Human Rights

The US state department country report for Greece 2006 has been published. I blogged the report on religious freedom in September and began the article with this statement. I am copy/pasting it here because I believe it is relevant.

Every year the US State Department (Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor) issues an International Religious Freedom Report. The one for 2006 was published on September 15th. The last time I posted one of these reports on Human Rights, the first comment was “That’s all we need, America telling Greece what to do”

So I just want to address this issue first.

The report was set up to promote and protect the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international agreements. They are compiled by gathering information from a variety of sources, including government and religious officials, nongovernmental organizations, journalists, human rights monitors, religious groups, and academics.

The international reports have not appeared because the US government suddenly felt like making sure that human rights were being protected throughout the world. For example, the international Trafficking in Persons report (TIP), was established because of pressure from women’s groups, NGOs and grassroots organisations. I mention this one in particular because I know people who are active in that area.

Now we have that out of the way…

The report is very long and covers many areas in some depth. I am going to break it down here into smaller articles to post through this week. It begins with this important statement:

The [Greek] government generally respected the human rights of its citizens; however, there were problems in several areas. The following human rights abuses were reported: abuse by security forces, particularly of illegal immigrants and Roma; overcrowding and harsh conditions in some prisons; detention of undocumented migrants in squalid conditions; limits on the ability of ethnic minorities to self-identify; restrictions on freedom of speech; restrictions and administrative obstacles faced by members of non‑Orthodox religions; detention and deportation of unaccompanied or separated immigrant minors, including asylum seekers; domestic violence against women; trafficking in persons; discrimination against ethnic minorities and Roma; substandard living conditions for Roma; inadequate access to schools for Romani children; and child exploitation in nontraditional labor.

I am only going to mention recent cases (2006) as many older issues I have already covered here on this blog. Needless to say many cases are still going through legal proceedings and in quite a few, no further action have been taken this year.

You can read the full report here

Below are some of the cases that stood out for me from the report.

Section 1: Respect for the Integrity of the Person

In September 2006, there were reports that coast guard authorities threw detained illegal migrants overboard and six of them drowned. After an investigation, authorities denied the reports.

International organizations and human rights nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) repeatedly alleged that illegal immigrants and refugees were subjected to violence by border guards and coast guard officers when caught entering the country illegally (see section 1.a.). Violence also occurred as coast guard officials tried to prevent illegal immigrants from leaving the country en route to other European Union (EU) countries.

During the year two migrants were killed in minefields along the border with Turkey. Sixty-eight persons have died over the previous 15 years in the Evros minefields.

The Council of Europe’s Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) reported in December that the rights of persons in police detention centers were not respected in practice and that there continued to be widespread use of violence against persons deprived of their liberty. The CPT delegation doctors found that persons who had alleged ill-treatment during interrogation or while in border guard stations were found to have injuries consistent with their allegations.

Many pretrial detainees were held with convicted prisoners in the high security Korydallos Prison in central Piraeus. In March three inmates (two Romanians and one Greek) were burned to death and another was seriously injured after setting a fire in their cell at Korydallos.

In April inmates in the old section of the Trikala prison, where 350 inmates were housed in a building intended for 125, organized a riot to protest the prison’s overcrowding. Since the riot, a new wing has opened at the Trikala prison and the old wing was renovated. Trikala’s overall capacity was increased to 400 in the enlarged facility and there were approximately that number incarcerated there at year’s end. In August a facility in Chania, Crete, designed for 10 inmates was holding 130, and another in Thessaloniki, built for 80 inmates, was holding 181. The Thessaloniki Bar Association reported that inmates in local police detention facilities did not have access to a yard or basic sanitary items, and they were poorly nourished.

The CPT also found that detention establishments of the Coast Guard on the islands of Chios and Mytilini were unacceptable, because metal containers lacking functioning hygienic facilities and natural light and ventilation were used to hold irregular immigrants. The CPT recommended that containers should never be used to hold persons for more than a few hours and should always be equipped with suitable facilities and ventilation.

In its 2006 annual report, Amnesty International (AI) and the CPT stated that detention conditions for aliens, including asylum seekers, irregular migrants, and unaccompanied minors, in some cases “may have amounted to cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment,” and that overcrowding remained a serious problem (see section 2.d.).

At the Hellenikon holding center for irregular immigrants a man has been detained for almost one and a half years without being able to communicate with anyone; he appeared to have developed symptoms of mental illness. The CPT delegation reported that this man had been placed in a cage-like cell for several months.

There continued to be reports that police took citizens to detention centers for arbitrary identity checks, used insulting language and threats of force, and conducted bodily searches in public. Police reportedly targeted persons based on their race, color, nationality, or their presence in “high-crime” areas (see section 5).

Defendants who do not speak Greek have the right to a court‑appointed interpreter. According to several immigrant associations in Athens, the low fees paid for such work often resulted in poor interpretation. Foreign defendants who used these interpreters frequently complained that they did not understand the proceedings at their trials. Defendants often were not advised of their rights during arrest in a language that they could understand. Several complained that they were not shown the Hellenic Police Informational Bulletin, which contains prisoners’ rights in a variety of languages, and that they were forced to sign blank documents later used for their deportation.

These are just some of the incidents that occurred in 2006. I think they give a very clear picture of human rights abuses that continue to happen in this country.

You can read the full report here

Tomorrow, I will post on Section Two: Respect for Civil Liberties

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