The lack of any information in a language they understand often leaves detained people in limbo about their future. Fighting back through demanding to know about their cases is their way of pushing the detention system to acknowledge them; it confirms their existence when all physical evidence of their existence is written away (see reports on the absence of custody records for those detained).
In November 2019, the Greek authorities formally began a process that erodes the distinctions between reception and detention, by announcing their intention to create more than 18,000 new detention places on the islands where asylum seekers are housed in camps, and by imposing automatic detention for all new arrivals. In May 2020, additional amendments to the law severely limited procedural safeguards and further extended the use of detention everywhere. Then, following the devastating fire that burned the camp of Moria to the ground in September 2020, the government announced the transformation of island camps into closed centres. Their plan, backed by €130 million of funding from the European Union, is to create two zones of fencing inside every camp, six metres apart, and to introduce biometric cards to control entry and exit, CCTV monitoring, airport-like bag screening and a secure detention facility. Camps on Samos, Leros and Kos are first in line for these changes. These developments effectively erode the boundaries between asylum reception centres and immigration detention centres, and, therefore, have much wider implications for human rights protections across the continent. And yet, due to the toxic discourse on mobility in Greece such developments continue unabated. Instead, violence against migrants has surged, with documented examples of dog hunts, beatings and torture by police officers and militias, alongside summary expulsions, and a normalisation of human rights abuses in detention centres. While human rights organisations, academic researchers and lawyers have a lot of information about what is actually happening on the ground, very little of that gets into mainstream public debate.
In a bid to fill at least some of this gap, and in collaboration with the Greek Council for Refugees (GCR), we set out to create a ‘know your rights’ leaflet with information about immigration detention in Greece. Although every effort is made to ensure the information in the leaflet is accurate and up to date, it should not be treated as a complete and authoritative statement of the law. In fact, while the GCR team was working on the content, the new asylum law was being introduced, which delayed its production significantly. Therefore, the information in there should not be considered as legal advice; in fact, the leaflet urges those in detention to seek consultation with lawyers before making decisions. In simple language, the leaflet explains practical things detained men, women and children can do in order to safeguard their human rights while in detention, as well as giving some advice about post release. It also links to websites for further information and offers outlets to condemn violent practices inside detention. We hope that this leaflet can help detained people in Greece understand their cases better, as well as assisting lawyers and organisations that seek to support them. It was written in Greek and has been translated in 5 languages, English, French, Arabic, Urdu and Farsi. It will be available online and distributed to detainees all over Greece.
This publication was funded by the ESRC-IAA award and by the Open Society Foundations.