A former Fylakio detainee who was registered as a Georgian national but said he was
stateless, characterized conditions inside Fylakio detention center, saying, “They are
aggressive in Fylakio… the police don't look at us as humans but as animals. They don't
care. They just throw the food inside [the cell] and they don't care if people kill one another
over the food. Those who are stronger eat. The others don't.”89
As Human Rights Watch observed during its research visit, the main detention building in
Fylakio is in plain view of the prefabricated container that serves as the Frontex office where
nationality-determination interviews take place. People sitting in it can see the detainees
being brought in and out in security vehicles. The sounds of protests, which also broke out
during interviews we conducted, were audible where the Frontex office is located.90
Tychero
Tychero is a town in the municipality of Soufli, located about two to three kilometers from the
border, where migrants are held in a police station that had previously been used as a train
station. During our visit the Greek police were holding migrants in two cells that were not
originally designed to detain people, but looked like storage rooms. They were poorly lit, had
no beds, and were overcrowded, with 130 detainees in the facility that, according to police
authorities there, had a capacity for up to 48.91
Migrants had to sleep on pieces of cardboard or directly on the concrete floor. Greek guards
confirmed to Human Rights Watch that the detainees there urinate in bottles as they do not
have access to toilets.92 Detainees showed us a corner where they urinated and one
detainee showed us a small backpack that showed damage apparently caused by mice. We
observed guards escorting a group of migrants from the cells to a nearby field to defecate.
89
Human Rights Watch Interview S-22, Venna, December 2, 2010.
of our findings on Fylakio, see HRC report, pg. 33. See also: FRA report, pp. 25 – 26, Human Rights Watch,
Stuck in a Revolving Door, 2008, http://www.hrw.org/reports/2008/11/26/stuck-revolving-door, pp. 70-71.
90 For corroboration
91
Human Rights Watch interview with Haralampos Vomvellis, commander in Tychero Police Detention facility, November 30,
2010.
92 The guard’s comment was not a formal interview.
Human Rights Watch heard similar accounts of detainees having to
urinate into bottles and saw bottles of urine in the cells at the Petrou Ralli detention facility during our 2008 visit, as reported
in Stuck in a Revolving Door report, p. 82. The CPT made the same observation in two Greek detention centers (CPT Report to
Greece, February 8, 2008, pp. 17, 18). The Greek government responded to the CPT by saying that this had “happened in the
past, and only in cases of psychologically disordered detainees,” and that detainees at present have access to the toilet “24
hours a day, or whenever they ask.” (Response of the Government of Greece to the CPT Report, p. 9, para. 1.a.(6)).
THE EU’S DIRTY HANDS
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