A child is dead

The full article is here at Dying to emigrate

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The Greek port town of Patra is a key route for migrants (mainly Afghanis and Iraqis) dreaming of starting a new life in neighbouring Italy. But as authorities are cracking down on desperate migrants, they are increasingly taking greater risks

KATHY TZILIVAKIS

ITALIAN authorities last week discovered the body of an unidentified immigrant child who had been hiding under a truck. The 15-year-old boy, who reportedly died from exposure to toxic exhaust fumes, started his fatal journey from the Greek Peloponnesian port town of Patra.

According to George Moschos, Greece’s deputy ombudsman for children, the boy’s death could have been prevented if Greek authorities had followed the law and upheld his rights as an unaccompanied minor.

The Italian authorities discovered a Greek deportation order in the boy’s pocket. “The piece of paper found in his pocket was issued by the Greek authorities ordering him to leave the country [Greece] within 30 days,” said Moschos, addressing a conference organised by the Greek Council for Refugees on February 1. “All children, regardless of their legal status, must be protected.”

Unaccompanied minors - children under the age of 18 - are protected under Greek law, no matter what their immigration status might be. Unlike undocumented migrants over the age of 18, these children are entitled to higher levels of support and protection. In any case, they should not be subject to deportation (see side story).

But like thousands of other immigrants, the unidentified boy took up his precarious perch under the truck out of desperation, possibly to join relatives or to begin a new life in Western Europe. Patra is a key route for thousands of migrants (mainly Afghanis and Iraqis) seeking to cross into Italy, about 500km across the Mediterranean Sea.

During a crackdown on stowaways last week - part of an ongoing operation to cut off this route to Italy - Greek coastguard officers pulled 45 migrants from two lorries in the Patra port. They had been hoping to get onto a ferry bound for the Italian port town of Ancona.

“We found 15 hiding in one truck and another 30 hiding in another truck that were waiting to board ferries for Italy,” Apostolis Liourdis, Patra’s coastguard chief, told the Athens News.

Last month, Patra coastguard officers discovered one migrant perched over a rear axle of a truck. It took officers 45 minutes to get him out because he was stuck. “He would have surely died if we hadn’t found him,” said Liourdis. “Unfortunately, such instances are common.”

“We have deployed nightly patrols to deal with the situation, but the problem continues. I don’t know if there is a definitive solution,” he added. “If there is, it’s probably beyond our means because it would mean an end to illegal immigration altogether. The only thing we can do is to increase security measures in the port to discourage immigrants from choosing Patra as a route to Italy.”

‘A dead-end situation’

The situation in Patra is not new. However, it garnered nationwide attention last week after local authorities decided to sweep the port of hundreds of migrants (most of them undocumented, though some have managed to apply for political asylum).

Patra Mayor Andreas Fouras says illegal immigration has become too big a problem for his town to ignore. He says Patra has come to resemble a kind of renegade outpost of illegal immigrants.

“Our problem is that thousands of migrants gather in the coastal area with one goal - to make their way to Italy,” Fouras told the Athens News. “The situation is tragic. Patra residents are tired of the situation because there is a high rate of crime and the quality of life in these coastal areas has significantly declined.”

If it were an easy problem to fix, Patra wouldn’t be at an impasse. But the political tap dance is trickier there, owing to its proximity with EU member Italy.

According to Fouras, a former main opposition Pasok MP, the state’s “inconsistent” response has failed to solve the problem.

“On the one hand, we have the health ministry sending blankets and, on the other, we have the interior ministry ordering arrests,” he said. “We are facing an unprecedented challenge because of EU and Greek laws. We are faced with a dead-end situation.”

Fouras is referring to the fact that the government will not permit the creation of a reception centre in Patra for fear of being accused by the EU of facilitating illegal immigration to Italy. Without a reception centre, homeless migrants have been forced to fend for themselves by squatting at makeshift camps on industrial wasteland close to the port. At one camp that is home to some 2,000 migrant men and boys, half of the improvised shelters, made of plastic sheets and cardboard boxes, were torn down last week. Bulldozers are set to finish the job this month.

The forceful eviction was met with harsh criticism from leftists and human rights advocates, as well as the local association of hospital doctors and nurses and the union of public school teachers. Critics argue that the government is failing to protect migrants’ basic human rights as asylum-seekers and minors.

“It’s not that we want this camp, but it should be left alone, at least until there is somewhere else the [homeless migrants] can go,” Nadia Kouloubi, a founding member of a newly-established association for the social support of immigrants and refugees in Patra, told the Athens News.

She wants the government to grant political asylum to the Afghani and Iraqi migrants.

“We believe that they are refugees of war,” said Kouloubi. “The recognition process should be almost automatic… because there are really only two possible solutions. We either strangle all of them or help them by granting them political asylum. Those who are granted asylum [refugee status] may then travel anywhere they like in Europe.”

But the asylum-seeker approval rate in Greece is the lowest in Europe. Nearly every single application for refugee status is rejected.

According to Christos Karapiperis, a social worker with the Red Cross branch in Patra, only some 180 of the 2,000-odd migrants living at the makeshift camp that was partially demolished have managed to apply for asylum. He also said that about a third of all those squatting at the camp are children.

“A decision to remove these people from Patra cannot be taken without first making arrangements about where they will go,” Karapiperis told the Athens News. “What we need here [in Patras] is a reception centre for the children and a separate one for those who request asylum. The conditions at the detention facility at the Patra police station are deplorable and overcrowded. This is why there should also be a place for those who are undocumented so that they may be informed about their rights because I am sure they do not know about their rights [to seek asylum] or about the Dublin Regulation.”

Based on the European Union’s Dublin II Regulation (EC 343/2003 of 18 February 2003), the first member state that the migrant enters is responsible for examining his/her asylum application. Also, the first member state is required to take back applicants who are found in another member state. This is why migrants who have tried to smuggle themselves to Italy from Patras are routinely returned to Greece by the Italians.

People seeking asylum in the EU often enter the bloc through Greece and then move further into the union in search of better conditions. According to Eurodac, the European Union’s centralised fingerprint database designed to prevent abuses of the asylum system, a “large section” of those who illegally enter Greece head for another EU country.

Technorati: greece, migrants, immigration, children, patra, asylum