Out of the spotlight: The rights of foreigners and minorities are still a grey area 2004. The GCR further expressed concern that such “interruptions” could lead to unfounded decisions of rejection and put at risk individuals who upon being returned to their countries could be persecuted and tortured. Academic research has also questioned the compatibility of such practices of “interruption” with the obligations of the Greek authorities to uphold the principle of non-refoulement and has concluded that “in fact, the Greek authorities appear to subordinate [this] obligation … to procedural minutiae aiming to reduce the number of asylum applicants” and that “Greece demonstrates bad faith in the way in which it implements the provisions of the Dublin-II Regulation”. 25 With regard to these findings, Amnesty International has expressed concern about the lack of specific stipulations in this Decree that would guarantee the rights of applicants to have their application examined in full following their transfer back to Greece on the basis of the Dublin II Regulation. The organization is concerned that the provisions of Article 2.8 of PD 61/99 are applied in ways that render it impossible for the applicant to know that the examination of their application has been “interrupted” (the process through which persons of “unknown residence” are informed is not clear) and thus effectively limit their right to appeal a decision of “interruption”. This then leads to a decision of rejection by the authorities after the lapse of the designated three-month period of appeal, and in such cases the authorities refuse to examine in full asylum applications upon the applicant’s return to Greece and instead issue immediate deportation orders. Thus, Amnesty International is concerned that the Greek authorities officially “interrupt” the process of examination of some asylum applications in 25 Panayiotis N. Papadimitriou and Ioannis F. Papageorgiou, 2005, “The New ‘Dubliners’: Implementation of European Council Regulation 343/2003 (Dublin-II) by the Greek Authorities”, Journal of Refugee Studies 18 (3): 312. Amnesty International 5 October 2005 14 ways that might expose persons to a risk of human rights violations. Amnesty International wrote to the authorities regarding one such individual who was at risk of being returned to the Darfur region of Sudan (see below). Amnesty International was also informed by local experts during its visit to Greece in June 2005 that on account of this practice, Norway has stopped returning asylum-seekers to Greece under the Dublin II Regulation. 1.4 Areas of concern in the application of the legal framework 1.4.1 Access procedure to the application While the definition of asylum-seeker in Article 1.1 of PD 61/99 makes it clear that protection may by requested (i) in writing, (ii) orally, or (iii) indirectly, in practice the last two methods are not taken into account by authorities. During Amnesty International’s mission to Greece in January 2005, the organization’s delegation met with police officers at stations in regions where foreigners had been detained on charges of illegal entry. 26 In all of the four stations visited (Mytilini, Ferres, Didimoticho, Soufli), the officers claimed that all of the detainees were “economic migrants”. However, interviews in the two stations, where the delegates were allowed to conduct them in private with the detainees, revealed that the provisions of this Article had not been fully adhered to. In one case (Soufli), two male detainees, who were Turkish nationals, claimed that they had 26 Article 31(1) of the Refugee Convention prohibits the imposition of penalties “on account of their illegal entry or presence, on refugees who, coming directly from a territory where their life or freedom was threatened (…), enter or are present in their territory without authorization, provided they present themselves without delay to the authorities and show good cause for their illegal entry or presence”. AI Index: EUR 25/016/2005