At Petrou Ralli, asylum applications are received only one day per week, every Saturday, officially from 6am, in a side street of the building, as waiting outside the main entrance is prohibited. In average, around 20 asylum applications are registered every week, although at times up to 2,000 persons may be queuing to apply for asylum. On Saturday mornings, the police officers of the Aliens Directorate randomly select around 20 people (sometimes the first in line, but not always). People start queuing from Thursday morning, even in harsh meteorological conditions and remain for three days with no access to toilets, water or food. In addition, the police regularly disperse the crowd so that people do not 6 start queuing before the Friday evening. Persons seeking to apply for asylum may be obliged to return many times over several months before having the opportunity to register, while facing the risk of being arrested and deported in the meantime. During the monitoring carried out by a consortium of NGOs between February and April 2012, there were some weeks were no applicants at all were allowed to register their asylum claim. After the ‘selected’ applicants are allowed to enter the building of the Aliens Directorates, the remaining asylum 7 seekers are dispersed with no explanation and no further information is provided. No standard prioritisation system applies and there is no mechanism in place to identify vulnerable people. Women and children have to queue with other asylum seekers, in the same conditions. The NGOs also highlight that the process to register an application leads to violence and exploitation, raising 8 tensions between asylum seekers, while the police remains indifferent even when fights occur. 9 Registrations are handled by police staff that lacks training for this specialised function , and are insufficient in number (the exact number is not known). This is despite the fact that the Greek Action Plan foresees additional training of police personnel responsible for the first and second instance procedure. Asylum seekers are expected to provide an address in Greece, and given the difficulties asylum seekers face in securing accommodation, this proves impossible for many people. Consequently, it is difficult for the authorities to notify asylum seekers of developments in their case, and for asylum seekers to meet deadlines for important procedural steps, including the lodging of an appeal. The asylum seekers who manage to apply for asylum, are provided with the special asylum seeker’s card, the so- called “pink card”. A specific procedure exists at Athens airport for new asylum applications lodged by persons without permission to enter. In this procedure, UNHCR has not observed particular barriers to the filing of an asylum application, although those applying for asylum at the airport may be detained for a maximum period of up to four weeks, during which they are interviewed. However, this procedure is characterised by the same absence of procedural guarantees as at the other entry points: there are generally no interpreters available, and legal and procedural counselling and assistance is not accessible. This lack of procedural guarantees is yet another gap in the implementation of the reform of the asylum system referred to in the Greek Action Plan, where it is expressly stated that provision of interpretation services and legal aid for asylum seekers is foreseen. If a decision is not taken within the four week maximum detention period, applicants are released, allowed to enter the territory and required to report to PetrouRalli. They are however confronted with the same difficulties as other applicants at Petrou Ralli, including the difficulty of providing an address as a condition for registering their asylum application. Only the people who are able to provide the authorities with an official address can receive a “pink card”. 6 7 8 9 See UNHCR, Dozens queue every week in Athens to apply for asylum, 22 March 2012; 14 Greek NGOs, opus cite. 14 Greek NGOs, opus cite. 14 Greek NGOs, opus cite. ECRE and ICJ, Second Joint Submission of the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) and of the European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE) to the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe in the case of M.S.S. v. Belgium and Greece (Application no. 30696/09) and related cases (hereinafter, ECRE and ICJ second submission on M.S.S. v. Belgium and Greece), February 2013, p. 19. See also, 14 Greek NGOs, Report of the Campaign for the Access to Asylum in Attica Area, July 2012. 14