III. Methodology and Scope Human Rights Watch conducted research for this report in Greece from May 22 to June 5, 2008 and in Turkey from June 5 to June 14, 2008. We conducted 173 interviews with migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers, of which 126 took place in Greece, 46 in Turkey, and one by telephone with an Iraqi asylum seeker in the Netherlands who had recently arrived from Greece. Human Rights Watch told all interviewees that they would receive no personal service or benefit for their testimonies and that the interviews were completely voluntary and confidential. Human Rights Watch interviewed 79 Iraqis, 32 Afghans, 13 Somalis, 11 Iranians, and 38 members of 16 other nationalities. The 173 people interviewed were overwhelmingly male, which reflects both that more single men than women engage in irregular migration and that the women who do migrate are harder to locate and interview. We were able to interview only 16 females. Of that number, five were Iraqis, all of whom were Christians living for a number of years in Athens; the remainder were all women or girls interviewed in places of detention: in Greece, five in the Petrou Ralli jail in Athens, one in the Kyprinou detention facility in Fylakio, and one in the detention facility on the island of Samos; in Turkey, three in the detention facility at Kırklareli and one in Edirne. Although the age demographics of the Iraqis interviewed were evenly spread out (three teenagers; 20 in their twenties; 20 in their thirties; 22 in their forties; 4 in their fifties; and 10 in their sixties), those over the age of 40 were almost all Christians living longterm in Athens, whereas the Muslims were almost all under age 40. The Iraqi Muslims were less likely than their Christian co-nationals to have spent as much time in Greece or to be asylum applicants or to have some form of documentation. By contrast, the nonIraqis interviewed were on the whole much younger than the Iraqis: two were preteenage children; 35 were teenagers; 46 were in their twenties; 7 in their thirties; and only 3 in their forties and 1 in his fifties. Iraqi Christians were disproportionately represented in the interview sample because they have been living in Greece (and Turkey) longer, are more integrated, better organized communally, and therefore easier to locate and interview than the largely undocumented Iraqi single Muslim men. Of the 79 Iraqis interviewed, 38 were Christians, 13 were Kurds and one each identified himself as Sabean or Turkoman. Of the 26 Arab 15 Human Rights Watch November 2008

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