733 Cheliotis October 2012). There have also been allegations of sexual harassment of detainees by guards, and revelations of severe ill treatment amounting to torture, which may also go unpunished, at least by domestic authorities. In the most well known case, a guard aided by colleagues raped a male Turkish detainee with a truncheon, and the victim was subsequently denied access to medical care. An internal administrative inquiry found no guilt, based on evidence that had been blatantly falsified, and when the case eventually reached the national courts, the prison sentences imposed in the first instance upon the perpetrator and some of his accomplices became suspended sentences and were commuted to fines at the appeal stage (see further ECtHR, 2012; also Pro Asyl, 2012). It comes as no surprise that detainees frequently describe the conditions of their detention by using terms such as ‘grave’ and even ‘hell’, going so far as to draw unfavourable comparisons with previous experiences of warzones that they may have had and managed to escape (see e.g. Human Rights Watch, 2011; Pro Asyl, 2012). Indeed, these conditions of detention are conducive not only to health problems, as mentioned earlier, but also to violent tensions amongst detainees themselves. Fights, for instance, are quick to erupt over access to sleeping space or the toilet, and such instances are also known to have triggered indiscriminate physical violence against detainees on the part of guards in order to discipline them (see e.g. Human Rights Watch, 2011; Pro Asyl, 2012). Additionally, lengthy periods of detention under deplorable conditions commonly drive detainees to engage in various forms of protest, some of which ironically entail direct infliction of further pain upon detainees’ own bodies, and may equally be met with violent reactions by the authorities in charge. Long and exhaustive hunger strikes, for example, are highly prevalent in detention centres throughout Greece, with some detainees even stitching their lips together. As recently as April 2013, around 1,800 detainees went on hunger strike in all detention facilities around the country, protesting against the length and conditions of their detention (Eleftherotypia, 9 April 2013; To Vima, 8 April 2013). As with periods of relative normality, moreover, self-harm and suicide attempts are likely to occur during times of protest (see further MSF, 2010a; Pro Asyl, 2012; To Vima, 7 April 2013). There have been reports of staff employing violence in response to detainee protests, but also of the riot police being called in and intervening aggressively (to suppress violence by protestors, according to controversial claims by the riot police themselves), including using water cannon, tear gas and stun grenades, and making arrests that eventually resulted in detention in conventional prisons (see further Eleftherotypia, 11 April 2013; Human Rights Watch, 2011; Ios, 9 December 2012; Pro Asyl, 2012; To Vima, 23 November 2012). Criticisms of the Greek state A number of domestic actors, from humanitarian NGOs to political parties and media outlets on the left of the political spectrum, have expressed urgent concerns about the excessive use and deplorable conditions of immigration detention in Greece, contesting the state discourse of philoxenia with such suggestive expressions as ‘barbarism’, ‘concentration camps’ and ‘Greek Guantanamo’ (see e.g. Eleftherotypia, 9 April 2013; Ios, 9 December 2012; Rizospastis, 12 April 2013). On the international level, too, Greece has regularly been subject to harsh criticism, not just by inspectorate bodies, NGOs and other Downloaded from euc.sagepub.com at Oxford University Libraries on November 25, 2013