INTERNAL VIOLENCE REPORT GREECE This report considers violence within state borders experienced by people-on-the-move (herein POM) and those seeking asylum in Greece. It draws on 40 testimonies collected in the last months of violence in detention, police brutality, racist violence, and hate crimes, as well as opensource data on structural forms of violence present in the management of migration and asylum in Greece. Since the BVMN’s last report on internal violence in Greece in October 2020, the situation has continued to deteriorate, leaving POM at increasing risk of both physical, actual harm, and structural violence against their living conditions and immediate amenities. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the New Democracy administration has used lockdown measures as an excuse to significantly expand the power of the police, while violence and abuses of these new powers have largely gone unchecked. In 2021, Greek Ombudsman Andreas Potakis announced that official complaints of police violence have risen by 75 percent during the past year. Much of this violence has targeted migrants, asylum seekers, and people-of-color, as well as outspoken political minorities (i.e. anarchists, feminists, etc), journalists, drug users, and the homeless. The consolidation of control on issues of migration and asylum under the Ministry for Migration and Asylum (herein MMA) has led to significant changes in terms of support available to asylum seekers, and yet another step away from a desired integration-focused approach, doubling down on containment policies, which are transformed into an incarceration-based model. The designation of ‘Turkey as a safe country’ for asylum seekers from Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Somalia and the introduction of admissibility interviews, as well as the closure of the Skype pre-registration system, has made it extremely difficult to access the asylum system, leaving those arriving at high risk of detention, involuntary return, and deportation. The normalisation of detention as a result of the passing of the International Protection Act (2020), reported on by BVMN in a policy analysis on the New Pact on Migration, continues to contribute to high levels of incarceration of POM in Greece, particularly for those considered to be from “safe countries of origin”. Drawing on testimonies collected by BVMN, the first sections of this report will provide an overview of violence experienced by POM in state-run detention facilities, in addition to police brutality in the port of Patras. The following sections will examine structural violence present in the Greek state’s praxis of migration management, focusing on recent legislative, structural and infrastructural changes that have driven considerable deterioration of conditions for POM and those seeking asylum in Greece. 1