Around 10 years ago an informal slum settlement, which has grown to consist of approximately 500 cardboard huts, developed close to the port in Patras as migrants assembled to find ways onto ferries departing Greece for Italy. Today several hundred migrants and asylum seekers stay in the settlement in squalid living conditions, among them unaccompanied children, estimated to number in the hundreds.175 At the end of January 2008, the local authorities attempted to destroy the camp. According to human rights activists, police and bulldozers reportedly moved into the camp and destroyed several huts.176 Large-scale arrests of children and adults in and outside the camp were part of this operation. A number of organizations, including the UNHCR, criticized the action, in particular because no alternative accommodation for residents was provided,177 and in early February 2008 the police halted the destruction of the camp (although persons who stayed told Human Rights Watch that the police continued to harass and arrest camp residents). Dozens of those who were arrested in Patras in the course of this round up and afterwards were transferred to the Venna detention center, and possibly other places of detention in the Evros border region and detained for three months. Among them were an unknown number of unaccompanied children who were registered in detention centers as adults. In early 2008, the Hellenic Red Cross and UNHCR estimated that there were around 250 unaccompanied children in the camp, but it is not known how many were arrested. Human Rights Watch sought access to the Venna detention facility in the Evros region in May 2008. We were not granted access to the cells; however, we were able to look over more than 200 entries in the registration log and briefly spoke to one 175 The Hellenic Red Cross and the UNHCR estimated that there were about 250 unaccompanied children in the settlement in early 2008. Email correspondence from Dora Papadopoulou, Hellenic Red Cross, to Human Rights Watch, April 22, 2008; “UNHCR expresses concern over children and asylum seekers at Patras camp,” UNHCR press release, No. 07/08, February 7, 2008, http://www.unhcr.gr/Press_Rel/7_2008.htm (accessed September 1, 2008). 176 Human Rights Watch interviews with human rights activists in Patras, June 8-9, 2008, and in Athens, June 5, 2008 (exact names withheld). 177 “UNHCR expresses concern over children and asylum seekers at Patras camp,” UNHCR press release, No. 07/08, February 7, 2008, http://www.unhcr.gr/Press_Rel/7_2008.htm (accessed September 1, 2008). Left to Survive 58