XIV. Seeking Access to Asylum in Greece

For those asylum seekers who manage to enter Greek territory and not to be summarily removed, gaining access to the asylum system becomes an additional challenge.  In fact, only 6 percent of asylum seekers in 2007 lodged their claims anywhere other than the Attica Police Asylum Department police center in Petrou Ralli, Athens.[215] 

Detention conditions themselves, an environment of intimidation, a lack of interpreters, and the location of migrant detention centers in areas where there are few lawyers or nongovernmental organizations are among the factors that conspire against access to asylum for detainees in Greece.  A report from a delegation of the European Parliament that visited Greece in June 2007 said, "Our impression is that a deliberate policy is adhered to try to encourage people not to claim asylum."[216] It appears that migrants on the Greek islands and in the Evros region are discouraged from seeking asylum in various ways.  The most common is the suggestion by guards and the common perception among other detainees and migrants that people who apply for asylum are detained longer than those who don't.  The Iraqi Kurd from Kirkuk who gave the account about being suspected of being a smuggler and being beaten for 10 minutes before being summarily returned across the Evros River also spoke about how he was dissuaded from seeking asylum in Greece after finally succeeding in entering and remaining in Greece in his fifth attempt to cross from Turkey:[217]

I had no asylum interview when I was arrested, detained, or released.  I told them I was an Iraqi.  I gave them my real name.  They only asked me if I wanted to stay in detention or leave.  They told me that if I asked for asylum and a red card that I would need to spend more time in jail beyond 25 days, but if I didn't want asylum and a red card I could leave detention after 25 days. I also had good information from my friends who told me the same thing. So, I refused the red card and after 25 days they released me.  I got a white paper telling me I needed to leave the country in 30 days.[218]

Others told Human Rights Watch they did not apply for asylum because they were not informed how to do so. Despite a UNHCR-approved five-language booklet, "Basic Information for Asylum-Seekers," that is supposedly made available to detainees, when Human Rights Watch walked down the corridor at the Petrou Ralli detention center and showed the detainees in each cell a copy of it, in no case did any detainee, male or female, say that he or she had ever seen it, nor did Human Rights Watch observe any sign of the booklet in Petrou Ralli (we did see the obvious display of the booklet in the controlled tour of Fylakio-Kyprinou where all the detainees were removed from the premises during our visit).  The absence of any interpreters in any of the Greek detention centers also renders communication about asylum-or any other subject-extremely difficult.   

An Iraqi Christian from Baghdad, who said that militia men killed his father and brother in law, was detained for 94 days in the Venna facility in the Evros region.   He said that he did not apply for asylum because he could not afford a lawyer, even though there is no requirement to have a lawyer in order to lodge an asylum claim, and also that he was misinformed about the principle of family reunification.  He said:

They gave us a small book on asylum on the third month there.  I read that book, but the guard told me that I would have to pay $500 for a lawyer to represent me to ask for asylum, so I did not ask for asylum.  He also said that I couldn't apply for my family.  I refused the red card because I couldn't bring my family here.  I don't want to live alone without my family. [219]

Others, particularly Iraqis, do not apply for asylum in the islands or the Evros region because they do not want to reveal their true nationalities for fear that they are more likely to be deported from areas of Greece that are closer to the Turkish frontier.  A 34-year-old Iraqi from Baghdad who said that he fled a threat from the Mahdi Army was detained on Chios Island in filthy, overcrowded conditions. [220]   He gave two reasons for not applying for asylum in Chios.  First, he claimed that he was a Palestinian, not an Iraqi.  "I told them I was Palestinian because I thought they would send me back to Zakho in northern Iraq and from there I would be sent back to Baghdad.  We heard that the government of Iraq was paying Turkey to send people back."  The second reason he did not want to apply for asylum was because of the horrible conditions in which the Greeks detained him.  He said, "No one wanted to claim asylum.  The wood house where I was detained made me sick.  The blankets were covered with lice, I slept in shit. I got scabies." [221]

An Iraqi detainee held at the old Samos facility in March 2007 said that he never saw the asylum booklet in Samos or had any idea about how to apply for asylum.  On the advice of his smuggler who told him that Iraqis would be detained for three months and deported but Afghans would be held for one week and released, he falsely claimed to be an Afghan.  With regard to asylum at the old Samos facility, he said:

There was no interview.  They asked nothing about Afghanistan.  They had no interpreters for Afghans, but they had no interpreters for Arabic either.  They didn't tell us how long they would hold us there.  They just released me after 15 days and gave me a paper that was in Greek that I couldn't understand.  When I was taking the ferry from Samos to Greece I asked some Greek girls who spoke English to translate it for me.  That's when I found out that I had 30 days to leave the country. [222]

The Chief of Police on Samos, Ioannis Kotsampasis, acknowledged that very few detainees seek asylum at Samos, but said that those who don't ask for asylum immediately are detained for the maximum three-month period.  This suggests that detention is being used as a deterrent for those who are regarded as lodging frivolous claims:

We give out a pamphlet that explains their rights in several languages…, but they don't come from war countries.  We don't see war injuries.  They don't ask for asylum… They only ask for asylum when they are in court and afraid to be deported.  Some seek asylum in order to get work permits.  Even so, very few ask for asylum here….

We usually detain adults from one month to 40 days.  It doesn't depend on nationality, unless they ask for asylum.  If they ask for asylum on the first day, then they don't stay long.  If they ask for asylum later, then they stay for the full three months.[223]

Recent detainees at Samos gave a contradictory account of the impact of nationality and asylum requests on the length of detention.  A recently released Algerian said:

In general, if you ask for asylum, you stay longer.  Usually Somalis and Afghans are held for 10 days and then released, but Palestinians, Sudanese, and Nigerians are held for 55 days.  No one admits be to being Iranian.  I saw one Iraqi, but he was released after 37 days.  One Iraqi family was released after seven days, but there are other families that stay 44 days.  For teenage boys, the majority are Afghans; most are released after 10 to 15 days and sent to Athens.  I asked for asylum inside the camp.  I stayed for 32 days, but I did not get a red card.  I only got the white paper.[224]

UNHCR sent a letter to the head of the General Police Directorate of the North East Aegean Isles in November 2007 that criticized the practice of increasing the period of detention for detainees who seek asylum.  UNHCR said, "[I]n areas of the North East Aegean, aliens who entered the country illegally and applied for asylum were detained for the maximum, three-month period, while persons from the same nationality who did not want to apply for asylum were freed earlier, with an average detention period of 20-30 days."[225]

The difficulties in gaining access to the asylum system are exceeded only by the rapidity that one can be rejected by the system.  A 21-year-old Kurd from Kirkuk who asked for asylum while detained at Samos (and who was deported from Greece to Turkey and from Turkey to northern Iraq, where he was tortured),[226] was denied asylum before he even knew that his application for asylum had been filed.  He never received a red card or notification of his denial:

I asked for asylum in Samos, ....but they sent me from Samos to immigration in Athens before giving me a red card.  I was in handcuffs on the ferry the whole time from Samos to Athens. I was in immigration detention in Athens. The lawyer Marianna came to the immigration detention center to apply for asylum, but instead of giving me a red card they gave me a deportation paper to leave the country in 30 days. [227]  

Seeking Asylum in Athens-Petrou Ralli 

Every Sunday morning, hundreds of people line up on the street outside Petrou Ralli in the hope of being one of the 300 chosen weekly to be given an appointment for a first-instance asylum interview.  Human Rights Watch walked the length of the line early one Sunday morning in June 2008 and watched as the selection process took place.  We estimated that about 1,000 people were lined up that morning.  A police official also walked down the line talking to some of the people in the queue, and picking a relative few along the line.  He then included as well some of the earliest arrivals at the front of the line to round out the lucky chosen ones allowed to file asylum applications and to come back for their first-instance interviews. 

There are many more efficient, fair, and accessible ways to organize the lodging of asylum applications, but Greece forces this weekly cattle call that adds to the widespread sense among asylum seekers of disrespect and deterrence regarding the filing of asylum claims.  An Iraqi school teacher said, "The line at Petrou Ralli is to humiliate us.  It is there to make us jump like monkeys.  Why can't they organize this in a dignified way?"[228] 

When Human Rights Watch posed the same question to Brigadier General Kordatos, he said, "They are overwhelmingly economic migrants.  We don't want them clogging the system for people with legitimate claims."[229]   This begs the questions, of course, where the people with legitimate claims are supposed to lodge their claims and how the legitimacy of claims are to be determined based on faces of people lined on a crowded sidewalk.