In 1999, following a surge of migrant arrivals from the Middle East through the Greece-Turkey land border, two Transitional Police Detachments, in Alexandroupolis and Orestiada, were set up for arresting and delivering to the relevant police station those irregularly entering Greece. In practice, people arrested crossing the border were detained for indeterminate periods in facilities resembling ‘human dumps’. Such places can hardly be described as official detention centres. As a high official, who had served at the border, described it ‘in the past there were no reception or detention centres, just camps covered only by a fence. We would dig up big holes in the ground and that would serve as a toilet’ (Fili, 2021 forthcoming). What is more, people detained there were often not formally registered. As the police officer in charge of the transitional detachments audaciously reassured the CPT delegation, ‘he reported orally all information to the Police Directorate in Alexandroupolis’. Such deliberate ‘informality’ laid the ground for practices of refoulement and push-backs of particular nationalities in the years to come.

For many years, the Evros region was the locus of pre-emptive and improvised measures, such as illegal push-backs, which became routine, systematic and brutal (e.g. see here, here and here). As a Greek border police officer told us, ‘in the past [before 2005] we were more effective. The Greek government used to hire fishermen at the border to illegally transfer migrants back to Turkey’ (Fili, forthcoming 2021). Now that Europe’s eyes are on us, we can’t keep our country secure by doing the same good quality work, he continued referring to push-backs. While this strategy may not have been an official one, border authorities did not do much to hide it. Refoulement by the Greek coast guard was occurring on such a systematic scale that border guard officers admitted they were under no obligation to inform persons subject to immediate readmission procedures of their rights and more particularly that such persons did not have the rights of notification of custody and access to lawyer. Based on interviews with migrants, Amnesty International argued that in 2013 there was at least once incident of pushback per week.

Outcry against these practices, led the authorities to adopt another set of border control policies, with the assistance of generous contributions from the European Border Fund. These included, increased Frontex operations, aimed at stopping the massive arrival and entry of migrants and enhanced border patrols through new technological means and more personnel. In line with the militarization plans of the Greek government, in 2012, the Greek government completed a 10.5km long fence along the most transited part of its land border with Turkey. Given the European Commission’s rejection of funding such a venture as ‘pointless’ and a ‘short-term measure’, Greece bore the brunt of its erection, 3,16 million euros, during its worst economic crisis that had plagued Greece since 2008. ‘It sends a clear message to the international community and the EU too that Greece is capable of securing its borders and that it won’t in the future allow immigration flows to pass.’ said the Minister of Public Protection when it was announced in 2011.

The special holding facility for irregular migrants in Filakio opened in 2007 with an official capacity of 374 (the CPT concluded that it was not constructed for more than 188 detainees). It has seven large cells, each with floor to ceiling bars, allowing no privacy. Each cell contains several sets of bunk beds. While first reports of the centre paint a picture of a well-maintained facility, despite overcrowding and limited access to fresh air, the future could only be described as a humanitarian crisis. The dramatic upsurge in border crossings in the region in 2010 and the Greek state’s inability or unwillingness to deal with reception and protection conditions led to inhuman living conditions in a prison-like environment.

In 2011, the CPT delegation found 83 juveniles (most unaccompanied) crammed into a room of less than 100m². The children had to share beds or sleep on the floor. The cell was dirty, exposed to the cold temperatures, which sometimes reach to below 16 degrees and the sanitary facilities were flooded with water and sewage. When the National Committee for Human Rights and the Greek Ombudsman visited the centre in 2011, unaccompanied minors detained there had been in the facility in such conditions for more than five months. more on minors here. Similarly, the sanitary facilities in the cell holding the families, baby and young children were in an execrable state: toilets filled with faeces as the flush systems were broken; floors flooded with water and sewage. As M.S. from Iran claimed ‘Sometimes we try not to eat for a few days just in order to avoid using the toilets’. In any case, meals were distributed only twice a day. According to the authorities, a break in funding the operational costs of the centre should have been attributed for the abhorrent situation. Detainees often reported mixed detention.

According to a report by ProAsyl, the detainees in Fylakio were deprived of all their basic rights, such as the right to information, to unrestricted access to the outside world, to have important information translated, to access a lawyer, to legal aid and to effective legal remedies while in detention. Owing to the huge number of detainees, the inhuman detention conditions, the temporariness of the programmes (only the Greek Council of Refugees offered free legal aid in the past) and the obstacles faced lawyers on the part of the authorities, the legal aid provided is limited to the most urgent legal actions. While doctors and nurses have been available, through the Prefecture and other human rights organizations like the MSF (providing services from 2009 until 2014), they were not enough for the number of people detained. As has been argued, detention is a cause of mental and physical suffering and is directly linked to the majority of the health problems for which detained migrants require medical attention. What is more, access to health care (medical and psychological treatment) is not always guaranteed, and sometimes guards arbitrarily discourage the detainees from calling the medical staff or refuse to refer them to the staff. Against this environment, humanitarian organisations found their work inside these centres challenging as their independence and access to detainees were constantly jeopardized by the police; opting to leave after denouncing the system.

In general, there were no activities offered nor were they let out in the fresh air for more than 20 minutes at a time. ‘We do not have enough police officers to control the situation in order to let them out,’ the officers repeatedly argued. In fact, as the report goes on, ‘everyone was treated the same - like caged animals.’ The atmosphere was extremely tense and relations between the irregular migrants and the police officers appeared hostile. Incidents of maltreatment, including racist insults and excessive use of force, abounded. Several persons alleged that they were punished with slaps, kicks and blows for making complaints or for committing acts of self-harm or simply to intimidate them.

For example, an unaccompanied minor told the delegation of ProAsyl in Fylakio: ‘The police sometimes beat us. First: When we are brought to the telephone room. We have only once a week access, and we are too many so not everybody has his or her turn. So when we start fighting among ourselves about the telephones, the police beat us. Second: When somebody is sick and we are shouting and making noise in order to call for medical help. Third: When the food is brought to the cell and somebody tries to get an extra portion.’ The CPT delegation even found bloodstains in a room, where the alleged beatings were taking place, which the authorities attributed to self-harm by detainees. Sexual harassment by police officers seems also to be common. In this context, in Fylakio there have been repeated reports of protests, including minors threatening to commit suicide; some even reached the wider public. On October 28, 2010, two other Iranians went on a hunger strike while in detention in Evros. They sewed their lips together with shoelaces, protesting against their readmission and for their right to seek asylum.

In an interview, the then responsible Minister of Citizens’ Protection reported his personal shame over the conditions for the detention of irregular migrants, adding, however, that possibilities [for improvement] are limited. Despite such open and unreserved agreement that such conditions constitute a flagrant violation of fundamental rights, little or nothing is done to improve them. The above findings were corroborated by the 2013 CPT visit too.

Fylakio Reception and Identification Centre

The First Reception Service (FRS) was established by Law 3907 of 26 January 2011 ‘to effectively manage the flow of illegally entering third-country nationals in the country under conditions that respect their dignity by including them in the procedures of First Reception.’ The first reception centre in the country opened in 2013 in Fylakio with an official capacity for 240 people, adjacent to the detention centre. While it opened with hopes that it would address the number of concerns over the country’s highly dysfunctional reception system, it never operated as such; instead, those accommodated there are de facto detained, forming a hybrid system of reception and detention. In fact, both the practices as well as the structure make differentiating between the two difficult. The reception centre is secured by barbed wire and guarded by the Police. As a good practice, detainees are allowed to use their phones and the internet for some hours during the day.

According to a report by ECRE in 2015, those arrested in the Evros region, are first held for two days or longer in police stations or detention centres before they are transferred to the reception centre. Apparently, this practice is based on a memorandum between the police and the first reception service in order to allow for the smooth function of the reception procedures. More recently and due to the increase of arrivals in the region, this period has been extended to one month, despite the lack of legal basis for such detention. People are not allowed to leave the reception centre and are subjected to a ‘restriction of their freedom’ according to the law for a maximum of 25 days for the completion of their registration procedures. This measure is applied indiscriminately and automatically. However, unaccompanied children may end up staying for longer (in 2018 the average stay was 57,4 days). In two cases followed by GCR in 2018, two unaccompanied children from Pakistan remained in “protective custody” for 5 months in the RIC of Fylakio, reached adulthood while in “protective custody” and were later transferred as adults to the pre-removal detention centre of Paranesti for further detention. In most other cases, those accommodated there are directly transferred to the Fylakio detention centre for a prolonged period of time.

Its limited capacity, lack of reception and identification services, including interpretation and medical care, make this form of de facto detention unbearable and unjustifiable for those held there. Compounding matters ill-treatment is seemingly a practice followed by the police to intimidate those held there. For example, an unaccompanied minor held under protective custody in Wing A, alleged that, the night prior to the CPT delegation’s visit, he had been punched and kicked by several police officers as well as being subjected to verbal abuse (confirmed by others in the room) after he had loudly protested against his confinement inside one of the accommodation containers. He claimed that this treatment was in retaliation for his escape attempt two days earlier, which was corroborated by his file. Other minors detained together with him stated that they had themselves been intimidated and threatened by the police officers that they would all be deprived of food if the minor left his room. Several allegations of verbal abuse, including racist language, by the authorities were also received. ‘You are Kurds, Syrians, Iraqis, Pakistanis but I am Greek, and I am proud. You are in this camp, where Greeks have shed their blood on this land. You must respect’, shouted to detainees an employee of the Greek Migration Ministry serving at the Reception and Identification Centre (RIC) in Fylakio in the region of Evros on the eve of 2019.

Pre-removal centre today

AITIMA visited the centre in 2016 and found that mixed detention was still the case, the cells were dirty, outdoor time was only allowed for 10-20 minutes at a time and there was a lack of medical services. Two years later, in 2018, a CPT delegation visited the centre and described the conditions as appalling and could be considered as amounting to inhuman or degrading treatment. Overcrowding was so high, reaching up to 640 detainees, leading the CPT to invoke Article 8, paragraph 5, of the Convention, requesting the Greek authorities to take immediate steps to radically reduce the occupancy levels at the centre.

The cells were filthy; toilets, showers and pipes were in a squalid state of repair, with water overflowing on cell floors; many detainees had to share mattresses; ventilation was insufficient; continuing mixed detention exposed women and girls to sexual and gender based violence; outdoor time was once more scarce, partly explained by extremely low staff numbers (5 officers for more than 400 detainees). While doctors and nurses were available, they were too few compared to the number of detainees. Here too, there have been many credible allegations of physical ill-treatment by the police mainly consisting of slaps, punches, and kicks as well as baton blows.