20.06.2022 PAGE 5 CASH ASSISTANCE “There are people in the camp who are registered for the cash card [cash assistance], sometimes they receive 75€ and they live the whole month with 75€, and I think that this is outrageous. A bus ticket costs 1,6€ [one way], if you have to buy tickets for 20 days you spend 64€ and you are left with 11€, this is crazy”. Between December 2021 and January 2022, the payments of the cash assistance finally resumed, after asylum seekers across Greece had not been receiving any form of financial support for 4 months due to severe delays since the Ministry of Migration and Asylum took control of the EU-funded program. Now, asylum seekers receive a monthly cash allowance of 75€. As camp residents explain, the amount distributed does not cover the cost of a daily bus ticket to go to the city. This creates an additional barrier to people’s freedom and right to access services outside the camp, including legal support. III. A RESTRICTIVE AND UNSAFE ENVIRONMENT As the residents’ basic rights and human dignity are not upheld by the Samos CCAC where poor living conditions continue to be a daily matter, their possibilities of leaving the facility are severely limited by the draconian security and police apparatus Extreme securitisation indeed continues to be a problem: “They have a drone that will be passing right throughout the camp. 2-3 drones passing like we are criminals or like we are terrorists.” It is significant of the state of fear reigning in the Samos CCAC the fact that many residents refused to do an interview for this project, while many more refrain from speaking up and denouncing the rights violations they face due to the fear of being arrested or jeopardising their asylum case. We have come to know of a person “trying to do a TikTok video in the camp. They arrested him”. This person, who had been using his phone and social media to shed light on the prisonlike conditions in the Samos CCAC and advocate for the rights of the residents, was brought to a police station and police officers “searched his phone, they saw a lot of videos, [and] they force him to delete the video.” Speaking about the digital surveillance in the camp, a resident asks himself if the CCAC is “a detention camp or a camp for asylum seekers? We are no longer free to live our private lives.” LIFE IN THE CLOSED CONTROLLED ACCESS CENTRE IN SAMOS