III. Methodology and Scope

Human Rights Watch conducted research for this report in Greece from May 22 to June 5, 2008 and in Turkey from June 5 to June 14, 2008.  We conducted 173 interviews with migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers, of which 126 took place in Greece, 46 in Turkey, and one by telephone with an Iraqi asylum seeker in the Netherlands who had recently arrived from Greece. Human Rights Watch told all interviewees that they would receive no personal service or benefit for their testimonies and that the interviews were completely voluntary and confidential.

Human Rights Watch interviewed 79 Iraqis, 32 Afghans, 13 Somalis, 11 Iranians, and 38 members of 16 other nationalities.  The 173 people interviewed were overwhelmingly male, which reflects both that more single men than women engage in irregular migration and that the women who do migrate are harder to locate and interview.  We were able to interview only 16 females. Of that number, five were Iraqis, all of whom were Christians living for a number of years in Athens; the remainder were all women or girls interviewed in places of detention:  in Greece, five in the Petrou Ralli jail in Athens, one in the Kyprinou detention facility in Fylakio, and one in the detention facility on the island of Samos; in Turkey, three in the detention facility at Kırklareli and one in Edirne.

Although the age demographics of the Iraqis interviewed were evenly spread out (three teenagers; 20 in their twenties; 20 in their thirties; 22 in their forties; 4 in their fifties; and 10 in their sixties), those over the age of 40 were almost all Christians living long-term in Athens, whereas the Muslims were almost all under age 40.  The Iraqi Muslims were less likely than their Christian co-nationals to have spent as much time in Greece or to be asylum applicants or to have some form of documentation.  By contrast, the non-Iraqis interviewed were on the whole much younger than the Iraqis: two were pre-teenage children; 35 were teenagers; 46 were in their twenties; 7 in their thirties; and only 3 in their forties and 1 in his fifties.

Iraqi Christians were disproportionately represented in the interview sample because they have been living in Greece (and Turkey) longer, are more integrated, better organized communally, and therefore easier to locate and interview than the largely undocumented Iraqi single Muslim men.  Of the 79 Iraqis interviewed, 38 were Christians, 13 were Kurds and one each identified himself as Sabean or Turkoman.  Of the 26 Arab Muslims, the relatively small number who identified as Sunni or Shi`a was evenly split, and a few spoke about having parents of mixed sectarian backgrounds.  The majority of Iraqis interviewed, 41, came from Baghdad, which was the case for nearly all of the Muslim newer arrivals.  Mosul was home for nine of the interviewees, and eight originated from Kirkuk.  Smaller numbers came from Dahok, Zakho, Erbil, Sulaymaniya, Diyala, Basra, Najaf, Karbala, and small villages. 

Of the 79 Iraqis interviewed, 70 were in Greece, 8 in Turkey, and 1 in the Netherlands.  Of those interviewed in Greece, 62 interviewees were in Athens, 5 in Samos, and 3 were detainees at Petrou Ralli. Nearly all of the interviews of Iraqi Christians in Athens took place at a community center near a church that includes a health clinic and provides other social services.  Nearly all of the interviews of Iraqi Muslim Arabs, Kurds, and other Iraqi minorities took place in complete privacy in slum tenement buildings and cafes in Athens or the makeshift camp at Pendeli.  Of the Iraqis interviewed in Turkey, six (all Christians) took place in private homes in Istanbul, and two were with detainees in Edirne.  With the exception of detainees and some of the Christians at the community center, interviews generally lasted at least 40 minutes and often more than an hour. 

Of the 94 non-Iraqis interviewed, 56 were interviewed in Greece and 38 in Turkey.  Of those interviewed in Greece, 15 were interviewed in Athens, 10 on the islands, seven (all Afghans) in Patras, and 14 in detention. Interviews of non-detainees in Athens and on the islands took place in slum tenement buildings, parks, or the office of the Ecumenical Refugee Center, and were conducted with complete privacy and often lasting an hour or more. 

Interviews of detainees in Greece did not take place under optimal conditions with complete privacy from other detainees, but guards who were usually within eyesight of the interview were not able to hear what was being said. Despite repeated requests, Human Rights Watch was not granted permission to visit Mersinidi in Chios, Pagani-Mitilini in Lesvos, and police facilities and detention centers in Peplos, Vrissika, Feres, Soufli, Tichero, Sapes, and Venna in the Evros region.  The information gleaned about these facilities, therefore, comes exclusively from former detainees (and our brief, unauthorized visit to Venna).

The Greek Ministry of Interior initially gave Human Rights Watch permission to visit only two facilities, Fylakio-Kyprinou in the Evros region and the new facility on Samos Island, and specified that the visits to the two facilities would be "for a few minutes" and "without discussion with detainees." [1]

Following the visits to Fylakio-Kyprinou and Samos, Human Rights Watch wrote to Brigadier General Constantinos Kordatos, commander of Hellenic Police Headquarters Aliens' Division, saying, "It is not possible to make any meaningful assessment of detention conditions without the opportunity to talk with detainees or to spend more than a few minutes walking through a facility," and again requested permission to visit more facilities and to be able to interview detainees privately. [2]   Following the second letter, the authorities gave Human Rights Watch permission to visit the detention facility for boys at Amigdeleza [3] and the detention facility at Petrou Ralli and allowed more time for us to speak with detainees. 

All of the non-Iraqis interviewed in Turkey were detained-24 in Edirne and 14 in Kırklareli.  All 11 of the Iranians interviewed were in Turkey.  The interviews at Edirne and Kırklareli were conducted in complete privacy, outdoors in courtyard areas without the presence of guards, police, or other authorities and each interview took as long as we wanted, in some cases for an hour or more.

Human Rights Watch was particularly careful in questioning people who claimed to be Iraqi to ensure that they were truthful about their nationality; we are satisfied that all those listed as Iraqi in these statistics and in this report are, in fact, Iraqi nationals.  The primary researcher for this report has conducted extensive interviews with Iraqi refugees and displaced people inside Iraq and in Turkey, Jordan, Iran, and Kuwait. The Arabic interpreter lived and studied in Baghdad.  We asked specific questions and assessed accent in order to test those claiming to be Iraqi. 

We are less confident that detainees identifying themselves as Burmese, Somalis, and Palestinians were who they said they were; in fact, one or two detained "Palestinians" may have been Iraqis.  For the purposes of this report, the actual nationalities of these detained non-Iraqis did not reflect on their credibility about conditions of detention, treatment at the border, and access to asylum.

We also interviewed police chiefs and detention center guards in both Greece and Turkey, as well as Coast Guard personnel in Greece.  In both Greece and Turkey, we interviewed UNHCR, lawyers, service providers, and other experts. 

This report pays relatively little attention to the situation of unaccompanied children in Greece because Human Rights Watch is issuing a separate, complementary report on the treatment of unaccompanied children in Greece. Left to Survive:  Protection Breakdown for Unaccompanied Children in Greece was researched at the same time as this report and will be published soon after this report's release.

We note that Greece adopted two new refugee laws in July 2008, Presidential Decrees 90/2008 and 96/2008, after we had completed our field research but before publication of the report.  Although the two laws were officially applicable retroactively, in real time officials were unaware of the applicability of laws that had not yet been passed.  In some cases, this created a discrepancy between what officials, experts, and asylum seekers told us about how the asylum system functions (for example, with respect to length of time of detention and deadlines for filing appeals) and how it should now be operating.  We have tried to note such discrepancies in footnotes. 

Finally, we promised to protect the anonymity of the migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees we interviewed. In most cases they gave us their names and other identifying details that will remain confidential.  The notation used in this report uses a letter and a number for each interview; the letter indicates the person who conducted the interview and the number refers to the person being interviewed.  All interviews are on file with Human Rights Watch.