XV. The Asylum Procedure in Greece

An asylum seeker in Greece has almost no chance of being granted asylum; Greece's asylum approval rate at the first instance is almost nonexistent.  In 2007, out of 25,111 asylum claims, Greece granted refugee status to eight persons after the first interview, an approval rate of 0.04 percent. [230]   Appeals of denied cases do not fare much better; the asylum appeals stage has an approval rate of 2 percent. [231]

While various factors contribute to this outcome, including a lack of legal representation, the inappropriate use of accelerated procedures, and poor interpreters, many of the problems are attributable to an institutional culture that takes a presumptively negative view of asylum seekers. 

 

This is because the asylum procedure in Greece is from beginning to end a police matter.  Police interviewers do not have sufficient specialized training or independence to conduct proper interviews.  When Human Rights Watch asked an Iraqi asylum seeker living in Greece for eight years whether he had taken steps to try to expedite his appeal, he said, "Your question presumes there is a system of law.  There is no law.  Everything is in the hands of the police." [232]

There is a great deal of confusion and misinformation about asylum in Greece.  Many people who appear to have strong claims for protection as refugees do not seek asylum.  Some decline to seek asylum in Greece because they believe by applying they will spend longer in detention; others think they will not be able to bring family members to join them if they apply; others think a lawyer is needed and they cannot afford one; and many have their heart set on seeking asylum in another European country. Others are classified as asylum seekers who had no intention of applying for asylum.  It is indicative of the opaqueness of the system and the superficiality of the initial interviews that a number of red-card holders interviewed by Human Rights Watch had no idea that they were asylum seekers.  A 28-year-old Afghan red card holder revealed his ignorance about the red card given to him when he was released from detention on Rhodos Island, and had no idea that he was an asylum seeker:

The police asked me where I came from, my name, how I came here and what country I was from…The questions lasted two or three minutes.  There was no interpreter.  Some of my friends understood some English.  They gave us the red card.  It is for Greece to identify us and now we can work with this card.  They will renew it several times and give you a green card. [233]

Legal Representation 

The law does not provide for legal representation for asylum seekers, though it does not exclude legal representation for those who can afford a lawyer or find one willing to work pro bono. [234]   The problem is the paucity of lawyers in Greece who are willing to represent asylum seekers.  An Athens-based lawyer described the Evros region as a legal "black hole" because of the virtual absence of asylum lawyers or nonprofit legal service providers. [235]   Despite being the entry point for all land arrivals from Turkey and the region to which people arrested in Patras are transported and detained, there are no NGOs that serve the migrant population there and no lawyers providing pro bono services to asylum seekers.  Where there are lawyers-in Athens and on some of the islands-they are completely swamped by the sheer numbers of migrants and asylum seekers in need of legal assistance.  A lawyer who used to work for the Greek Council for Refugees (GCR) told Human Rights Watch, "I started my career as an asylum lawyer.  It was not feasible to follow even the serious cases.  The NGOs are overwhelmed with duties.  Lawyers are dealing with detention, security decisions, judicial representation. They can't keep up with everything." [236]

Accelerated Procedure

Greece has both an accelerated procedure for applicants deemed to be economic migrants and a normal procedure.  However, it appears that the large majority of asylum cases are pushed into the accelerated procedure. [237]

Accelerated claims are supposed to be decided at the first instance within one month of the application being filed, whereas the normal procedure allows for a decision in three months. [238] Applicants at borders, transit zones or ports, and airports whose cases are denied in the accelerated procedure have eight days to appeal a negative decision, [239] whereas applicants in the normal procedure have 30 days to appeal. [240] Greek refugee law provides not only that all asylum applications "submitted at the border or the transit zones of ports or airports of the country" [241] shall be in the accelerated procedure, but also applications of asylum seekers who "entered the country unlawfully or prolonged his/her stay unlawfully and, without good reason, has either not presented himself/herself to the authorities and/or filed an asylum application as soon as possible, given the circumstances of his/her entry." [242]   This sets up a damned if you do/damned if you don't scenario in which applicants are put in the accelerated procedure if they apply immediately upon entering the country or if they don't.  Other reasons, in law, for placing an asylum seeker in the accelerated procedure is if the claim is "manifestly unfounded" or if the applicant comes from a safe country of origin or safe third country. [243]

"Manifestly unfounded" cases appear to be less than manifest in their unfoundedness.  Efthalia Pappa of the Greek Ecumenical Refugee Program told Human Rights Watch how a lawyer from her organization went to the asylum interview with an unaccompanied child from Eritrea who was a torture survivor.  "This boy had the capacity to tell how he had been tortured," she said.  "Because a lawyer was present, the police officer was obliged to write it down.  At the end, though, he wrote, 'manifestly unfounded, came for economic reasons.'" [244]  

Grounds for Protection

The standard that an asylum applicant in Greece needs to meet in order to be recognized as a refugee is the same (a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion) as that of the Refugee Convention and the European Council directive on the qualifications for refugee status, which has been transposed into Greek law. [245]

Greek law also provides a humanitarian status for applicants whose refugee claims are rejected but who in exceptional cases and for humanitarian reasons can be provided with a one-year residence permit, at which point they are expected to depart Greece unless that remains impossible. [246] In contrast, refugees are granted five-year permits. [247]

In July 2008, Greece enacted new legislation, Presidential Decree 96/2008, to bring its qualifications for refugee status and other forms of international protection into conformity with EU standards.  This law adds a new ground for protection, subsidiary status, for persons who would face "serious harm" if returned.  Serious harm is defined to include the death penalty, torture or inhuman and degrading treatment, and serious threats to a civilian's life or physical integrity on account of indiscriminate violence in situations of armed conflict. [248]   The July 2008 law stipulates that beneficiaries of subsidiary protection will be granted renewable two-year residence permits. [249] The law provides all beneficiaries of international protection with work authorization, access to education, social welfare, and health care on a par with Greek nationals. [250]

As of the writing of this report, Greece has no experience applying the new law's subsidiary protection standard in its asylum adjudications.[251]  When it does so, interviewers and adjudicators should be guided by the latest UNHCR return advisory of December 2007 which recommends that all states should consider asylum seekers from central and southern Iraq as refugees based on the 1951 Refugee Convention, but also that those not recognized under the Refugee Convention criteria should be afforded subsidiary protection.[252]  

 

The First-instance Interview

The Petrou Ralli police station, where 94 percent of asylum interviews in Greece were conducted in 2007, [253] has one cluttered, noisy, busy room without adequate space for privacy or time to elicit all relevant information where 10 police interviewers conduct 60 to 75 interviews per day. [254] At one end of the same open room where all the interviews take place stands an inky table where the applicants are fingerprinted. 

The legal standard in Greek refugee law holds that "a personal interview shall take place under conditions which guarantee appropriate confidentiality... [and] which allow applicants to present the grounds of their applications in a comprehensive manner." [255]   In a room awash in paper, movement, and commotion, a private, confidential, comprehensive interview seems nearly impossible.

UNHCR analyzed 305 asylum first-instance decisions as part of a study on the Implementation of the European Council's Qualification Directive and found not only that all claimants were rejected, but also that "none of these decisions contained any reference to the facts and none contained any detailed legal reasoning." [256]    The rejected cases included Somalis, Afghans, Sudanese, Sri Lankans, and Iraqis.  The rejected Iraqi cases included a Chaldean Christian claiming persecution at the hands of Muslim militants and an Iraqi police officer expressing a fear of persecution because of his cooperation with U.S. forces. [257]

UNHCR's review of case files showed the consistent use of boilerplate language in the denials.  All contained the standard language:  "It is obvious that s/he abandoned his country in order to find a job and improve his living conditions."  They all also misstate international refugee law by stating that the applicant "cannot justify that s/he suffered or will suffer any individual persecution by the authorities of his country." [258]   International refugee law, including Article 6 of the EU's Qualification Directive, which as of July 2008 has been transposed into Greek law, explicitly recognizes that nonstate actors can be the agents of persecution. [259]  

Secretariat General for Public Order provided Human Rights Watch with two sets of interview questions for police officers to use in first-instance asylum interviews.[260]  The first set of 10 questions is for the accelerated procedure for applicants presumed to have come to Greece for economic reasons.  Many of these are leading questions:  "For which reason was it not possible for you to find work in your country? Did you try to move to another region of your country in order to work?  Did you try to find work in any of the neighbouring countries? Have you been forced to abandon your country for reasons of quarrels/troubles with your relatives?" The questionnaire appears not to reflect the reality that refugees can have mixed motives for leaving their countries or that private actors, including family members, can be the agents of persecution.  The 18-question guide for police interviewers in the regular procedure includes questions that test the applicant's general knowledge of his alleged country of origin as well as questions that probe the facts of a persecution claim and the possibility of an internal flight alternative.  Both questionnaires ask the applicant why he chose Greece as his destination country.  

UNHCR's analysis of first-instance decisions included a review of the police case files and found that "294 of the first instance case files reviewed did not contain the responses of the applicants to standard questions posed by interviewing police officers.  Only 11 files contained two to three brief lines stating facts." [261]  

Asylum seekers interviewed by Human Rights Watch gave accounts of their first-instance interviews that were consistent with these findings.  A 17-year-old Afghan boy said, "The police here did not ask me about my story so I didn't tell them." [262]   An 18-year old Afghan who told Human Rights Watch about a local commander who beat his father, said of his 15-minute asylum interview, "I told them about the commander, but they didn't ask me any details or ask any questions about the commander." [263]   A 33-year-old Nigerian man said, "I wanted to tell him why I came here in Greece, but he did not want to listen to the story of my life.  It was not an interview.  They only asked why I came here.  I wanted to explain.  And he only wrote, "A better life."  He asked me to sign the paper, but it was all in Greek.  I signed." [264]  

Another Afghan, a highly educated man who speaks excellent English and insisted on an interview conducted in English still required a translator because none of the police interviewers at Petrou Ralli could speak English well enough to interview him directly.  Because he was available he also spent the day of his own interview acting as an interpreter for other Afghan asylum seekers.  Including time for interpretation, the interviews for which he interpreted took about 30 minutes.  His own interview lasted a little over an hour.  He said:

They asked us questions that had nothing to do with our country.  They only addressed their experiences, not according to our lower level of experience in Afghanistan. In Afghanistan you can't do what you want, it's not like in Greece.  The interviewer did not look for explanations for Afghanistan, but acted as though the situation there was like here in Greece.  He would not let me give details.  He did not ask step by step what happened.  I brought papers to the interview to prove my claim and I wrote translations of everything into English.  I was not able to explain my documents.  He didn't look at them. [265]  

The day before talking with Human Rights Watch this Afghan man went back to Petrou Ralli to pick up his red card.  "I got a red card with a rejection notice.  The paper is in Greek.  I still can't understand it." [266]  

The handful of Greek lawyers who provide legal services for asylum seekers consistently express the view that the interviews are superficial and that there is no chance for the granting of status in the first instance.  Panagiotis Papadimitriou, member of the Legal Assistance Unit of the Greek Council for Refugees (GCR), described the quality of the interviews as low.  "People tell us they are pushed to say they come for economic reasons and to find a job." [267]   Pappa of the Greek Ecumenical Refugee Program, who has been assisting asylum seekers for 14 years, said, "Our 1999 asylum legislation is better than the EU directive on refugee status determination, but nothing of these provisions is implemented in the proper way." [268]   She said, "Genuine refugees have no chance in the first instance.  It is not an interview, but rather:  'What is your name?  What is your date of birth? How did you get to Greece?" [269]

Interpreters

The Greek asylum procedure lacks competent interpreters.  Greek law-as well as Article 10 of the EC directive on asylum procedures-specifies that a translator must be available for the asylum interview, but some asylum seekers told Human Rights Watch that they did not have interpreters during their interview or that the interpreters that were present were not competent or acted inappropriately. [270]   One problem is when interpreters begin to act as interviewers themselves.  "The law says that there should be two police interviewers and an interpreter," said Pappa of the Ecumenical Refugee Program, "but in practice the police interviewer often delegates the actual interviewing to an interpreter." [271]  

Some asylum seekers said that some of the interpreters in the asylum office in Petrou Ralli seem to take over the interviews and seem particularly adversarial.  In other cases, the interpreters "coach" the applicants to say that they came for economic reasons.  A 16-year-old Afghan boy recounted the role of the interpreter in his asylum interview at Petrou Ralli:

The policeman in civilian clothes asked something and the Iranian woman 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.  I don't remember what I said after that…. I thought if I said something more the police would kick me out without documents.  I was scared.  I was then told to step to the side for fingerprints.  The Iranian woman said two or three times that I should say I came for a better life.  The interview took five minutes. [272]

Problems with interpreters are particularly acute in the outlying areas.  A 31-year–old English-speaking Iraqi who applied for asylum in Samos (and has still not received his red card), said that he would not have been able to seek asylum there if he didn't speak English. "In Samos, it would be a problem if you only spoke Arabic." [273]   Human Rights Watch asked the chief of police for Samos, Mr. Ionnis Kotsampasis, how he was able to find interpreters for asylum seekers on the island.  He said, "We don't have translators, but it is not a problem.  Usually in any group there is someone who speaks English, so we make that person the translator." [274]   He added that if necessary, there is someone on the island who speaks Arabic and who could translate.

The asylum office at Petrou Ralli where more than 90 percent of first-instance interviews are conducted has 20 full-time interpreters, five of whom are Arabic speakers.  On the day of the Human Rights Watch visit there were few if any Arabic speakers among the crowd of about 75 people waiting for their interviews to begin.  The overwhelming majority appeared to be from Bangladesh or other south Asian countries.  Human Rights Watch asked a Bangladeshi interpreter how many Bangladeshi interpreters there were. "I am the only one," he said. [275]

The problems with interpreters are not limited to the asylum interviews per se.  A 36-year-old Iraqi man from Basra was arrested while walking on the street shortly after his first interview with Human Rights Watch, spent seven days in the Petrou Ralli jail, and then consented to a second Human Rights Watch interview two hours after his release from Petrou Ralli.  He was taken from Petrou Ralli to appear in court.  Because of language problems, he was not clear where the court was or the charges against him.  He spoke about the hearing:

I went to court, but I didn't understand anything because there was no interpreter.  The judge asked me one question.  The whole thing only lasted three minutes.  He asked me a question in Greek.  A guard who speaks some Arabic told me that he sentenced me to three months, but I was released after seven days. [276]     

Appeals of Negative Decisions

Like first-instance decisions, appeals are characterized by cursory consideration of claims and procedural superficiality; in 2007 Greece granted asylum to 138 cases on appeal, two percent of the total.[277]  A six-person Appeals Committee, chaired by the legal counsellor of the Secretariat General for Public Order, meets twice a week and considers 75 cases per session. The Appeals Committee historically has not rendered decisions itself, but rather has made recommendations to the Secretariat General for Public Order.  The new refugee law, retroactive to December 1, 2007, now authorizes the Appeals Committee to make decisions itself, but the majority of the Appeals Committee remains government officials: two from the police (including the chairman) and two from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, with one from the Athens Bar Association and one from UNHCR.[278]  At the end of 2007, Greece had a serious backlog of 19,015 cases awaiting hearings before the Appeals Committee.[279]

UNHCR's study of Greece's compliance with the EC's Qualification Directive included an analysis of recommendations from the majority of the Appeals Committee, and found that most majority recommendations were repetitive boilerplate with the same language as first-instance decisions ("It is obvious that s/he abandoned his country in order to find a job and improve his living conditions.") and that "generally, there was no further information relating to the facts or legal reasoning, and there were no recorded minutes of the hearing." [280]   These findings call into question whether Greece has met the requirement of Article 39 of the EC's Procedures Directive that asylum applicants should have "an effective remedy" before a court or tribunal against a negative decision on their first-instance asylum claim. [281]

"Tricks" to Knock Applicants Out of the Asylum Procedure

Many people told Human Rights that they had tried to apply for asylum in Greece, but had been tricked into abandoning their asylum claims by their failure to comply with procedural requirements that were not adequately explained and which they did not understand or because of being physically prevented from lodging appeals within specified time limits.

One problem is physical access to the Petrou Ralli police station.  Just as most of the hundreds of people who line up on the street outside Petrou Ralli are not able to lodge applications for asylum in the first place, asylum seekers also experience obstacles in physically being able to submit their appeals to the police station within the prescribed deadline.  "The police stop you from going, even if you carry a reference letter from GCR," said a red card holder who also works for one of the service providers. "I had many documents to support my claim.  The young guy opened my file; it was full of documents, and he didn't even look at the file.  I was rejected.  It is the same answer for everyone." [282]  

One of the most common "tricks" to remove applicants from the asylum procedure is that of giving the applicant the coveted red card, the asylum-seeker card widely known to be renewable at six-month intervals, together with a paper written only in Greek that says that the asylum application has been rejected and that the person has 10 days to file an appeal.  Very few applicants can read or understand Greek and in their happiness and relief to receive the red card, pay little attention to the white paper with the Greek lettering.  When they go back six months later to renew their red card, it is taken away because they failed to file an appeal.

A 23-year-old Iraqi man from Mosul who fled from Iraq in 2007 illustrates both the problem of access to Greek territory and to being tricked out of the asylum procedure.  On his first attempt to enter Greece on September 10, 2007 he was summarily expelled to Turkey after being held for 12 hours.  Later that month, he succeeded in entering Greece on his second attempt, and applied for asylum as soon as he could.  But he quickly fell out of the asylum procedure:

I asked for asylum and got the red card and a white paper.  No one explained to me what the white paper was for.  So I missed the appeal of my asylum denial.  When I went to renew my red card on March 23, they took it away.  Now I have no paper and I could be stopped and put in jail at any time. [283]

Others fall out of the procedure for missing the deadlines for renewal of the red card.  A 56-year-old Iraqi from Baghdad told Human Rights Watch how his son fell out of the asylum procedure:

It was a Greek Christian holiday when he was denied.  The government offices were closed, but he was denied because he was late and now he has been undocumented since 2002. He has been arrested four times.  He is afraid to work.  He can't go anywhere else.  He came here in 1998 as a young boy.  He missed the renewal date by four or five days after this holiday.  We have a red card and he has nothing.[284]

While other applicants lose their red cards because of failures to report changes of address or simply because they were not at home when the authorities checked on their residence.  The president of an Iraqi Christian self-help organization, a 64-year-old man with a wife and two sons, told Human Rights Watch of the Kafkaesque ordeal that has left him undocumented:

I had a red card and lived at the same address in Alexandroupolis.  The police came and said I was not home.  I went to renew my card with the Alexandroupolis police and they told me my file was sent to headquarters in Athens and told me to go there in two months.  I brought my red card and they took it away.  They said I was not at my residence.  I never had a chance to appeal the denial of my red card.  I went to GCR and UNHCR, but they couldn't get it back either.  They never gave me a first rejection. I don't ever remember having an interview.  I just got a paper on September 30, 2004 telling me I had 30 days to leave Greece.  I have been living illegally for four years.  My son needs an operation on his leg, but I can't go to any clinic.  I can't work because I have no papers. [285]

Some asylum seekers experience long delays getting their red cards in the first place.  They don't fall out of the system because they are not recognized as being in the system in the first place.  Human Rights Watch spoke to a 31-year-old Iraqi from Baghdad who says that he escaped Iraq after the Mahdi Army kidnapped him. He said that he did not apply for asylum while in detention in Samos because he thought it would mean longer detention.  After his release he went to a lawyer who "took me to the police again, and they fingerprinted me again.  That was two months ago, and I still don't have a red card." [286]   At the time of our interview he was living illegally beyond the 30-day required departure; he had been arrested twice, but released after being held for several hours in the police station. He is now homeless and sleeps in a park on the island of Samos. 

For those people who do get the coveted red cards, their six-month renewals provoke great anxiety.  Because of the lack of any predictable procedure or normal outcome for renewing red cards, the ability to gain access to the bureaucracy to renew the card and what happens to the card at the point are matters of great uncertainty.  The lack of transparency and fear are factors that in combination make the system prone to corruption and abuse.  An 33-year-old Iraqi who was kidnapped and tortured for having a brother who worked as a translator for the Americans (his brother was killed) has had a red card for two years and five months, but expressed to Human Rights Watch his fear about going back for each renewal.  "To renew the red card, a gay policeman said I would need to have sex with him.  Now I need to have someone from GCR go with me when I renew my card." [287]