II. Xenophobic Violence in Athens

They say it’s a free country but then they beat me because I’m a migrant … I don’t go outside when it’s dark.

—Qadir Hossaini, Afghan legal migrant, Athens, December 6, 2011

On May 10, 2011, a 44-year-old Greek man, Manolis Kantaris, was fatally stabbed by assailants who stole his video camera as he prepared to take his wife to the hospital to give birth. Just hours later, and before any official announcements were made about the national origin of the attackers, protesters converged on the area where the attack took place shouting “Foreigners Out” and “Greece is for Greeks.”[40] Over the next few days, gangs of Greeks attacked migrants and asylum seekers indiscriminately in central Athens in apparent retaliation for the murder. They chased them through the streets, dragged them off buses, and beat and stabbed them.

The upsurge of anti-immigrant violence was a cause for serious concern. However, attacks against migrants and asylum seekers began well before May 2011, and continue with frightening regularity. Migrants and asylum seekers interviewed by Human Rights Watch spoke of virtual no-go areas in Athens after dark because of fear of attacks by vigilante groups. Yunus Mohammadi, the president of an association of Afghans in Greece, told us he shows newer arrivals a map of Athens with a red line around areas they should avoid.  “This is exactly what I used to do in Afghanistan with the Red Cross about places people shouldn’t go because of fighting,” Mohammadi said. “And here I am doing the same thing in a European country.”[41]

The true extent of xenophobic violence in Greece is unknown. Government statistics are unreliable due to failures of the law enforcement agencies and criminal justice system to adequately respond to, identify, investigate, and prosecute hate crimes. Underreporting by victims, particularly undocumented migrants, is also a significant problem. In the entire country the Greek government recorded just two hate crimes in 2009, and only one in 2008.[42] In December 2011 an official at the Ministry of Citizen Protection told Human Rights Watch there were three cases from 2010 and 11 cases from 2011 under investigation as possible hate crimes.[43] In a May 2012 interview, Dimitris Zimianitis, a prosecutor who serves as liaison for the Greek government with the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, indicated there were nine cases from 2011 under investigation as possible hate crimes in Athens.[44]

To fill the gaps in official data and in the wake of growing evidence of violent attacks on migrants, the National Commission for Human Rights—an independent government advisory body—and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees spearheaded the creation, in October 2011, of a network of 18 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to systematically record racist attacks. The first results of the pilot project were presented in March 2012. 

The Network recorded 63 incidents between October and December 2011 in Athens and Patras. Forty-two incidents involved physical injury, including twelve involving serious injury. Eighteen of these incidents involved police officers, while the rest were perpetrated by private citizens.[45] Most victims were undocumented migrants (27) and asylum seekers (23), from Afghanistan (25) and sub-Saharan Africa (21).[46]

Doctors of the World and the Greek NGO Praksis, both members of the recording network, run health clinics in downtown Athens. Both organizations have expressed serious concerns about the increasing number of migrants and asylum seekers seeking medical assistance following what victims described as racist attacks. The two groups only began systematically recording cases of racist violence as part of the Network’s pilot project in October 2011. But in June 2011, Doctors of the World director Nikitas Kanakis estimated that 300 victims of such attacks had sought treatment at the organization’s clinic in the first half of 2011. Tzanetos Antipas, the head of Praksis, said at the same time that they had treated just over 200 victims in roughly the same period.[47]

In the course of our research, Human Rights Watch interviewed victims of 51 serious attacks between August 2009 and May 2012. Victims were from Afghanistan, Somalia, and seven other countries; they included two pregnant women. Patterns emerge from the victim testimonies: most of the attacks take place at night on or near town squares; attackers work in groups, include women, and are often dressed in dark clothing with their faces obscured by cloth or helmets; bare-fisted attacks are not uncommon, but attackers also often wield clubs or beer bottles as weapons; most attacks are accompanied by insults against the migrants and exhortations to leave Greece, and in some cases the assailants also rob their victims.

A number of victims said women actively participated in the assault. Jereer K., a 17-year-old undocumented Somali boy, was attacked by four men and two women on motorcycles near Aghios Panteleimonas Square in November 2011: “They attacked me with sticks and were kicking me,” he said. “One lady hit me, so much. She was around 20 years old, with thick black hair with red in it, dark complexion.”[48] Saadia, a 20-year-old Somali, was eight months pregnant when four men and one woman attacked her in the same area in April 2012. They yelled insults, slapped her and kicked her to the ground. They ran away when she clutched her stomach; she thought they might not have understood she was pregnant until that point because she was wearing a loose dress. Her child was born healthy a few weeks later.[49]

Not included in this figure are eight comparatively minor incidents in which the interviewee was approached menacingly, chased, slapped or otherwise lightly accosted, or spat on.

It is impossible to know how many attacks were thwarted by the intervention of passers-by or because the intended victim was able to escape. We spoke with ten people who told us of their own near misses, and a Human Rights Watch staff member witnessed an attempted attack in front of the Navy Tribunal in Piraeus (the port of Athens) on December 16, 2011, where a large group had gathered in support of 39 members of Hellenic Coast Guard Underwater Missions Unit on trial for chanting in unison racist slogans during the Greek Independence Day Parade on March 25, 2010. A group of black-clad youths surrounded a South-Asian man with apparent intent to harm him, but were ultimately convinced to desist by an older demonstrator. We note also that we learned of four incidents in which the person we interviewed escaped harm but someone else was injured.

May 2011

On May 10, 2011, in downtown Athens, Manolis Kantaris was murdered during the theft of his video camera as he prepared to go to the hospital for the birth of his child. This crime triggered widespread attacks on foreigners on the streets of the city after his killing was attributed to migrants. 

The worst of the violence occurred on May 12, when a 21-year-old Bangladeshi man named Alim Adbul Mana was stabbed to death and at least 25 people were hospitalized, according to news reports, with stab wounds or injuries sustained from severe beatings.[50]  A reporter from the Associated Press who witnessed the attacks described a horrifying scene on May 12: 

Several hundred youths, dressed in black and some wielding bats, were involved in the daytime attacks in an area where thousands of Asian and African immigrants live. Immigrants were chased through narrow streets of the city’s Kato Patisia neighborhood and punched and kicked to the ground by groups of attackers…Thugs in motorcycle helmets beat up immigrants, sending others fleeing for safety amid heavy rush-hour traffic. Similar attacks have occurred over the past two days. The black-clad ultranationalist youths marched through migrant areas… Male and female protesters were seen taking part in the beatings.[51]

Olivier Abdoulai, a 30-year-old Congolese, was out on the streets when he saw the anti-immigrant demonstration on May 12 and changed course.

It was the day they hunted men in Omonia. Two days after the Greek man’s death.  They had red flags and bats. They hit people with the bats: blacks, Pakistanis, Arabs…I saw them hitting [people]… and a Greek man said, ‘Be careful, you shouldn’t go that way because they’re hitting people. I didn’t see any police…In the group [of attackers] there were men and women, mixed ages. They were yelling in Greek, I couldn’t understand. They were yelling, they swung their bats, they hunted down foreigners.[52]

Virtually all the migrants and asylum seekers we interviewed who had been in Athens in May 2011 said it was a period of intense fear. One Afghan man who did not want to give a name told us simply, “In May we understood we would be attacked. We only went outside for essential things. Otherwise, we stayed inside. Since then we don’t go out at night. When we go out, someone watches from the window to see if we get attacked.”[53]

Badara Gueye, a 28-year-old Senegalese man, also hid: “We stayed indoors for two days…  One day we opened the door to look outside. They saw us and the racists said ‘come here, we’ll kill you.’”[54]Mohammed Idress, a 33-year-old Sudanese man, said he escaped several attempted attacks in this period. “You know I am an athlete in Sudan. I run the Marathon. Nobody caught me. Because of my legs. Three or four times they found me, but they never caught me. Because whenever I see two or three motorcycles or groups, I run.”[55] Modou Ndiaye, a 31-year-old Senegalese, told us he managed to evade an attack by a group of roughly thirty men, dressed in black and armed with bats, in the Omonia neighborhood.[56]

Abuubeker Adam, a 23-year-old Somali man, managed to avoid harm on several occasions during the May violence. On one occasion a few days after the murder of Kantaris, Adam was in an internet café, along with many other Somalis when a group of fifteen people, including one woman, burst in. Adam remembered that the people in the group were dressed in black and wearing helmets, and had with them metal objects, bottles and knives. “They got inside, they counted [us] and then they asked ‘any other people inside?’ We said no, and they left. There was a lot of police in the streets at that time.”[57]

Witnesses to the violence interviewed by Human Rights Watch spoke of vigilante groups forcing people to get off buses, or beating them up when they disembarked at bus stops.  Arif Muhammadi, an interpreter Human Rights Watch used for some of the interviews, said he watched the violence from an upstairs window on Chalkokondyli Street: “I saw how the fascists went on the buses and when they saw an Afghan they pulled him off and beat him. I saw this.”[58] Qadir Hossaini, another interpreter who works for the humanitarian NGO Médécins du Monde (Doctors of the World), said he was taken to and from work by his employers during this period because taking the bus was too dangerous.[59] Many others hid indoors, according to migrants interviewed by Human Rights Watch.[60]

Youssef, a 26-year-old Afghan asylum seeker, told us he was attacked when he got off a bus at Aghios Panteleimonas Square. 

I saw some people on the road, like 15 or 20 people…They stopped the bus…and five or six men came inside. They had sticks and said ‘down, down, down’ to all the foreigners... This thing had happened in Iran, it reminded me of Iran. There [in Iran], they [the Police] stop the bus, enter inside and choose whoever looks Afghan and send them back to Afghanistan. But this is Europe, I said to myself. This happens in Europe. And not by the police, but by normal citizens. The men said the foreigners had to get off, hitting them. People outside were singing Greece is for Greeks.  People getting off were hit. I got off, and got hit on the back. I thought I’d have more trouble if I spoke Greek so I said some German words I knew and I pushed and I escaped. A car almost hit me. I saw others running too, and others ran after them. Someone ran after me too but didn’t catch me.[61]

Youssef said all of the assailants were men, most of them wearing sweatshirts, and some of them hooded. He did not report the attack to the police because he had no faith they would help him.[62]

There are conflicting reports about police behavior during the worst of the violence. Riot police were out in force during and after the demonstration and engaged in “running battles” with attackers, according to some press accounts.[63]Abubeker Adam told us that though he had to insist, the police had responded to his call for help, escorting him and a friend down Tritis Septemvriou Street (where the murder of Kantaris took place), and encircling them to protect them from an angry mob.[64]

At the same time there were allegations of police failing to act to prevent or end the violence, or arrest those responsible. Badara Gueye, who recalled seeing hundreds of people armed with bats, complained that the police “did nothing.”[65]Abduwahab Mohammed, a 23-year-old Somali, told us what happened when a large group attacked a gathering place for the Somali community: “The police came and just stood and the racists ran away… The police told the Somali people to go home…and then the police left.”[66]

On May 16, 2011, Athens mayor Yiorgos Kaminis condemned what he called political violence by extremist groups in some parts of the city and accused the police of inertia in combating right-wing attacks on migrants.[67] A few days later, he complained that “the police are slow to react or are scandalously absent when extreme rightist groups carry out criminal attacks on migrants.”[68]

It does not appear that anyone was ever charged in connection with the 2011 May violence.  Although a police statement on May 12, 2011, indicated that 47 people (40 Greeks and 7 foreign nationals) were brought in for questioning that day, Human Rights Watch was unable to learn whether charges were brought  or whether anyone was brought to trial and if so what the charges were. In a letter dated May 17, 2012, the Athens prosecutor office informed Human Rights Watch that the events have been “classified in the File of Unknown Perpetrators.” Two Afghan men were arrested for the murder of Manolis Kantaris on May 10, 2011; according to the Athens prosecutor’s office the case is still under investigation.[69]

Continuing Violence

Violent attacks on migrants and asylum seekers in Athens neither began nor ended in May 2011. As noted above, Human Rights Watch documented 51 serious attacks between August 2009 and May 2012. 

Although the majority of those interviewed who had experienced an attack were men, we also spoke with seven women who told us about being attacked. Two of these women were pregnant at the time of the attack. Five of the women are Somali while two are Afghan. 

Human Rights Watch research and the select testimonies below suggest that large squares in central Athens such as Aghios Panteleimonas Square, Attica Square and Victoria Square are particularly dangerous areas for anyone who does not look Greek.

Aghios Panteleimonas

The repeated attacks on the home of Razia Sharife, an Afghan asylum seeker and single mother of three, illustrate the intensity of anti-immigrant activity in the Aghios Panteleimonas neighborhood. Her street-level apartment next to Aghios Panteleimonas Square has been attacked numerous times, including four times in January 2012 and one time in April 2012. In three incidents in January, individuals threw bottles and rocks at her windows and doors. The fourth incident that month, on January 15, 2012, was more serious: Sharife said someone she recognized as a neighbor first broke the windows then threw tear gas into the apartment. She believes he then sprayed a fire extinguisher into the apartment, causing her to fear that “he wanted to burn us alive.”[70] In April 2012, a large group of men with their faces obscured actually entered her apartment, broke beer bottles all over and destroyed furniture. They then left. None of those in the apartment at the time, who included her three young children (a three-year-old, and eleven-year-old twins), were injured.[71]

Human Rights Watch interviewed Sharife for the first time on January 9, 2012, shortly after individuals had thrown bottles and stones at her windows and front door. Sharife explained:

Every time they pass here this happens. Three days ago, they came and were hitting the door with their legs…today they broke the window and the door. At first they threw bottles and then they broke the glass with stones and threw stones inside and then they started kicking the door… They wear black clothes and…hoods and they do these things… Today when this happened I called the police… They came, they took my statement…and they told me they cannot do anything and that I had to go…file a complaint.  Until now I have made three complaints…once in 2010 and two times in 2011. I go there and they say to me they will search…but they have done nothing… Today there were [only] men but often there are also two girls that have dogs.  The girls too wear hoods and wear black…  Every day they are sitting at the café next to the church… Why can’t they [the police] catch them?[72]

Human Rights Watch observed the broken window and cracks in the door.

When Human Rights Watch researcher visited Sharife’s apartment on January 13, 2012, to conduct interviews with other Afghan victims of attacks, she herself witnessed an attack on the apartment. There were a dozen people in the apartment at the time, including Sharife, her three children, the researcher, and seven Afghan men. 

The Human Rights Watch researcher was sitting with an interpreter near the curtained window that looked out onto the street when she heard a loud noise as individuals outside began to hit the door with something she could not identify. “The door is made of thick glass and I could see the cracks appearing and the shadows of people on the other side of the door,” she recalled. Everyone stayed inside for the duration of the attack, roughly three minutes, and the researcher called the police as soon as it ended (9:23 p.m. according to her cell phone records). [73]

The police at the scene took information from Sharife and the Human Rights Watch researcher about the attack, but neither was able to give a description of the assailants because they had both remained inside during the attack. Sharife explained about the previous attacks and told the police about the group that regularly gathers on Aghios Panteleimonas Square. The police left shortly afterwards to search for the attackers; they did not interview anyone else in the apartment or anyone in the Afghan-owned internet café next door, which was open at the time. 

The exterior of Razia Sharife’s house the day after the January 2012 attack. © 2012 Eva Cossé/ Human Rights Watch

After the police had left, the Human Rights Watch researcher spoke with an Afghan man who had witnessed the attack from the café; he said there were five or six men who beat the door with hammers. Said Jafari, the 40-year-old owner of the internet café, and one of his employees told Human Rights Watch the next day that they had seen two or three men attacking the door while others stood on the corner watching. All were dressed in black and wearing hoods, according to Jafari.[74] Outside the apartment door, the researcher observed three big stones as well as a broken bottle of beer.

Sharife says the police returned three times that evening, each time different officers, to ask more questions about the incident. The following morning, officers from the Aliens police also visited: “They asked me for my pink card.  I gave it. They said, ‘You are not Afghan, we don’t believe you, prove to us that you are Afghan.’ I had a passport and I showed it to them and they left.”[75]

Accompanied by the same Human Rights Watch researcher and an interpreter, Sharife filed an official complaint at the Aghios Panteleimonas police station on January 14, 2012. The police officer who took Sharife’s statement insisted that there was a mandatory 100 Euro (US$ 125) fee to file the complaint. He said the police are under orders from the prosecutor’s office to not accept complaints without the fee, and that complaints forwarded to the prosecutor without the fee are archived immediately. Ultimately he accepted the statement without the fee, and in an email on March 13, 2012, the Aghios Panteleimonas police station informed Human Rights Watch that the Sharife’s complaint had been forwarded on January 18, 2012 to the Athens Public Prosecutor. The prosecutor reportedly ordered a preliminary investigation on January 31, 2012. The message further stated that “daily foot and car patrols are dispatched from our service for the policing of the area under our responsibility in order to prevent criminal acts against citizens and for the enforcement of existing laws.”[76]

Sharife also called the police after the incident on January 15, 2012, when assailants sprayed tear gas into her apartment, and again after a further attack in April 2012. She said the police came on both occasions, took her statement, and urged her to relocate. She has not heard from them since, nor is she aware of any developments in the investigation, despite the fact that she provided information on the neighbor she suspects of involvement in the January 15 attack.[77]

Said Jafari, the 40-year-old Afghan owner of the internet café next to Sharife’s apartment, told us he has had to change his store-front window three times because of similar attacks.  There were two attacks in 2010, and one in August 2011. On that last occasion, someone wrote “Foreigners Out” in blue letters on the store-front shutters. After Jafari reported the incident to the Aghios Panteleimonas police station, the police painted black markings over the words to try to obscure the message, but the writing is still clearly visible. Jafari complained that he was refused a copy of the complaint he filed, and that the police took no action in response to his repeated reports to them linking a group of people who gather at a café on the corner of the square to these attacks.[78]

Human Rights Watch documented 23 other serious attacks that took place in the Aghios Panteleimonas neighborhood between August 2009 and April 2012.  Three of these are described below.

Safar Haidari, December 2011

Safar Haidari just after the December 2011 attack. © 2011 Anonymous

Safar Haidari is a 29-year-old asylum seeker from Afghanistan and is the vice-president of a cultural association called Nour. On December 23, around 8 p.m., he was attacked roughly 200 meters from the Aghios Panteleimonas police station. A group of 10-15 men, who all appeared to be around or under 30 years old, wearing helmets or hoods, approached him, asked him where he was from, and then one of them punched him in the right eye. He fell to the ground and then the group began to beat him with sticks and kick him. The assailants stole his mobile phone and cigarettes, and then left.

In front of me there was a store with people…My body was hurting and I couldn’t move too much…I went there. Two or three people in the store saw what happened. I asked in what direction they [the attackers] had gone and they told me that half of them headed towards Acharnon Street and the other half towards Attica Square. I had a second phone with me because I had it in my pocket and they didn’t take it and I called the police. Fifteen to 20 minutes later two police motorcycles came by…I don’t know if they came because I called or they wanted to go somewhere else. I told them what happened. They asked for my papers. At that moment I was in a really bad situation because I couldn’t see well and they asked for my papers. I said, ‘Ok, I have papers but you should leave in order to find those who just left.  They must be somewhere close; they must be in Attiki, in Acharnon.’[79]

The patrol officers told him to report the crime at the police station. Haidari did go the station, but left after 20 minutes or so, without filing a complaint, because he was in pain and felt the police were not attending to him. “There were five policemen. My head was hurting because I was hit on the head. I said I cannot wait because I wanted to go the hospital, but the policeman said to me, ‘Now we cannot do anything, we are busy, you should wait.’ But I saw the five policemen in the office drinking coffee and chatting.  I made a remark to them. They told me again to wait.”[80]

Haidari returned to the police station on December 27, but again left after waiting for what he felt was too long. “There was also an old Greek man there. They served him immediately. I waited around 20-30 minutes. I asked how much longer I have to wait and they told me that they are very busy and cannot do anything now. Then I left.”[81]

Yasser Abdurraham, December 2011

Yasser Abdurraham’s wrist. © 2012 Judith Sunderland/Human Rights Watch

Abdurraham, an 18-year-old Somali, said he was attacked in early December 2011 in front of the Aghios Panteleimonas church by six or seven men on motorcycles.

It was late, around 2 a.m. I was walking home alone. They called to me—‘Come on, come on, Africa, Africa’—and I walked over and they hit me…with a beer bottle. It broke on my head and they slashed my wrist when I held it up [to defend myself]. They punched me in the face, cracked a tooth, and my nose. I don’t know why they did this. They didn’t say anything after they started hitting me. The police came and they ran off on their motorcycles. I showed them [the police] my wrist and I said, ‘Box box’ [to indicate he had been beaten] and they said, ‘Hey Africa’ and made a face and left. I didn’t go back to the police [to report it]. They don’t do anything for people like me.[82]

Mina Ahmad, October 2011

Though she couldn’t remember the exact date, Mina Ahmad, a twenty-year-old Somali woman, told us she was attacked near the end of October 2011, when she was six months pregnant, in the vicinity of the Aghios Panteleimonas church. She was with her infant daughter and was six-months pregnant. Five or six men, all wearing black, approached her as she was about to cross the street.

They asked me first, ‘Where are you from?’ I said Somalia. When I answered they tried to take my daughter away… They hit me on my head with a wooden stick… I fell down bleeding. When I fell down and they saw I was bleeding they ran away. My daughter was crying. I couldn’t see her but I heard her cry behind me… I called some friends. All the people [around at the time of the attack] they were watching but nobody helped me. Friends came to help me. I didn’t go the hospital, I stayed at home… I took coffee and put it on the wound. Now I have a small scar. [At the time] I just thought about the baby inside me.  It didn’t matter if I was hurt. I just thought about the baby and my daughter.[83]

Though upset, Ahmad’s daughter was unharmed; Ahmad’s son was born healthy a month later. According to Ahmad, the attackers yelled at her, “Get out of the country!” Ahmad has been in Greece since 2009. Undocumented at the time of the attack and our interview, she has since applied for asylum. She did not report the attack to the police.

Attacks elsewhere in Central Athens

Xenophobic violence is not limited to the Aghios Panteleimonas neighborhood. We documented 19 attacks in other areas of downtown Athens, as well as a five in other neighborhoods of the city. Below are four cases from the Attiki and Victoria neighborhoods in the center of the city.

Douglas Ebenezer Kesse, January 2012

A 32-year-old Ghanaian asylum seeker, Douglas Ebenezer Kesse was assaulted near a big tram depot in the vicinity of Attiki train station on January 9, 2012. He was walking down the street between 8:30 and 9 p.m. when a group of about ten young men dressed in black with three dogs attacked him.

The first thing, one of them asked me, ‘Hey friend where are you from?’ That is the only thing, only words that I could remember. All of a sudden… they rushed on me with sticks. All the people like that. All of them would rush on me and started beating me... I fell down, when I got up, because I was struggling for survival, because many people were beating me up, I got up, I ran again, and the dogs chased me, they brought me down, they beat on me again. The third time I got up I was running, they used their sticks to hit my legs and I fell down again, so for the fourth time, I was able to run just a distance. Some cars were coming like this, towards the direction so they left. I shouted. I’m a Christian so the only words that I know could save me is Jesus Christ. So I begin to shout to call the name of Jesus, ‘Jesus, Jesus!’ There were some people on the street but they were just looking at the action, like a movie… Nobody came to my assistance.[84]

The attackers also stole Kesse’s wallet which he told Human Rights Watch contained a large sum of money he needed to pay his rent. After recovering from the attack at home, Kesse went later that night to the Kypseli police station on Patision Street near America Square, the closest to where he lives. He was told they could do nothing and that he needed to report the attack to the Aghios Panteleimonas police station. Kesse did not do so.

The experience, the only attack in four years of living in Greece, has marked Kesse. He explained,

I feel very bad because, as human beings, we shouldn’t be treated like this. We know that in Europe, these things shouldn’t happen…because it’s not in the jungle. I am so much depressed and so much downhearted to see something like this happen to somebody who is seeking political asylum and a human being also. I am a human being; I am not an animal to be chased with sticks.[85]

Mehdi Naderi, December 2011

Mehdi Naderi. © 2011 Eva Cossé/Human Rights Watch

Naderi, a twenty-year-old Afghan who arrived in Greece in September 2011, was injured when he and two friends were attacked on a pedestrian street near Attica Square on the night of December 12, 2011. We spoke with all three the following day. Naderi said they were just walking down the street when a group of roughly 15 people attacked them.

They didn’t say anything. Suddenly they attacked, they beat me, and I left. It was around 8:30 or 9 p.m. We were on the street… It was dark and we did not understand what happened. We didn’t see them. Suddenly they attacked. But we realized that those who hit us were men. They suddenly appeared from inside the park, in Attica Square, and started hitting. They were saying something but we didn’t understand. But they had in their hands woods and irons. They have hit me everywhere, and in my body also. It is not only my nose and my head… I started running but there was a lot of blood flowing. Suddenly, I felt dizzy and then I stopped and my friends caught me. They were chasing us for a long time. They were behind us. At the time they attacked, my two friends escaped. I ran a lot.[86]

Naderi and his friends went home, but later, with the help of an Afghan activist, called an ambulance and went to the Korgialeneio Benakeio Athens General Hospital for treatment. Naderi received stitches to his head and nose. According to Naderi and Medhi Sarwari, one of the friends who witnessed the attack and accompanied him to the hospital, there were three other injured migrants and numerous police officers that night at the hospital. It was unclear how the migrants sustained their injuries.[87]

Naderi did not report the attack to the police. “I didn’t think to go the police because I am sure that if I go, the police won’t help me, they will bother me more. That’s what most of the people say. They say they go to the police and the police do nothing and scare them.”[88]

Hassan Mohamed, October 2011

A 25-year-old Somali without papers in Greece, Hassan Mohamed was attacked on October 29 as he returned home from an internet café near Victoria Square.

I was talking on the phone and they came at me from the front. Maybe 20 to 25 people. They beat me. I ran and they beat me. I fell unconscious. The police came and called an ambulance. They told me to come back after the hospital with the papers. I went back, I told them, I am the one you took from the street, this is the paper with everything: blood test, scan, x-rays, I had a broken bone under the right eye.

Mohamed ultimately gave up filing a complaint because he was concerned he would be detained because of his undocumented status.[89]

Mahmoud and Maria, August 2011

Maria’s scars from the August 2011 attack. © 2011 Mahmoud

Mahmoud and Maria are a couple from Afghanistan with refugee status in Greece. On August 5, 2011, near Attiki train station in broad daylight two men on a motorcycle attacked Maria, leaving her with a prominent scar on her left hand. The two men on a motorcycle swung at them with what Mahmoud described as “something white, maybe wood with nails” as they yelled the word for ‘dirty’ (Βρωμιάρα). Maria remembered,

I held my hand in front of my head when something hit my hand. After that I held my hand, it was something very hard, I didn’t know what it was but it seemed like a saw. My hand was hurt severely here. It was injured so deeply that you could see the bone. [90]

Mahmoud explained to us that he thinks the attackers were aiming at him, but hit Maria when, out of instinct, he ducked. [91]

After the attack, Mahmoud and Maria ran away, and only went to the hospital the following day. Maria told us they did not report the attack to the police because “we had already heard that the police don’t help us in situations like that.”[92] Mahmoud said, “Go to the police? Is that a joke? If you go to the police they tell you to go fight yourself.”[93]

Although better now, Maria was deeply shaken by the attack. “I didn’t want to go out anymore, and my husband had to do all the everyday errands and things I normally did… Now I try to dress more like Greek women; I don’t want to draw any attention to myself.”[94]