luggage and one was talking on a mobile phone as they walked casually from a side entrance at the airport.

They had arrived on a Qantas flight at 2pm, separated from other passengers and taken to Immigration Department offices at the airport to complete visa paperwork.

Afghan United Association of SA president Hussain Razaiat said the men chose Adelaide because of its settlement services and the size of the Afghan community here.

“They are traumatised because of the accident and some of them still have burns,” he said. “But they are so happy to be here.”

Another eight were expected to arrive from Brisbane last night.

SA will be home to the largest contingent of the 42 Afghan refugees who were on board the SIEV 36, which exploded near Ashmore Reef, 610km north of Broome, in April.

West Australian Premier Colin Barnett has been critical of the Federal Government for granting the men asylum ahead of a coronial inquiry that will investigate the deliberately-lit fire that killed five people.

Their arrival came as Kevin Rudd denied making plans to re-open SA’s notorious Baxter Detention Centre – mothballed in 2007 – despite what some fear is a potential flood of maritime arrivals in coming months.

It is understood the Government has considered the option.

Mr Rudd made the comments while again defending his weekend call on Indonesia’s President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to have that country intercept asylum seekers headed for Australia.

Under growing pressure over the number of suspected illegal entry vessels entering Australian waters, which the Opposition attributes directly to Labor’s softer-line border protection stance, Mr Rudd reaffirmed that Australia had asked Indonesia to stop vessels traversing its waters where possible and would continue to do so.

“It’s the right thing to do in the national interest,” he said. “We maintain an unapologetically tough line on border security and a humane approach in dealing with people.”

The dramatic increase in the number of often unseaworthy vessels entering Australian waters, 32 so far this year compared with a just a few in 2008, has forced the Government to consider new policy options.

An additional 200 beds have been ordered for the Christmas Island facility but the specially designed refugee assessment and processing centre is nearing capacity, meaning other accommodation may be needed.

Source: Adelaide Now

The 42 Afghan asylum seekers who survived the explosion and fire on their boat at Ashmore Reef, 610 kilometres north of Broome, five months ago will be given refugee status.

It is believed the Department of Immigration and Citizenship will give permanent-protection visas to them this week.

Officials say the asylum seekers’ claims for refuge were thoroughly examined and all had rigorous health, security and identity checks.

”The granting of protection visas will help the group, who have undergone a traumatic ordeal, to settle in the community and recover their physical and mental health,” the officials said.

After a lengthy investigation, Northern Territory police said this month they did not have the evidence to charge any of those who had been on the boat identified as SIEV (suspected illegal entry vessel) 36, which blew up on April 16.

Five asylum seekers were killed and several others were injured.

The police said one or more of those aboard triggered the explosion by spilling fuel and igniting it, and whoever did that could have been killed in the blast.

Assistant Northern Territory Police Commissioner Mark McAdie said some of the survivors could have been concealing the truth. “We think there is a very good chance that other people on the boat know something and are not telling us,” he said.

A coroner’s inquiry begins in January and more information may emerge there.

The Age has been told that if the coroner uncovers who caused the fire, their emergency protection visa could be revoked and they could be deported.

”The individuals will be subject to Australian laws and penalties should any charges arise out of the NT coronial inquiry,” a Government source said. ”People convicted of serious crimes can have their visa cancelled under section 501 of the Migration Act and face removal from Australia.”

The two crew members have been arrested on people-smuggling charges.

Police said they were satisfied the crewmen did not cause the explosion. The men are being held in Darwin’s Berrimah Jail.

Twenty of the asylum seekers are in immigration detention in Brisbane and 22 are held in Perth.

The refugees will have the same entitlements as other permanent residents of Australia.

Settlement services will include local orientation and help to find suitable accommodation, torture and trauma counselling, where necessary, and English language tuition.

The officials said the decision to grant the visas had been discussed with the police, who raised no concerns.

The department says it will help the police if any of the group is called to appear at the coronial inquiry.

Late last week, a boat with 52 asylum seekers and three crew aboard was intercepted by the navy off the West Australian coast.

It was the 31st to arrive this year, making a total of 1648 people.

Opposition immigration spokeswoman Sharman Stone said 1928 asylum seekers had arrived on Christmas Island since Labor unravelled the Howard government’s border-protection measures in September last year.

The consequence of Labor’s decision was chaos, Dr Stone said.

Source: The Age

An Afghan migrant cries as police evacuate him. Photograph: Pascal Rossignol/Reuters

There will be no ‘invasion’ from ‘jungle camps’

The persistence of camps appearing along the Normandy coast is a sympton of the failure of a wider European asylum policy

• Alan Travis
• guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 22 September 2009 13.35 BST

At a moment when the Labour home secretary, Alan Johnson, expresses his “delight” at the pitiful sight of hundreds of French police rounding up mainly Afghan asylum seekers in a makeshift camp in Calais, it is time to defend the right to claim asylum in Britain.

Johnson, in language that seems more concerned about the Daily Mail front page than the wording of the 1951 Geneva convention on asylum, pre-judges the issue by talking about protecting “genuine” refugees but insisting they should not be allowed to come to Britain to have their claims decided.

As far as the home secretary is concerned the “swift and decisive” action by the French in clearing the “Jungle” refugee camp is a clear signal that Nicholas Sarkozy’s government will build even stronger controls at the Calais border with Britain.

But it is daft to think that increasing the height of the wire fences around the Calais train depots and the Channel Tunnel entrance is seriously tackling the flow of illegal migration in to Britain.

The majority of illegal migrants in Britain do not come as part of some kind of cross-Channel “invasion” but instead come in through the front perfectly legally on planes through Heathrow or Gatwick as visitors or skilled workers on short-term contracts who overstay their visa.

Despite the propaganda of the Daily Mail and the Express there is no foreign “invasion force” in Calais poised to conquer Blighty by the back door.

Sir Andrew Green, the chairman of Migrationwatch, insists that they are queueing up at Calais only because Britain is a such a “soft touch” on asylum. But a quick glance at those who were in the camp shows that they are people who have fled from the world’s worst trouble spots – Afghanistan, Iraq and Eritrea among them – rather than some kind of benefit tourists with a Rough Guide to European social security rates in their pocket.

The obvious question is why they haven’t claimed asylum in France or the other countries they have already travelled through such as Greece. The answer is that the French have simply not been interested in processing their asylum claims during the eight months they have been there. Even now the way the camp was cleared meant that most of the 1,500 who were there have dispersed and gone underground again. Only 20 are actually having their claims for asylum determined.

Perhaps the more powerful reason why they want to come to Britain however, especially for the Afghan pashtuns among them, is that they have strong family and cultural links with Britain. Britain’s Afghan community for historic reasons is much larger than that in France and they are more likely to speak English than French.

Even David Blunkett when he negotiated the closure of the Sangatte camp seven years ago agreed that the bulk of the asylum seekers should be able to come to Britain to have their claims for refugee status decided.

The Home Office tells us that the British asylum system is now fixed and is much more robust in deciding claims quickly and efficiently. It cannot be beyond them to discover which are actually the “genuine” refugees.

But the persistence of the camps appearing along the Normandy coast is a sympton of the failure of a wider European asylum policy. All the refugee welfare organisations predict a fresh camp will now emerge somewhere else along the coast. The French need to be reminded to live up to their refugee obligations as well. Unfortunately the European tide is flowing the other way. In Italy Berlusconi blithely sends back asylum seekers to North Africa at their risk of their lives without barely a glimpse at their refugee claims. It is time that Europe regained its reputation as a safe haven for those fleeing the world’s conflicts.

Settlements such as Taqi Naqi have been criticised for the lack of services

Taqi Naqi township emerges bleak and barren from the dust of western Afghanistan, an apparent ghost town of derelict mud houses melding into a dun landscape.

The government built it for homeless refugees returning to Herat province from Iran after US-led troops ousted the Taliban regime in late 2001, but no one wants to live here, away from arable farmland and big cities.

Behind some of the doors, however, there is life — albeit one eked out with the help of foreign aid and dreams of a better future.

Inside 38-year-old Mina Yousif’s house, the family of tailors prepares clothing for a wedding. Tapestries of Afghanistan’s legendary anti-Soviet and anti-Taliban fighter Ahmad Shah Massoud bring colour to the dirt walls.

“We did not want to come back to Afghanistan because here there are no facilities, there is no power,” Yousif said, adding they felt pressured to return in 2004 by Iranian authorities after nearly 20 years as refugees.

“But in Iran we had many facilities, we were very comfortable.”

Her neighbour Zulaikha, who has one name only, is also disparaging of her new home: “We have nothing, they have to help us. There is no transport to go to the cities, there are no vehicles.”

About eight million Afghans fled or were forced from their homes by decades of civil war and the subsequent 1996-2001 Taliban government, which transformed Afghanistan into a draconian Islamist state.

Between 2002 and 2008, about five million Afghans returned home with dreams of peace and prosperity, the United Nations says.

“When we talk about five million repatriated, we are talking about an estimated 20 percent of the total population of the country,” said Mohammad Nadir Farhad, spokesman in Kabul for UN refugee agency UNHCR.

Many returned with valuable skills needed to develop an impoverished and rural country, largely devoid of infrastructure.

“There have been quite a lot of positive changes that they have made. Some of the refugees have invested immensely in their country,” Farhad told AFP.

But as the years passed, Afghanistan failed to rebuild as much as hoped and plunged deeper into a violent insurgency led by a regrouped Taliban militia. Quality of life remains dismal in the fifth poorest country in the world.

As bickering and claims of fraud mushroom after the still-undecided August presidential ballot, there is little sign of imminent improvement or stability.

Brussels-based think tank International Crisis Group said in a recent report that the government failed to provide security and basic services for the returnees, resulting in rising unemployment and landlessness.

This risked creating an army of young, poor and disenfranchised men — potential foot soldiers for the Taliban’s potent battle to unseat the government and expel foreign troops, it said.

“Moreover, as Afghans attempt to resettle in their home provinces or migrate to the country?s more secure and economically productive zones, land disputes risk sparking deep-rooted tribal, ethnic or sectarian violence,” it added.

Settlements such as Taqi Naqi, built for the most destitute of returnees, have been criticised for the lack of services.

US-based Refugees International last year urged donors to stop funding badly designed land allocation schemes that left people “stranded in the desert”.

Because of the dismal prospects, many refugees simply chose not to return, with up to one million still in Iran and 1.7 million living in Pakistan.

Instead, much of the traffic flows the other way as young men illegally travel to more prosperous neighbouring countries in search of work.

At the wind-beaten Islam Qala border crossing with Iran, an hour’s drive west of Taqi Naqi, the Afghan flag flutters over empty warehouses and courtyards designed for processing streams of Afghan refugees.

But just outside, hundreds of young men with their belongings piled on wheelbarrows or hoisted on shoulders trudge by — economic migrants deported by the Iranian authorities.

UNHCR staff at Islam Qala say that while about 100 refugees return each day, more than 1,000 deportees stream though the border in the same time period.

“I had to go there because I had no money, I had to earn money for my family,” said 20-year-old mason Akbar Rashidy, who was in Iran for one year before the police caught up with him and shipped him to the border.

“I just want it to be so I never have to leave my country to another one,” he said, before disappearing back into Afghanistan.

Source: AFP

Two new attacks on refugees in the area of Aghios Panteleimonas

In the first case on August 6 an asylum seeker from Afghanistan was prevented from some Greeks to pass through the square and when he asked them the reasonhe was attacked by at least ten of them, who immobilized and beat him, and then left him unconscious on the street.

The local police did not register the event but referred him to a hospital where he remained  the following day until dawn as his injuries were severe.   He returned to the police station where he was deferred twice from filing a complaint.  After this the victim with the legal advice of the Council of Refugees filed a lawsuit in Athens Prosecutor.

The more recent  case is the one of an Afghan of recognized refugee status who has been receiving the last two weeks daily pressures and threats to close down his shop  «so that foreigners stop gathering there».  On August 17 about 10 people started hitting the window of the restaurant and told him to shut down; he refused, called the police for help but the police never came.   He was forced to close his shop, since the threats were repeated, and the police never came on the spot.

source: http://www.enet.gr/?i=news.el.article&id=76200

One more fascist attack in Attiki Square

An Afghan immigrant was produced by ambulance to the emergency wing of Evangelismos hospital, having been heavily injured yesterday at 8.30pm on an attack at Attikis square.  He suffers several injuries throughout his body and has been pierced with a crowbar  beneath the heart!

He was attacked by a gang of fascists who patrol every night in the area.  The standard, daily gathering spot of the fascist gang is just 30 meters from the Police Department of  Aghios Panteleimonas.   It is obvious that the contract between the fascists and the minister of public order involves daily patrols of thugs who stab and beat immigrants. In the summer many immigrants have been produced to hospitals according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

source: http://athens.indymedia.org/front.php3?lang=el&article_id=1072344

Polls opened today in Afghanistan with Washington watching closely in hopes that elections are peaceful and leave a lasting mark of democracy for future state building. Pakistan has the same interest on perhaps an even more immediate level. Successful elections in Afghanistan are an integral ingredient to Pakistan’s domestic offensive in uprooting dangerous factions, expanding the economy, nurturing their democracy and stabilizing relations with neighbors. But if a candidate does not receive at least 50% of votes in this first round, “elections are pushed into a second, more unpredictable round of voting“. And second round elections might agitate an already rickety political climate amidst apprehensions of violence, which is entirely detrimental for Pakistan given domestic and regional circumstances right now.

On the domestic front, Pakistan’s military continues to make progress against dangerous groups. Weakened by the death (and or disappearance) of leader Baitullah Mehsud, the Taliban in Pakistan “seems to be in disarray”. Meaning Islamabad’s offensive against factions this year are bearing fruits for the War on Terror and shifting toward more stability, hopefully for the long term. But if elections in Afghanistan are pushed to a second round, weeks of political irresolution can allow terrorist groups a climate of uncertainty within which to recuperate from losses and cause turmoil. Which since 2001 has shown that a dangerous spillover effect exists wherein Afghani militant groups shift in to Pakistan harboring themselves into the nebulous, virtually imperturbable border.

Broader regional considerations also factor into Pakistan’s hopes for stable elections. The spillover of militant groups since 9/11 intensifies Pakistan’s long desired interest in seeing a democratic, stable Afghanistan where refugees may repatriate. In fact,Pakistan hosts one of the largest refugee populations in the world, an underreported story that actually helps explain why dangerous factions were able to develop in Pakistan. Millions of devastated Afghans, some armed and many destitute from fighting Soviets in the 1980’s found refuge from their war ravaged country in Pakistan. A mostly destitute population seeking refuge in a developing country with highly volatile political circumstances allowed violent sectarian and religiously extremist factions to exploit and recruit refugees to their cause. In addition, there are heavy economic costs for Pakistan in maintaining such a large number of refugees. Since last years military escalation in Afghanistan, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees explains that there is around 2 to 2.1 million Afghani Refugees now living in Pakistan. He said the United Nations planned to launch an emergency appeal for hundreds of millions of dollars needed to sustain refugees that have come in just this past year. So peaceful elections in a first round that move Afghanistan in a direction of democratic stability is integral to Pakistan’s security: they relieve Islamabad of a very costly responsibility to a long-standing refugee challenge.

Although some minority, yet raucous opinions say elections ushering democratic authority are not in Islamabad’s interest because they “diminish Pakistan’s influence in Afghanistan”. Thus suggesting policymakers are strategically motivated to prevent losing an allegedly malleable buffer zone that Afghanistan serves against India. It’s an unlikely, poorly reasoned notion. It attempts to be qualified by citing Islamabad’s insistence on uprooting domestic militant/fundamentalist groups, so as to avoid confrontation with a supposed malleable buffer forces. But expecting policy makers to divert efforts from turmoil at home to external threats is a laughable assertion. Before taking care of neighboring militant groups whose primary focus is not on fighting Pakistanis, Islamabad legitimately devotes resources to uprooting domestic factions who pose an immediate threat. Suicide bombings have become an almost weekly recurrence in Pakistan and with that level of instability, faulting Pakistan for not doing enough to uproot neighboring terror is outrageous. Plus, NATO forces and amplified American presence in Afghanistan furthers the absurdity of such calls for Pakistan to ignore turmoil at home and focus on Afghanistan. And neither of these allegations logically indicate a Pakistani motivation for instability so as to use Afghanistan as a buffer zone.

But perhaps the most unreasonable way of supporting a notion that Pakistan lacks interest in successful elections refers to relations with India. Specifically, that Islamabad’s refusal to remove forces from the Indian border despite current spillover from Afghanistan indicates an excessive concern with an Indian threat. A few reasons why this is incorrect: firstly, referring again to amplified U.S. and current NATO presence and given an abundance of domestic threats that require Islamabad’s attention, removing troops from the Indian border to the Afghan border does little to help Pakistan now, (especially weighted against the risks of doing so). Secondly, even if troops from were redeployed, those forces are squarely trained/equipped to face a potential Indian threat, not in counterterrorism. Which became well known much to Washington’s dismay with the military’s many unsuccessful attempts at uprooting militants from the northern regions along the Afghan border.

Finally, a refusal to redeploy forces is not because of an excessive concern given the reality of current Indian-Pakistani relations. The Mumbai atrocities occurred less than a year ago and the aftermath saw a speedy, vehement escalation of tensions. Some Indian media and politicians fanned the flames, and when tensions rise between India and Pakistan, the world gets nervous. By way of a counterfactual, we can tie how these tensions relate to justifying Islamabad’s decision to maintain troops on the border: If, God Forbid, another atrocity took place on Indian soil since 11/26/08 and Pakistan had redeployed troops away from the border. The result could be an even further escalation of tensions. A terrifying potential  for confrontation ensues and Pakistan’s capacity to defend against an already far more immense Indian force is drastically diminished. Which itself has a potential to cause hasty, over offensive beahvior from either side. Basic lessons in Realism thus teach us that redeployment away from the Indian border is out of the question. Given history, and sensitive circumstances since 11/26 I think military strategy might advise the same. Thus from a Pakistani policymakers point of view, troops on the Indian border is a legitimate priority. If anything, one might even argue they deter confrontation.

So, allegations that Islamabad is not sufficiently committed to stable election processes in Afghanistan are just not reasonable. If anything, successful elections relieve Pakistan of deep social and economic costs through refugee repatriation. And from the Mumbai atrocities to countless civilians who suffer daily from terror and a climate of instability that allows violent factions to operate, a peaceful, prosperous Afghanistan beginning with successful elections is very much in Pakistan’s interest.

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED @

If you are coming to Calais to show solidarity and want information call (from UK) 00 33 6 34 81 07 10 from France 06 34 81 07 10

Latest information from activists on the ground in Calais

*Friday 31st July (3.30pm)

PATROLS
We have been continuing with the patrols early morning and at night.
We do not have news yet on the 2 migrants who were attacked
yesterday. Generally everything seems quite calm. Today we saw a CRS
(riot police) van with 6-7 Afghans but the police had not been to
the ‘jungle’ so they must have picked them up elsewhere.
The patrols are essential, but time consuming so we are also trying
to find residents near the jungles who will help us monitor

SCABIES/MEDICS
We have been doing some basic first aid and taking maalox. If anyone
is coming from England alcohol gel which doesn’t require water is
cheaper there so please bring some for us to distribute!
Medecins du monde has called for all NGO’s to work together to take
action on scabies between 17-21 August. The operation will take place
across Calais.
Treatment of scabies, Hygiene kit, Shower, Medical consultation,
Clean clothes, ‘Coverage’
MDM and MSF will provide most of the materials and do lobbying.
People are trying to find out where the NGO’s are meeting to get
more info(we haven’t been invited!) will send more info soon

CONCERNS
-are the migrants being cleaned up ahead of being put on charter
flights and deported?
-need to mobilize to make sure activist’s in the area at this time
even if deportations do not take place the migrants will be very
vulnerable if their homes etc are being ‘cleaned’
-how will it be organized?
-how will it be maintained?
(stopped from coming back if still no water?)

OFFICE SPACE

We really need one! People looking this afternoon at apartments.
Funding is still an issue;

JOBS THAT CAN BE DONE FROM OUTSIDE CALAIS

Please help with these if you can and email to confirm they are
happening
-fundraising
Needed desperately!
-design a window display/flag
We talked about making something really simple (using barbed wire to
birds logo maybe) that local supporters could display in their
windows (and could be given out or even sold at the market)
-leaflets and letters to residents
About Calais that can be given out at events in town and door to door
-improve the business card for migrants
At the moment we have a card in English only with the emergency phone
number on it 0650734104. We have been giving it out, so far not many
people have been using it but trying to improve this. Would be good
to have it in as many languages as possible, small business card
size that just says ‘in case of raids call 0650734104′ and that we
are from no borders/Calais migrant solidarity.
-UK arrivals leaflet
Being distributed in farsi and Arabic needs better translation into
pashtun. Needs a contact number for people who make it to England to
call. Please send a comment to this blog if you can help with any
of this.

calais update
Homepage: http://www.calaismigrantsolidarity.wordpress.com

source of the Article: New York Times website

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

By BILL FRELICK

July 29, 2009WASHINGTON — The Greek government has come up with a novel solution to a growing backlog of asylum appeals: Abolish appeals.

Greece’s Refugee Problem

No backlog. No Problem.

But the problem can’t be dismissed so easily. Greece has a backlog of about 30,000 cases. A part-time asylum appeals board hears about 60 cases a week. At this rate, it would take about 10 years to clear the current backlog alone.

But wait. Greece, with its long coastal borders, is at the front line of migration to the European Union, with nearly 20,000 new asylum applications lodged there last year. Part of the reason is E.U. law, and the so-called “Dublin rules,” under which other Union member states can send asylum seekers who entered the E.U. through Greek borders back to Greece.

Last year, the Greek asylum approval rate was 0.05 percent. Since essentially everyone is initially denied, the appeals have been growing faster than the system’s capacity to keep up.

Anyone with a pocket calculator can see that the system doesn’t work. But it is not just a question of numbers. Each number represents a person. One of them is “Hamed,” who fled Afghanistan alone at age 13 when a local warlord threatened to kill him if he did not submit “for dancing and more.”

His asylum interview took place in 2008 in a noisy, crowded room in the Petrou Ralli police station:

“The policeman in civilian clothes asked something and the Iranian woman [the interpreter] told me I should say I came for a better life.

“I don’t know whether the police officer said that or not because I didn’t understand him. I told the Iranian woman that I wanted to explain my other problems. At that point the police officer shouted at me and I got scared. …”

The interview took five minutes.

The obvious solution is to have specially trained officials, including specialists in interviewing children, conduct careful, private interviews, and grant asylum to people who need it. Then, an independent body should work full-time to consider appeals in a fair and timely way.

Instead the government has introduced Presidential Decree 81/2009, which makes a bad system worse.

First, instead of creating a corps of specialized asylum interviewers capable of identifying people needing protection, the decree spreads the job of interviewing asylum seekers to police directorates throughout the country.

Police officers have a host of other duties and lack training in asylum law or in conducting interviews with fearful and traumatized asylum seekers.

Competent interpreters and asylum lawyers, in short supply even in Athens, are almost absent in the islands and border regions.

Second, the decree abolishes the right to lodge an appeal and eliminates the asylum appeals board (after it finishes the cases currently before it), retaining only strictly limited judicial review. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees has declined to participate in the new asylum procedure, saying that it does “not sufficiently guarantee efficiency and fairness.”

Greek asylum procedures are just the tip of the iceberg of a system that fails at every stage to protect refugees and unaccompanied children.

These failures include illegal push-backs of migrants at the Turkish border, the puncturing of boats in the Aegean Sea, deplorable conditions of detention, police brutality, and various legal and administrative tricks to keep asylum seekers from lodging a claim, all of which Human Rights Watch exhaustively documented in two reports published late last year.

In June, the European Council’s Committee for the Prevention of Torture issued a report, saying that its repeated recommendations since 1997 to improve the conditions of migrant detention have been “largely ignored by the Greek authorities.”

Greece responded with legislative changes that extend the period of administrative detention to up to one year, and possibly 18 months. And, on July 12, the Greek authorities burned and bulldozed a long-standing campsite at Patras occupied by migrants, including many unaccompanied children, thus swelling the numbers being held in unacceptable conditions of detention.

If Greece does not put its own house in order, the European Union must hold it accountable. Other E.U. member states should suspend all returns of asylum seekers to Greece under the terms of the Dublin Convention and all E.U. institutions should demand that Greece immediately comply not only with Union asylum standards, but also with human rights norms that should long since have been considered inviolable among European states.

Bill Frelick is the refugee policy director at Human Rights Watch and the author of “Stuck in a Revolving Door: Iraqis and Other Asylum Seekers and Migrants at the Greece/Turkey Entrance to the European Union.”

And a critique of it from black cat – red cat

Greece’s Refugee Problem: that’s the wrong way to look at it

Through the internets and the twitters, I came across Bill Frelick’s op-ed at the New York Times, titled “Greece’s Refugee Problem“. The article is strikingly to the point, and I recommend to anyone reading it. As a Greek, I should add that under pressure from the rise of the far-right, the current conservative Greek government has been transforming Greece’s non-policy policy, which it inherited from the previous centrist (“socialist”) government, into an active anti-immigrant and anti-refugee policy.

From the previous non-functional system designed to ignore the problem, the new policies aim to actively block all paths for admission of people as refugees. At the same time, conditions for immigrants and refugees are deteriorating. The matter of the conditions in the “administrative detention centers”, may not even be the big issue here. There are tens if not hundreds of thousands more people that have entered the country illegally, who cram in newly emergent urban ghettos or are exploited viciously as dirt cheap labor in the countryside. These people are offered no means to integrate into society and social tensions build up to explosive levels. During the recent years Greece is becoming an increasingly violent society. And the government’s response is more repression and pressure, with conditions that are utter shame for people claiming to be heirs to a great civilization.

The NYT article correctly points out some of these points, although it focuses just on the asylum seekers. And Bill Frelick is absolutely correct in pointing out that Greece should be held accountable for what it inflicts on refugees. For too long have Greek authorities been abusing immigrants and refugees in preposterous ways, ignoring our own Greek Constitution that demands respect for human rights and human dignity and spitting in the face of anything we claim to be heirs to.

But Bill Frelick makes a grave mistake in singling out Greece. He completely overlooks the reasons why Greece has to face this problem. The Greek response to the refugee issue is definitely worthy of severe criticism, however refugees do not appear out of thin air. Mr Frellick is talking about the response to the symptoms, but fails to even mention the underlying condition. His example of an Afghan boy fleeing a pederast warlord is a very uncharacteristic example. Many more people have fled their countries due to the imperialist wars waged by the US and their allies. And even greater is the number of people fleeing their countries due to economic conditions imposed by the neo-colonial exploitation war waged by the EU, the US, China etc on third world countries. And sure, Greece is not innocent in any of these, too: it’s a well established member of the EU and NATO.

So yes Greece must be severely criticized. But severe criticism should also be directed towards those that uproot people from their countries in the first place. And if one looks beyond sentimentalist compassion into the true reasons of the problem, there can only be one  “j’ accuse”: capitalism. But the NYT wouldn’t publish anything about that, would it?