XVII. Dublin Returns

The Shock of Return  

Iraqis who are returned to Greece per the Dublin system consistently comment on the rough, intimidating, insulting reception from Greek police from the moment they step off the plane.  A 30-year-old man from Baghdad was returned from Sweden on March 5, 2008 after his fingerprints identified him as having first arrived in Greece.  On arrival at the Athens airport, he alleges that Greek police beat him as soon as he got off the plane:

They beat me at the door of the plane as soon as it arrived.  I said to my Swedish escort, "Look what they are doing to me."  But he raised his hands to say there was nothing he could do.  They took me by the collar.  They pushed me.  I said, "Why are you pushing me?"  Then the Greek policeman kicked me in the balls and I fell down.  I was still in handcuffs.  The Swedish escort stood in the doorway of the plane and watched this happen.  There were two other Iraqis being returned with me and four policemen who were all there watching me being beaten.[312] 

Things improved little after his initial reception: "They took me to the airport police station, where I stayed for seven days until March 12.  The conditions were not good.  It was not clean.  The food was not good.  The bathrooms were very dirty."[313]

This returnee from Sweden who had been in the asylum process in Sweden until his fingerprints were discovered, had yet to have even the most perfunctory consideration of his asylum claim in Greece at the time of the Human Rights Watch interview: "They didn't say anything to me about asylum in the airport or at the airport police station.  They didn't ask me any questions about Iraq. When they let me go, they just gave me a red card."[314]

Although he had no resources, the Greek authorities provided him no shelter or assistance upon return.  To the contrary:

From when I was released, I have not found even a simple job. I have a red card; that is all.  I live with six others in one room.  My red card was stolen, so I went to the police to report it, and they put me in jail for seven more days.  I asked them, "Why are you putting me in jail?"  They said that they suspected me of giving or selling my red card to someone else.  I didn't go to court or anything.  It was the jail at the Exarchion police station.  It was dirty, just like the other jail. [315]

Access to Asylum upon Return

Human Rights Watch interviewed a number of asylum seekers, mostly Iraqis, who were returned to Greece under the Dublin II regulation and who have yet to have had meaningful examination of their asylum claims.  A 34-year-old Iraqi from Baghdad who said that he left under threat from the Mahdi Army, who was held in horrible conditions on Chios Island, traveled to Sweden at his earliest opportunity after being released from detention.[316]  He spent eight months in Sweden living at an open reception center.  "In my last interview in Sweden, a female official said, 'I promise you the same rights in Greece as in Sweden.'  It was a lie what she told me."  He showed Human Rights a letter in English signed by the commander of the Hellenic Police Headquarters Aliens' Division, Brigadier General Constantinos P. Kordatos, that said, "Please note that this person will be able to submit any asylum application upon arrival to our country if he/she wishes to do so."

Swedish officials returned him to Greece in March 2008.  They turned over the asylum claim he filed in Sweden and all supporting documents, which he saw being handed to Greek police upon arrival. He spent the next four days in the airport jail.  "But I had no interview," he said.  He explained the questions he was asked:

When I first arrived, a woman in civilian clothing said, 'Where are you from?'  I said, 'Iraq.'  She asked where else I had been, and I told her that I came from Sweden.  She asked, 'Why did you leave Iraq?' I was in a room with four other people.  There was no confidentiality.  I said in English, 'Can I speak with you?'  She said, 'No.'  She gave me a form and told me to write my story in a little box on a piece of paper that was about three inches wide and two inches long.  I wrote my claim, about 40 or 50 words, to tell about my problems with security in Baghdad. I spent no more than 10 or 15 minutes with her.  She told me to go.  She spoke no Arabic.  There were also Afghans with me who wanted to talk.  But there was no translator for them.  After that, they put me in the street.  When I left the airport, I had nothing, nowhere to go.  I had no address in Greece. When I was in Sweden, the government paid for an apartment.  It was not like a jail at all.[317] 

A 30-year-old Sunni former Ba`th party member from Baghdad who fled Iraq in 2006 after the Mahdi Armi kidnapped and beat him [he showed Human Rights Watch significant scars on his back and torso] crossed into Greece on his third attempt in March 2007 and was held at the old detention center at Samos.  There he claimed to be an Afghan out of fear that the authorities might return him to Iraq if he said he was an Iraqi.  He said that no one at Samos asked him any questions in Pashtu, Farsi, or Arabic to establish his identity, but simply fingerprinted him, took down his name and "Afghan" nationality, and released him after a week with a 30-day notice to leave the country.  Twenty days later, he flew to Sweden with a false passport:

I applied for asylum in Sweden.  They respected me. They listened to me.  They heard my story.  I was not in detention, but in a refugee hotel. But after five months they found my fingerprints and told me I had to go back to Greece.

Several members of my family were living in Sweden and I wanted to stay there, but they were cousins, not close relatives, and they wouldn't let me stay. [318]

Rather than be deported to Greece, he fled from Sweden to Norway and applied for asylum there, but his fingerprints caught up with him again.  He then fled to Germany, but was caught, put in jail for 65 days, and then was handcuffed and deported to Greece via Hungary.  He even asked the Hungarians for asylum during his three-hour stopover, but they told him he had to go to Greece:

I arrived in Athens in April 2008.  As soon as I arrived at the airport I was met by two Greek policemen who started insulting me.  They asked why I used different names in different countries.  I had used my real name in Sweden and Norway where I wanted asylum, but a different name in Germany and Greece.  They put my fake name from Germany on a red card that they gave me.  They left blank the residence in Greece because I told them I had nowhere to live here.  They just gave me the red card, no other papers, nothing, no asylum interview, no interpreter, no lawyer, they just told me to go.  I asked where.  They said, "Anywhere you want."  I don't have any appointment for an asylum interview, but the red card runs out in four months [they usually are issued for six months].  If they gave me a work and residence permit I could live here, but I can't do anything with this card.[319]

A 21-year-old Iraqi Kurd who had already been deported from Greece to Turkey and from Turkey to northern Iraq where he was tortured upon his return said that he tried to apply for asylum while detained at Samos. Instead of being given a red card, however, he was only given a notice to leave the country in 30 days, which he did by going to Finland. His story continues with the revolving door transfer back to Greece-and still no consideration of his asylum claim:

So, I left Greece and went to Finland. This was 2007. I had a fake passport. I asked for asylum there, but they had my fingerprints and told me I had to seek asylum in Greece. I told them that I had tried to seek asylum in Greece, but that the Greek authorities had only given me a paper saying I had to leave the country in 30 days and had not given me any asylum-seeker card. But the Finnish court said I had to go back to Greece.

I stayed in jail for two months and four days in Helsinki. The jail was good. The jail in Finland was better than being free here. They have human rights in Finland. I felt like a human being in Finland. I don't feel like a human being in Greece.

When I arrived back in the Greek airport, the first words I heard were, "You malaka, where are you coming from?" My mind immediately changed from Finland to Greece.

I spent eight days in the airport jail. I'm too angry to describe it. It was one small cell with 10 guys in it. You had to wait three hours before they would let you go to the toilet. I was very angry… They gave me a deportation paper to leave Greece in one month. By now, I have a whole file of these deportation papers.

I have been in jail four times since being returned from Finland. Each time I get another deportation paper. Now whenever I see the police, I change direction. I am now illegal again.  I never got a red card. I live in this country with no papers, no job. How can I eat here? I don't know the language, I don't have any friends. What if I get sick? Nobody knows me. I don't know what to do. [320]

Despite the Dublin II rule that the country agreeing to the transfer agrees to examine the asylum claim, in fact, if Greece allowed this man to file a new asylum application upon his return from Finland at all, it appears as though it was a perfunctory denial while in detention at the airport that certainly did not give him anything approaching a meaningful examination of his asylum claim or appeal of a negative decision.

 

Lack of Reception, Housing, Social Services for Dublin Returnees 

Some returnees have a less traumatic initial re-entry, but find that their condition deteriorates after living a few months in Greece.  The contrast between housing and other social services that are provided to asylum seekers in other EU countries and the lack of support upon return to Greece is one of the most disorienting and alienating experiences for returnees under the Dublin system.  The lack of social support also has a striking impact on the ability of vulnerable asylum seekers to pursue their claims for protection in Greece.  

Iraqi asylum seekers who managed to live for a time in other European states, particularly Sweden, Finland, and Norway, praised their treatment as far more humane than what they experienced in Greece.  A 34-year-old man from Kirkuk who said that he fled for his life because people were seeking revenge on him for having been a military policeman in the Ba`thist era, nearly died crossing by foot from Turkey to Greece.  He is now partially blind and dependent on dialysis for his survival.  He spoke highly of his treatment in Sweden, in contrast to his present circumstances in Athens, where he was homeless and destitute at the time Human Rights Watch talked with him:

I asked for asylum in Stockholm.  They took me to a hospital and from there I stayed for eight months in a house under comfortable conditions.  Even the taxi driver bringing me from the hospital treated me politely, asking me if there was any place else I would like to go, and the police when it was snowing took me in their car and treated me nicely.  They gave me a bankcard [He produces it.  It says "Migrationsverket"]. 

But they took my fingerprints and said I should be returned to Greece.  I said that I did not want to return to Greece because I didn't think they would take care of my kidneys and eyes.  But Sweden checked with Greece and Greece said they would take care of my health and all my rights.  A Swedish official told me that if Greece does not accept you, we will take you and will let you bring your wife and son (who are still in Iraq).[321] 

The man produced a copy of a letter to the Greek authorities from a Swedish doctor that said that the man had "end stage renal disease" and was dialysis dependent.  The letter concluded by saying, "Thanks in advance for the dialysis and medical help that you surely are going to offer [name withheld]."[322] 

Upon his return to Athens, the Greek authorities transferred him to a Hellenic Red Cross camp in Lavrios, but he became homeless within a few months:

After [one month in the Lavrios camp], they brought me to Athens and put me in a hotel for two months.  They then said I couldn't stay there any longer.  I am now homeless.  I don't have a toilet. Nothing.  I live on the street.  I only have peripheral vision. I am blind straight ahead. I go every three days to get dialysis to clean out my blood.  But I don't speak English or Greek.  I don't understand anything.  I don't understand the medicine, how many tablets I am supposed to take.[323]  

The authorities rejected his asylum claim in January 2008 and his case was under appeal at the time of our interview.  He went to a social service agency for help.  "The interpreter there told me I was unlucky," he said, "He told me that I would die on the street."[324]