II. Abusive Identity Checks

If a police officer sees you, that you're black, he calls you, takes your paper, throws it, insults you. If he’s a bit racist, he will waste your time at Allodapon.

—Franky, 34-year-old Togolese registered asylum seeker, Athens, February 13, 2013.

Most people in Greece, including Greek nationals, have been stopped at some point in their life and asked to provide proof of their identity to the police. For migrants and asylum seekers living in areas with a high concentration of migrants, such as downtown Athens, identity checks had long been a routine part of life, well before Operation Xenios Zeus started in August 2012. Operation Xenios Zeus has intensified the frequency and onus of these stops. Almost everyone interviewed for this report had been stopped numerous times: out of the 44 people who told us they have been stopped by the police for an identity check since the launch of Xenios Zeus on August 4, 2012, 37 people, including 2 children, said they have been stopped more than once.

Salem, a 42-year-old Somali registered asylum seeker told us that in “the seven months I have been in Greece, the police have stopped me every day. Today, I was stopped two times.… Good day today. I am lucky.”[21] Sixteen-year-old Ruhallah M., an Afghan registered asylum seeker who had been in Athens for two months when we met, told us that police had stopped him every day since his arrival to the capital.[22] Dialo, a 42-year-old Guinean legal migrant who has been in Greece since 1994, told us that “I have been stopped many, many times. Since [Operation] Xenios Zeus, 30 times.”[23]

Under Greek law, the police have broad powers to stop individuals in public areas and require them to provide proof of their identity—the identity check (εξακρίβωση στοιχείων). According to officials in the Ministry of Public Order and Citizen Protection, which is responsible for law enforcement and immigration control, these powers derive from Presidential Decree 141/1991 (hereafter “P.D. 141/1991”) which defines the responsibilities and actions of the staff of the Ministry of Public Order, including of police officers.[24]

P.D. 141/1991 gives police officers the authority to verify the identity of persons entering or leaving shops or homes during the night, if conditions create suspicion that a crime has been or might be committed; and to bring to the police station individuals with no proof of their identity or who, because of the place, time, and circumstances, as well as their behavior, create a suspicion of commission of a criminal act.[25] The decree also gives the police broad powers for preventive purposes to conduct searches of persons, bags, vehicles, and public spaces.[26]

In addition to the prevention and suppression of crime, the Greek police are tasked with monitoring compliance with provisions in law relating to the “entry, residence and employment of foreigners in the country.”[27] In accordance with Greek and EU law, third-country nationals legally residing in Greece, including refugees and asylum seekers, enjoy freedom of movement and residence throughout the Greek territory. Those who do not fulfill legal conditions for entry and stay can be subject to arrest, detention, and deportation.[28]

Identity checks for the purposes of immigration control, such as those conducted on a massive scale during the ongoing Operation Xenios Zeus, are not prescribed explicitly in law. Human Rights Watch was told that the normal procedure for immigration stops requires that individuals who do not have papers, or in case of doubt about the authenticity of papers provided, will be detained briefly on the street, then transferred by police bus to the Aliens Police Division at Petrou Ralli for verification of their identity.[29]

These broad powers leave far too much discretion, in the absence of clear and detailed guidance, to police officers when it comes to choosing whom to stop for an identity check. It is a basic precept of law, well-established in international human rights jurisprudence, that laws must be sufficiently clear and well defined to limit the scope for arbitrary action and interpretation by law enforcement and judicial authorities. Legal precision is also important so that people know what conduct is prohibited and can regulate their behavior accordingly.[30]

Ethnic Profiling

Police officers came at the door [of the bus] and said ... ‘Now all blacks out, this is a control [identity check].’

—Tupac (pseudonym), 19-year-old Guinean registered asylum seeker, Athens, February 22, 2013.

Since the start of Operation Xenios Zeus in August 2012, police authorities have taken tens of thousands of foreigners to police stations for verification of their documents following identity checks in the street. There are no official statistics on how many people have been stopped and released on the spot after a quick check of their papers. The police have, however, published statistics on how many people they have taken to a police station for verification of their identity in the context of Operation Xenios Zeus: between August 4, 2012 and February 22, 2013, police brought 84,792 people of foreign origin to the police station for further verification in Athens.[31] The total number of stops, including those released without being taken to a police station, is unknown. According to the police 4,811 of those stopped during Operation Xenios Zeus in that period were found to be residing unlawfully in Greece (less than 6 percent). Since police statistics do not include people stopped for an identity check in the street and released on the spot, the overall detection rate is likely to be even lower than 6 percent.

The high number of people stopped and taken to the police station compared to the low number of undocumented migrants ultimately identified during Operation Xenios Zeus suggests that police are determining whom to stop on the basis of their foreign appearance, including racial and ethnic physical features. When carried out with no reasonable justification such ethnic profiling is discriminatory and unlawful (see below).

Most of the people we spoke with in the course of this research attributed the stops directly or indirectly to their appearance as foreigners.[32] Nazar, a 35-year-old Afghan registered asylum seeker, for example said he believes he was stopped because of physical appearance. “They understand that I have an Afghan face and that’s why they stop me,” he said.[33] Mamadou, a 33-year-old Guinean registered asylum seeker, explained, “They stop me because I am a foreigner. They want to know who I am.… I don’t think they stop Greeks as frequently.”[34]

Others attributed the stops directly to racism. “Maybe they [the police] are racist, maybe because we are illegal, maybe because they [the police] think we have drugs,” Fathi, a 23-year-old undocumented migrant woman from Somalia, said.[35]

Dome, a 28-year-old undocumented migrant from Benin, explained:

They don’t look for undocumented migrants, they look for blacks. If in 100 [persons], one is black, they [the police] will approach the black. It hurts. It is as if human rights do not exist.[36]

Abou, a 31-year-old registered asylum seeker from Senegal, agreed. “I think that it’s the only country where we can say that every time the police see a black, they stop him to ask for his paper.”[37] Ousmane, an 18-year-old Guinean registered asylum seeker, is persuaded that the police stop him because he’s black: “As a result of my skin,” he stressed.[38] Franky, a 34-year-old Togolese registered asylum seeker simply said: “It is racism.”[39]

We heard twelve accounts of identity checks where people described being stopped explicitly based on physical appearance, including two cases where people were not stopped themselves but witnessed what they felt was a discriminatory stop. It is worth noting that in the vast majority of identity checks we heard about during this research people described being stopped along with other foreigners—Africans, Arabs, Asians—but none cited being stopped along with Greek-looking persons (white) except in one case where the interviewee told us the police put him in a police bus in which they were also holding a number of “unconscious Greeks” (i.e. drunk or high on drugs).[40] It is worth noting that undocumented migrants in Greece can be Caucasian/white, including Georgians, Russians, Ukrainians, and Albanians—the latter being one of the largest groups entering irregularly into Greece.[41] There are no official statistics broken down by nationality of the people stopped and taken to police stations for an identity check in the context of Operation Xenios Zeus.  

Tupac, a 19-year-old Guinean registered asylum seeker, told us that in early February at around 5 p.m., uniformed and plainclothed police officers forced black and Asian people, including him, out of a bus at Amerikis Square in central Athens:

There were at least seven blacks, and two Asians.... [P]olice officers came to the door and said in Greek, ‘Oli i black ekso, oli i black ekso’ [All blacks out, all blacks out]. I understand a little bit [of Greek] … the Greeks in the bus were clapping to encourage them.

I thought that when you find someone in a bus you have the right to request his paper or the ticket. But what I see is the blacks and the two Asians, meaning the foreigners … out.… I thought it was like ancient times, slavery.[42]

Lamine Kaba, a 41-year-old Guinean legal migrant who has lived in Greece since 1998 and is married to a Greek woman described how he was the only one stopped by a police officer in plainclothes while on a bus on his way back from work in December 2012:

I was in the trolley that goes from Omonoia to Amerikis Square. At Agiou Meletiou Street, sitting in the bus, I saw a young man entering and coming directly to me. He said, ‘Ta chartia sou[your papers].’ I say, 'It's only me you saw on the bus? But who are you? ’ He took out his card and said, ‘Police.’ I said, ‘Mono emena[only me]?’ ... I felt like finger pointed because of my physical appearance.… It was clearly a question of color. [43]

Later that month, Lamine was subjected to another targeted stop on his way to work, this time by a group of seven plainclothed and uniformed police officers when coming out of the bus on Kannigos Square:

As soon as we got off the bus, every foreigner, Pakistani, African, they were telling us, ‘Stop, sit down.’ A police officer in uniform told me to sit down.… There was a selection by [the] color [of our skin], or by geographic map [by country].[44]

Franky, a 34-year-old registered asylum seeker from Togo, told us on February 13, 2013, that the last time he was subjected to a police stop had been two days before with an African friend around Syntagma Square at 2 p.m.:

They stopped only the two of us even though there were lots of people passing by… After ten minutes they allowed us to go. I was … very, very, angry. But I cannot do anything. There were people passing, plenty of whites, and they stopped only the two of us. Why?[45]

It was not the first time Franky felt he has been singled out for a control because of his physical appearance: in December 2012, four police officers on motorcycles had subjected him to an identity check around 3 p.m., when he and three Togolese friends went to buy food at a street market near Viktoria Square. “There are whites there, but they [the police] came at us, the blacks,” he said.[46]

Andreas, a 26-year-old white Greek who has never been stopped by the police told us that in October 2012, he was walking with three friends—two men of sub-Saharan origin and one white woman—at Amerikis Square when two police officers in plainclothes conducted an identity check only of the black members of the group. “They didn’t even look at us [Andreas and the white woman],” he said. Despite the fact that undocumented migrants can also be white, Andreas told us the police “didn’t ask for our papers.”[47]

John, a 20-year-old Guinean registered asylum seeker, was subjected to an identity check along with a friend in central Athens on the last day of Ramadan in August 2012:

Four [police officers] come to us. They say ‘Muslims?’ We say, ‘Nai’ [yes]. They say, ‘Sit down.’ I told them that we have the red card [asylum seeker’s card], we didn’t do anything. They told us to shut up…. There were two Malian Muslims and Arabs. And a black comes and they asked him if he is Muslim, he said he is Christian and they let him [go]. I think they were stopping people because we are Muslims. We were wearing the Muslim dress. They took us to Amerikis Square and there we found many people. Around 150 people.[48]

Ethnic Profiling Violates Rights

Greece has the right to enforce its immigration laws and the police can use profiling as a legitimate preventive and investigative tool, when for example suspect descriptions, which include ethnicity or national origin, are drawn up on the basis of specific, reliable information.[49] It is also legitimate to increase police patrols in areas of high criminality.

However, police officers do not have the right to presume people are criminals or irregular migrants solely or primarily because of their race or ethnicity, or their presence in a particular place. Profiling is discriminatory and unlawful when police systematically target certain groups for stops, even when these actions are grounded in unconscious stereotyping rather than an intentional policy.[50]

The European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI), a Council of Europe body, defines unlawful racial (or ethnic) profiling as:

The use by the police, with no objective and reasonable justification, of grounds such as race, colour, language, religion, nationality or national or ethnic origin in control, surveillance or investigation activities.[51] 

The Council of Europe’s European Code of Police Ethics requires police officers to discharge their duties “in a fair manner, guided, in particular, by the principles of impartiality and non-discrimination.”[52] Police investigations should be based on “a reasonable suspicion of an actual or possible offence or crime.”[53]

International human rights authorities, the European Court of Human Rights, and national courts have established clearly that law enforcement action based solely or mainly on ethnic profiles is unlawful.

The European Court of Human Rights has applied article 14 of the convention (non-discrimination) to law enforcement activities, notably in the case of Timishev v. Russia, involving an ethnic Chechen prevented by Russian police officers from crossing an internal administrative border. The court argued that “no difference in treatment which is based exclusively or to a decisive extent on a person’s ethnic origin is capable of being objectively justified in a contemporary democratic society.” The court has also found that the convention prohibits indirect discrimination—patterns of discriminatory impact resulting from policies or practices even in the absence of discriminatory intent. 

The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) has expressed concern about racial discrimination in the criminal justice system, and said that authorities must “take the necessary steps to prevent questioning, arrests and searches which are in reality based solely on the physical appearance of a person, that person’s colour or features or membership of a racial or ethnic group, or any profiling which exposes him or her to greater suspicion.”[54]

Ethnic profiling is unlawful in the context of immigration control as well as general policing. In a landmark decision in 2009, the UN Human Rights Committee (HRC) said the identity check of Rosalind Williams Lecraft, a naturalized Spanish citizen, in a train station in Spain amounted to unlawful discrimination in violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. When Williams Lecraft asked police why she was the only person asked to show her documents, she was told the police had to stop people “who looked like her” because “many of them are illegal immigrants.” The HRC said that while identity checks are permitted for protecting public safety, preventing crime, and controlling irregular immigration, “the physical or ethnic characteristics” of persons subjected to a stop “should not be considered as indicative of their possibly illegal situation in the country.”[55] 

The HRC warned that targeting people with certain physical characteristics or ethnic backgrounds “would not only negatively affect the dignity of the persons concerned, but would also contribute to the spread of xenophobic attitudes in the public at large and would run counter to an effective policy aimed at combating racial discrimination.”[56]

More recently, the administrative appeals court of Koblenz, Germany, ruled in October 2012, that the immigration stop of a black German student on a train in December 2010 had violated federal antidiscrimination norms because it was mainly based on skin color.[57] The federal government—the defendant in the case—concurred that “skin color as the sole or decisive criterion” for the conduct of an immigration stop is prohibited and apologized to the plaintiff.[58]

The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has said that:

[D]ifferential treatment based on citizenship or immigration status will constitute discrimination if the criteria for such differentiation, judged in the light of the objectives and purposes of the Convention, are not applied pursuant to a legitimate aim, and are not proportional to the achievement of this aim.[59]

Human Rights Commissioner of the Council of Europe, Nils Muižnieks, said in a report published in April 2013, that “[e]thnic profiling by the Greek police is … an issue of serious concern,” and urged the Greek authorities to “put an end to the practice of ethnic profiling by the police, reportedly widely used concerning Roma and as part of the ‘Xenios Zeus’ police operation under which the legal status of migrants is verified.”[60]

Officials at the Ministry of Public Order and Citizen Protection assured us that a police officer’s decision about who to stop depends on intelligence regarding the presence of irregular migrants in a specific area and on the officer’s judgment in assessing whether a person may have committed an offense.[61] The fact that less than 6 percent of stops have led to the identification and detention of an undocumented migrant, undermines this assertion as intelligence-led stops should lead to a higher detection rate.

Official statistics and our research demonstrate that the police are engaging in ethnic profiling, in violation of international and national law, by deeming individuals likely to be undocumented migrants based on little, if anything, more than their physical appearance.

Comments from police unions’ representatives also tend to confirm the use of ethnic profiling. A representative of the Police Association of Border Guards of Attica stressed that the location and behavior of the person play an important role, while also saying they stop “all persons who don't look Greek. Many times we also check Greeks too who don’t look Greek.”[62] A senior official in the Hellenic Police Guards Union of Attica—which represents police guards—a special category of low-ranking police officers—explained, “When an operation is ordered in the center [of Athens] … it is reasonable for a police officer … to bring to the station whoever they can … who has the characteristics of an immigrant.”[63]

With the exception of officers attached to the Border Guards unit, police conducting immigration stops receive no specialized training in immigration and asylum issues, nor are there specific guidelines for how to conduct stops in the context of Operation Xenios Zeus.[64] Ioannis Fanariotis, secretary general of the Hellenic Police Guards Union of Attica cited this as a problem, saying, “You cannot ask the police officer to say if the person he sees is legal or illegal. We need training on how to tell the difference.”[65]

Intrusive Searches

They asked if I have paper. I said I have a red card. They searched my pockets, my wallet, kicked my legs. I said I’m sick; I’m going to the hospital. He said, ‘It’s not my business. Don’t talk too much.’

—Nazar, 35-year-old Afghan registered asylum seeker, Athens, February 14, 2013

Eighteen interviewees, including a 16-year-old child, gave accounts of experiencing pat-downs and bag searches during police controls in the context of Operation Xenios Zeus, some involving destruction of personal items.

Abdulrahman Mahout Ahmed, a 19-year-old undocumented Somali migrant, complained that four police officers emptied his bag and broke his mobile phone during a stop in August 2012 near Larissis station in central Athens:

It was Ramadan. I went to the mosque to pray. After we finish, we go out.... The police were outside Novotel in the street.... They asked my charti [paper] and I gave them my charti. They checked my pockets, took my wallet and put everything down.… I have a small bag, they took it, threw it on the floor, my phone fell out and they stepped on my phone.… After that I left for Samos [a Greek island in the Aegean].[66]

Twenty-six-year-old Azizi, a registered asylum seeker from Afghanistan, told us that officers stopped him for an identity check a block from the Aghios Panteleimonas police station three months before our interview in February 2013. He was transferred to the aliens police division for further verification. Azizi alleges that police officers took €70 he had in his wallet after they searched him in the street:

They searched everything we had. I showed my wallet and I had €70 and they took it [the wallet].… [At the Aliens Police Division] they gave me back my wallet, my card but not the money. I asked for it and he [a police officer] told me, ‘Fuge, fuge tora,[Go, go now],’ in a brutal way.[67]

Lamine Kaba, a 41-year-old Guinean legal migrant who has lived in Greece since 1998 and is married to a Greek woman, was stopped by two police officers in Athens, in October 2012, who pushed him against a wall, searched him, emptied his bag and told him to leave the country if he didn’t like it. © 2013 Human Rights Watch

Lamine Kaba, a 41-year-old Guinean who has lived in Greece since 1998, complained about the lack of respect that goes with the search. In October, he was stopped by two police officers in plainclothes in Kato Petralona when leaving work around 2 p.m.:

I had to go and get my little one [daughter]. I was in hurry. I saw two persons in civil clothes. I was by foot. They stopped in front of me, straight on me. I didn’t expect such a thing. One of the police officers tells me, ‘Give me your bag,’ and he pushed me against the wall. I said, ‘If you want the paper there is no need to do that.’ They told me, ‘We don’t care about that.’ They emptied my bag and told me, ‘If you don’t like it, you can leave the country’… If they were polite they wouldn’t put me against the wall, pull my bag very violently.[68]

Thirty-year-old Abdul Khalid Mohammad, a refugee from Afghanistan, had a similar experience in January at around 2:30 p.m. in Thissio [a tourist area in central Athens]:

I was with my friend and we were coming from the Acropolis, and three [police] motorcycles came, stopped, and without asking if we have papers they [the police] immediately put us with the back against the wall and searched us.… I took out everything that I had on me and showed my papers.… They were behaving as if I was a criminal, as if I had guns.… One of them told me, ‘If you have a problem, go file a complaint, go back to your country.’[69]

John, a twenty-year-old registered asylum seeker from Guinea, described how on a January morning in 2013, four police officers in two motorcycles stopped him and two friends near Amerikis Square for a control, and destroyed the certified photocopy of his asylum seeker’s card:

They searched us everywhere. I had my red card and the certified photocopy of the original. When I took it out, he [a police officer] took out a knife and immediately tore the photocopy. He didn’t give me time to explain myself. Then they threw it to the garbage.[70]

Zoeher, a 24-year-old Afghan with subsidiary protection,[71] told us how three months before our interview, police officers in Omonoia police station undressed him and a friend for a search.

It was 2 or 3 p.m. We were returning from work … passing by the police station with a friend and three persons came and asked for our papers.… We gave our papers and this guy [a police officer] said, ‘Let’s go to the station’… In the police station they searched us.… They put us in a room and undressed us and searched all our clothes. Then they gave me my card and told me ‘Fuge malaka [Go away asshole].’[72]

Violation of the Right to Privacy

Routine searches not grounded in a reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing or possession of illegal or dangerous objects violate national and international norms protecting the right to privacy.

Both the European Convention on Human Rights(ECHR) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) require that interferences in liberty, individual privacy, and bodily integrity be in accordance with law—that is that they comply both in substance and procedure with a clear legal basis. The norm setting out the basis must not only exist in the legal system but be accessible and clear and precise enough to be foreseeable to a reasonable degree in its application and consequences.[73]  In this way, it should allow a person to regulate his or her behavior to comply with the law, and to remove the risk of arbitrariness.

In Gillan and Quinton v. the UK, the European Court of Human Rights found that “coercive powers … to require an individual to submit to a detailed search of his person, his clothing and his personal belongings” in the absence of reasonable suspicion under the UK’s counterterrorism legislation amounted to unlawful interference with the right to private life because of the lack of clear delimitations on their use and sufficient safeguards against abuse.[74]  The court noted the humiliation and embarrassment that public searches of a person’s private items can cause.[75]

Greek law allows the search of a person and his or her personal belongings only if there is a serious suspicion that an “offense” has been committed or if it is an “absolute necessity.”[76]  A 2005 police circular clarifies that existence of those conditions must be based on specific factual or subjective information, which is relevant and sufficient to justify in law the frisk, and that objecting to a physical search is not a ground for a serious suspicion justifying an onerous search.[77]

Representatives from the Border Guards Union of Attica told us that they have to conduct a pat-down for their safety when they have “a suspicion that the person is carrying a weapon. We must do the body check if the person is transferred … with the bus.”[78] However, our research suggests that pat-downs and bag searches are not limited to these circumstances. Body pat-downs and bag searches during immigration stops appear to be routine, even in the absence of any reasonable suspicion that the individual is carrying unlawful or dangerous objects, violating the right to privacy and Greek legislation.

Physical and Verbal Abuse during Stops

[The police officer] became mad and slapped me.… He slapped me and his friends [police officers] came down [off the motorcycle].... They took me, searched me, and handcuffed me.…

— Tupac (pseudonym), 19-year-old Guinean registered asylum seeker, Athens, February 22, 2013

Four interviewees reported they had experienced physical abuse in the context of an immigration stop since the beginning of Operation Xenios Zeus, while many interviewees complained of poor police practices and rude, insulting, and threatening behavior. We interviewed eight other migrants and asylum seekers who experienced physical abuse at the hands of police officers during stops before the beginning of Operation Xenios Zeus or in situations outside the context of a regular immigration stop.

Law enforcement abuse of migrants and asylum seekers in Greece is a serious and long-standing problem, including in the context of identity checks.[79] A network of Greek nongovernmental organizations, coordinated by the UNHCR and the Greek National Commission for Human Rights, recorded 43 incidents of police brutality between October 1, 2011 and December 31, 2012, against migrants and asylum seekers. The incidents concerned “duty officers who resorted to illegal acts and violent practices while carrying out routine checks,” as well as “instances where people were brought to police stations, were detained and mistreated for a few hours,” and “cases where legal documents were destroyed during these operations.” [80]

Abdel, a 25-year-old refugee from Afghanistan, said that two plainclothes police officers approached him outside his home in October 2012 as he left for work, and took him to the building’s parking lot.

[T]hey searched me, my bag, my pockets, everything, and then they beat me. They slapped me; fifteen or sixteen slaps. And I was asking. ‘Why?’ They were telling me, ‘To show you so that you can understand.’ Then they gave me my papers and I left.… I couldn’t hear for two weeks.[81]

Tupac, the 19-year-old Guinean registered asylum seeker quoted above, said a police officer hit him during a stop at the end of December 2012 near Amerikis Square. The officer ridiculed Tupac for the way he was dressed and then slapped him. Using plastic gloves, the officer looked at his asylum seeker’s card and said “Look, look at the black on the photo … look at the monkey.” He then threw the card on the ground and stepped on it. After handcuffing and searching Tupac, the police released him. He told us one of the other three officers in the patrol apologized.[82]

Tourists also have alleged falling victim to police brutality during stops.  A Korean backpacker told the BBC a plainclothed policeman punched him in the face during a stop.[83]  The backpacker Hyun Young Jung had asked the officer to identify himself. The police subsequently brought him to the police station where they beat him again. The BBC report does not specify when the incident took place. A Nigerian-born US citizen told the BBC police detained and handcuffed him in July 2012, before the launch of Operation Xenios Zeus, while he was on vacation in Greece. He had shown officers his US passport. Christian Ukwuorji alleged that officers beat him unconscious when he tried to take a photograph of his handcuffs with his mobile phone.[84] Both the Korean and the Nigerian said they will not visit Greece again.[85] The police told the BBC they could not comment on the cases, as they are under investigation.[86]

In November 2012, the US Embassy in Greece took the unusual step of updating its country-specific information on Greece to warn US visitors about “confirmed reports of U.S. African-American citizens detained by police authorities conducting sweeps for illegal immigrants in Athens.”[87]

Almost all interviewees complained that police officers were disrespectful during stops, describing a range of abuse including being called “assholes”, being told to shut up, and being threatened with deportation.[88] As Majid, a 26-year-old undocumented Afghan migrant explained, “There are some who are good and treat us like humans but there are some who treat us like animals. Unfortunately those who treat us like humans are very few. They are rare.”[89]

Ill-Treatment Always Violates Rights

Police officers in Greece are confronted with dangerous and threatening situations, and they have the duty to restrain violent individuals to protect others and themselves. All use of force, however, must be justified by the circumstances and limited to the minimum extent necessary.

International human rights law imposes the clear duty on authorities to prevent—through clear laws, regulations, and guidance—and punish unjustified use of force. The European Court of Human Rights has condemned Greece eleven times for cases concerning ill-treatment or misuse of firearms by law enforcement officers, and the absence of effective investigations, including ten cases where the victims were migrants or members of minorities.[90] In particular, the Court has found Greece in violation of article 3 (prohibition of torture) in conjunction with article 14 (prohibition of discrimination) in two of these cases, for police brutality and failure to investigate the racist motivation of crimes committed against Roma by law enforcement officers.[91]

Several international human rights bodies have criticized Greece about excessive use of force by law enforcement officials and ill-treatment of undocumented migrants, asylum seekers, and minorities, including Roma.[92]

In 2012, the UN Committee Against Torture expressed its concern at repeated and consistent reports of “ill-treatment of undocumented migrants, asylum seekers and Roma by law enforcement officials … in the context of regular police checks in the streets of urban settings, in violation of the Convention” and urged Greek authorities to send “a clear and unambiguous message that racist or discriminatory acts, including by police and other public officials, are unacceptable, and by prosecuting and punishing the perpetrators of such acts.”[93]

The European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) has repeatedly expressed concerns about police ill-treatment of minorities and migrants at the time of arrest and in custody.[94] In 2009, ECRI reiterated its call on the Greek government to “carry out effective investigations into alleged cases of racial discrimination or racially-motivated misconduct by the police and ensure as necessary that the perpetrators of these acts are adequately punished.”[95]

National and international guidelines for law enforcement officials emphasize the importance of respectful treatment. The Greek Code of Police Ethics requires police officers “to respect the value of the human being and to ensure the protection of his rights” and calls on officers to avoid all “prejudice” based on race, ethnicity, gender, religion, among other protected grounds, as well as to carry out “their duties, guided by the principles of legitimacy, proportionality, leniency, good public governance, non-discrimination and respect for people's diversity.”[96]

The Council of Europe’s European Code of Police Ethics requires that all police personnel act with “integrity and respect towards the public and with particular consideration for the situation of individuals belonging to especially vulnerable groups.”[97]  Finally, the UN Code of Conduct of Law Enforcement Officials calls for officers to “respect and protect human dignity and maintain and uphold the human rights of all persons.”[98]

The cases of physical and verbal abuse we documented in this report violate the prohibition of ill-treatment. They amount in some cases to racially-motivated misconduct, and breach the duty of police officers to respect and protect irrespective of race, ethnicity, and religion, in violation of national and international human rights law and standards. Greece has obligations under international human rights law to undertake effective measures to prevent such treatment and to investigate and where appropriate, prosecute offenders.