This picture was taken during a field visit to one of the detention centres in the Evros region. This mosquito-bitten 15 month old baby is Iraqi and had been at the centre for 10 days prior to our visit. He will spend a month (or two) in that place, as all the Iraqis do, waiting for Turkey’s decision to the Greek authorities’ appeal for reinsertion back to Turkey. If they are returned to Turkey, they will find or be found by their smuggler who will re-attempt to get them into Greece. The minimum standards for humane detention conditions are not met by the detention centres at the Greek borders. This article briefly presents the situation at detention centres in the Evros and Rodopi regions of Northern Greece[1], whilst going further to explain why this is the case, and formulate some policy suggestions thereafter.

From an economic point of view, Greek society seems unable to bear the cost of detention under minimum humane conditions. In most detention centres of the Evros region, the local Prefecture takes responsibility for catering, the supply of basic hygiene materials, as well as disinfestations and cleaning in some centres. It does so by contracting these tasks out to local businesses and organisations. However, in most cases the Prefecture is not reimbursing the businesses that carry out their contractual duties from their own funds. There are many cases where the Prefecture has not cleared its debt to local businesses after a year. As a result, many of these contractors/suppliers face bankruptcy and the detention centre’s conditions deteriorate even more as time goes by. Lacking basic items of personal hygiene for the detainees (e.g. bars of soap, nappies, toothbrushes, toothpastes, and serviettes) is a common problem that police authorities are confronted with. The detainees’ wards and toilets are rarely cleaned, while basic equipment is missing in some cases[2]. In a nutshell,“toilets? A mess…I cannot send the poor woman [the cleaner] to clean that”, as the officer in one detention centre in Evros characteristically described the situation. Responsible for the cleanliness of the wards are the detainees themselves (usually with a plastic bin bag as a sole ‘cleaning’ material) according to the rules set in various detention centres. Images of dirty waters from toilets reaching out to beds and mattresses where men, women, children and babies sleep are characteristic of the sanitary conditions of most centres.

It should be noted that these serious problems are related not only with the shift of irregular migrant inflows from the Greek-Turkish sea border to the Greek-Turkish land border during the last year[3] and the current economic crisis in Greece but also with the opaque ways that Greek Ministries and Greek Public Sector services redistribute and allocate respectively European funds to intended recipients. Indicatively, Greece (and in particular the Ministry of Health) has been given an emergency funding of € 7.1 million Euros under the European Refugee Fund in 2008 and 2009 for the purpose of reinforcing its reception capacities in order to manage coping with the influx of third country nationals arriving at the Greek borders, and is entitled more than € 17.8 million Euros for the programming period 2008-2013 under the same Fund. Nevertheless, the situation described above remains two years later. As regards the cost of detention, the cost in drugs only at the detention facility of Venna in the Rodopi region was estimated at 500-600 euros per month according to the general practitioner working in the centre until recently. The cost of food per detainee ranges dramatically in different centres: from 5.8 Euros per detainee per day (a minimum cost set by Greek law for prisoners in the early 1980s) to nearly 20 euros per detainee per day – which was recorded at a detention centre on one Greek island at the Turkish sea border. The latter is a clear indication of overpriced contracts between prefectures and local catering businesses.

With regard to the fundamental human rights of the detained irregular migrants, the Evros and Rodopi detention centres do not meet the nationally and internationally ratified detention requirements. The grave humanitarian needs in the Evros detention centres are also indicated by UNHCR office recommendations for the region . From a health and sanitation perspective, the usual problems that detainees face (dermatitis, eczema, urine infections, infections of the upper respiratory tract, hepatitis[4]) are a result of crowding, the uncleanliness of the detainees’ wards, the unsuitability of the existing buildings (cold in winter, intolerable heat and mosquitoes in the summer and spring), the lack of provision for access to outdoor spaces and the poor quality of the detainees’ diet.

The doctor at Venna detention centre set the tone when the discussion came to the food provided for detainees: «ok, they are not undernourished». One of the commanders of a detention centre in Evros spelled out the obvious «if you do this diet for one or two months, you will definitely have a problem with your health later on». Interestingly, the Venna detention centre is the only one of its kind that, since April 2010, has a doctor at its disposal –despite the fact that his timetable does not correspond to the needs of the centre (he is only present from 08.00 to 14.00 Monday to Friday). At the other centres, only emergencies are referred to local hospitals, which is also problematic since there are no interpreters and only limited communication with the authorities. Finally, there is only one psychologist (speaking only Greek and English) visiting the detention centres of Evros and Rodopi.

To give an idea of the extent of overcrowding in detention centres: the detention centre of Tychero has a capacity of 46 persons and during the day of the visit it had 106 detainees. In Feres, there were 113 detainees in a facility designed to take up to 30 people. Indicative is the picture of a 4 member Iraqi family that was sleeping on a single mattress on the floor of the ward. In most cases there is inadequate lighting, ventilation and heating. Men and women and children live together in extremely cramped condtions, even though an effort is made to separate the two groups by police authorities. Bringing detainees out to the courtyard on a regular basis during the day does not take place in any of the centres. In the detention centres that do have such a space (e.g. Venna), the detainees declare that they are allowed out of the cells for less than 10 minutes on a non-daily basis. This is mainly due to the large number of detainees and the limited staff available to facilitate the detainee’s access to fresh air.

In theory, irregular migrants and refugees have the right to apply for asylum (e.g. UNHCR leaflets are distributed in some wards). However, in practice the right to apply is consistently denied. After their apprehension they are neither briefed accordingly about their rights, nor offered legal advice by any independent authority or organization. Indicative of the dimensions of the problem of access to applying for asylum are the words of several detention centre commanders in the Evros region: «it is contradictory, appalling…that us who chase them are delegated to examine their asylum cases» (see also the CLANDESTINO Greek case study for the problem of asylum-seeking in Greece). Of utmost importance and blocking further access to basic human rights is the lack of interpreters in the detention centres.

One of the positive findings in comparison to previous reports on the conditions in Evros detention centres is that the separation of families that was mentioned in the MSF report has stopped and the fact that commanders do try to separate families from single adult males under the circumstances of overcrowding. In these instances racist and exploitative attitudes of policemen coexist with acts of professionalism and glimpses of humane treatment.

Lastly, the morale and psychological condition of police officers themselves, as they are confronted daily with duties that are beyond their capacities, is an issue that requires further investigation. Often the policemen themselves cannot comprehend the rationale of a policy of deterrence and arrest of irregular migrants when it is escorted by the utter inadequacy to detain these people that eventually end up in the transit hubs of Athens and Salonica. «With policing measures you cannot solve the problem» according to the words of policemen in Fylakio (North Evros region).

Indeed, the significant economic and political investment of Greece and the EU on the intensification of border controls and deportations of irregular migrants does not make sense. Evidence from 10 months of fieldwork (January 2010-November 2010) with irregular migrants, smugglers, coastguard and police officials in Athens, Patra, Mytilene, Salonica and the Evros and Rodopi regions on smuggling of Asians and Africans into Greece reveals the following facts that do not justify the increasing flow of funds towards border control. First, smuggling routes constantly change. The deep-rooted dynamics of smuggling developed in Greece, Turkey and Iran cannot be deterred solely by the active involvement of FRONTEX in Greece; at best such activity leads to small changes in routes or diversion through other countries (e.g. Bulgaria, Romania). Second, all irregular migrants and refugees that attempt to pass the Greek borders do so (unless they die in the process) and if apprehended, in most cases, they are released after some days or a couple of months with the instruction to leave the country in 30 days of their own accord (see also the Clandestino project Greek case study). A smuggling network only gets paid after the migrant is free on Greek soil; this means that crossing attempts are repeated and do not stop until the migrant reaches Athens (in most cases) or Salonica. In this respect, migrants violently pushed into small overcrowded dinghies or crammed into vans in order to reach their destination is common practice. Third, deportation of most smuggled nationalities is untenable due to the cost of such an experiment (see also Clandestino Greek Policy Brief). Such an action should also be accompanied by re-integration conditions (on a local level at least) that would deter re-emigration[5].On the other hand, the few hundreds (around 700 people in the period 2008-2010) sent back to Turkey through the bilateral Re-Insertion Protocol are formed only of nationals from countries with which Turkey has land borders (Iraq, Syria, Georgia, Iran).

Given the above, we recommend the following policy priorities for the management of irregular migration flows into Greece.

1. Strike a balance between border control funding and funding on reception and detention facilities. Develop mechanisms for monitoring the allocation of funds within Greece and, eventually, provide for the basic human rights of irregular migrant detainees.
2. Dismantle smuggling networks via concerted policy efforts that transcend police investigations. The social embeddedness of smuggling in certain transit countries (Turkey, Iran in Asia, Egypt and certain North African countries in Africa) and countries of origin cannot be tackled without a common EU foreign policy agenda that aims to promote development and political stability in these countries.
3. Create an effective asylum system (that involves screening mechanisms, interpreters and legal advisers at the border, stopping the detention of asylum seekers, implementation by an independent asylum authority – not the Greek police). At the time of writing, the Greek government has initiated an online discussion platform on a new Asylum legislation draft that would meet these criteria.
4. Implement the Return Directive ensuring basic standards for an effective and durable return.

 

---

[1] The findings of our research field visit in August 2010 in the detention centres of the Evros and Rodopi regions in Northern Greece near the Greek-Turkish land-border corroborate the report of the MSF mission in Venna and Fylakio for the period June 2009-May 2010.

[2] To give an example, in the Tychero camp there are no showers or taps in the families’ ward. Broken pipes spraying water are used instead for this purpose right outside the sole existing toilet.

[3] 31,219 migrants were apprehended in the first 9months of 2010 as opposed to 8,787 in the first 9months of 2009 at the Greek-Turkish land border. While only 4,529 people were apprehended at the Greek-Turkish sea border in the first 9months of 2010 as opposed to the 19,725 migrants apprehended during the same period a year ago.

[4] These data were given by the doctor that served in the Venna detention centre during the spring and summer of 2010.

[5] Interestingly, such reintegration conditions for returnee irregular migrants have not developed during the last decade in the neighbouring Albania which has less internal problems than, say, Afghanistan, Pakistan or Somalia.