Private security guards:
POM are often discovered hiding in vessels or
inside trucks by private security staff hired by the
port. The patrolling activities in the port are carried
out by the ICTS Hellas, a private security firm with
deployments inside the Port for over 10 years.
Rather than handing people over to police officers,
several POM reported that the guards operated
autonomously and used force to deter them from
future stowaway attempts. In one report from 1
December 2021, the respondent explains he was
hiding inside a truck when he was found by a
security guard wearing a uniform of some kind. The
guard started to beat the respondent on his knees
with a baton. Fearing he might be arrested and
despite being injured, the respondent was able to
escape from the guard.
Truck drivers:
POM who manage to evade discovery by police
and private security guards may still later be
discovered by truck drivers in whose vehicles they
are hiding. As with the security guards, POM
reported that truck drivers also behave violently
towards them, without calling the authorities. For
example, a report collected on 13 September, 2021
states:
“The driver of the truck in which the
respondent had been hiding found him and
urged him to come out. When he did so, the
driver hit him on the head with a wooden
bat, causing a gash of about 7 cm. The
respondent then tried to run away, while
the truck driver shouted words at him in
Greek that he did not understand”.
POM also reported theft of their personal items,
including cell phones, by the police. In two cases of
internal violence reported in January 2022 by field
reporters on the ground, police officers in the New
Port of Patras confiscated the respondents’ mobile
phones, forcing them to enter their passwords to
unlock the device. In one of the cases, the police
officer reportedly said, “Give me your mobile phone
for information, and then you can go back to the
factory.”
These individual cases speak to wider policies of
bodily harm, structural violence, and containment
by the authorities. POM in Patras are unable to
return to their countries of origin, yet prohibited from
moving forward and therefore become trapped in
the precarity of living arrangements in abandoned
factories, brutal conditions of the port, and statesponsored conditions of constraint, all of which
restrict mobility and administer force. This situation
is far from new and proliferates a continuation of
policies that have been detailed as established in
the BVMN’s previous report. In spite of the
consistent reporting on such human rights
violations, little evidence is present for a less
hostile, less inhospitable environment for POM or
accountability on the part of perpetrators.
Subsequently, the following sections will address
underlying and structured forms of violence that
constrict mobility vis-à-vis access to asylum, basic
needs, and safe passage.
.
Police in the port:
POM also identified police officers who patrol inside
the port as perpetrators of violence. In one incident
from 20 September, 2021, the respondent claimed
that he was apprehended by a plainclothes officer
inside the port. Reportedly, this officer assaulted
him by hitting him on the back and on his head with
a baton. The respondent added that he already had
a wound on his head (sustained after a truck driver
discovered him in his vehicle) that was healing. The
policeman’s blow reopened his wound.
Injury sustained by POM from a police
officer in the port of Patras.
5