Reykjavík Grapevine - 04.12.2009, Page 11

The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 18 — 2009
11
“I put my clothes in the bag, then
they took me directly to the police
station. I protested and asked to
make phone calls again, and take my
salary—I didn’t have any money! They
kept saying: ‘later, later.’ After five
minutes in the police station, they took
me to the airport where I stayed the
whole night. They deported me at six
AM the next day. I had some Icelandic
money on me and they did not let me
change it in the airport. And still no
phone calls.”
Four police officers escorted Nour
and the two others being deported
through their flight. “In Greece I was
put in prison for one night.” Then
Nour was interviewed, a required
formality. “They gave me a piece of
paper with a small empty space to
fill, and told me: ‘You have to describe
your situation and why you want to
seek asylum here.’ The space was too
small to write my full family name in
it. I laughed: ‘Write my problems here?
How?’ They said: ‘Just write whatever
you want, just write something, in your
language.’ So I wrote, in Arabic: ‘I do
not seek asylum in Greece.’ I signed it
and gave them the paper. OK, you are
free, they then said. With no papers
to prove my identity, nothing. I asked:
‘How am I free? I have no place to go.’
‘It’s like that,’ they said. ‘You want to go
free or you want to stay in jail?’”
Nour was left in the streets of
Athens with Icelandic currency in
his pocket. “I tried to change it at the
airport but they were not allowed to
accept Icelandic money because of the
crisis. So I’m at the airport and can’t
even go to the city centre. What should
I do there anyway? Then I remembered
a Greek I met in Iceland. I called him,
he came to the airport and took me
to his house.” Nour stayed there for
one night. “Then he left Greece so I
couldn’t stay there longer. So I was
in the street again. I don’t know, it’s
really hard to speak about; I don’t want
to think about it. I’m still thinking
positive. I will never give up.”
ignored to death
Nour brings me to a tent outside
Parliament, home to five men
collectively on hunger strike. They
represent a group of fifteen people:
Iraqi, Iranian, and Afghan. They all
carry UN refugee cards as former
members of PMOI, M for Mujahedin.
Western media sometimes called
them freedom fighters, but they are
now considered a terrorist organisation
by the US. Since 2001, their struggle
for free elections and gender equality
in Iran is supposedly non-violent. It is
strange to weigh these fragile figures,
exhausted and skinny, against the idea
of Mujahedin fighters. As ex-members
their situation is extremely precarious,
they explain to me, because not only
would the Iranian government and
Kurdish forces like to see them dead,
but the PMOI as well. In Greece you
may add fascists and police to their
threats.
One of them shows me pictures of
serious head injuries he suffered from
police when caught on an Athens bus
with no ticket. “Three of us are gone.
We don’t know what happened to
them, if they left or were kidnapped or
killed—disappeared, that’s all.” Greek
bureaucracy seems unaffected by UN
acknowledgement of their refugee
status, which they all have certificates
for. One of them shows me a picture
of himself 40 kg. heavier—a full-blown
carpenter. He’s all skin and bones now.
Another, a professional mechanic,
suffers an eye infection that gets worse
the longer he sleeps in gardens, and
is nearly blind. “You are a refugee, go
away asshole,” a Greek doctor told him
the last time he sought help. “Some of
us did not see our family for twenty
years,” they tell me. One managed to
get to Bulgaria but was transferred
back. “Give me a white card,” he asks
Greek authorities, “so I can save my
life, get away, when someone tries to
kill me.”9
In an industrial suburb a few
kilometres away from the centre we
find the Directorate of Immigration.
Cars are parked by the wall around
the office building, and the hundred
men who spent the night in the
parking spaces now stand by the gate,
waiting. The guard by the gate holds
an automatic rifle in his hand, finger
by the trigger, and hurls obscenities at
those who approach him. The men are
here to get stamps on papers. During
the hour we spend there, no one is let
through. They have to show up again
and again. Since they have no money,
and no legal access to transportation,
and being caught on a bus with poses
a real danger to immigrants, they sleep
by the gate, in relative safety.
1 ‘Clashes and arrests …’
http://clandestinenglish.wordpress.
com/2009/06/10/clashes-and-arrests-around-the-
aghios-panteleimonas-neighborhood-in-athens/
2 ‘Chrysi Avyi’
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hrisi_Avgi
3 See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_politi-
cal_parties_in_Greece for a detailed list of Greek
political parties
4 For detailed information, see: Asylum Levels and
Trends …. UNHCR 2009.
http://www.unhcr.org/4adebca49.html
5 Nick Squires and Paul Anast. ‘Greek immigration
crisis …’ in The Daily Telegraph. Sept 7 2009.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/
greece/6147072/Greek-immigration-crisis-spawns-
shanty-towns-and-squats.html
6 Established in 2005 on U.S. payroll to establish
security in certain areas, but then turned against the
coalition forces and the government.
7 Iraqi refugees fear expulsion from Syria’ in The
National. September 3, 2009.
http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/
article?AID=/20090904/FOREIGN/709039884/1011/
NEWS. See also: ‘Iraq’. Refugees International. http://
www.refugeesinternational.org/where-we-work/
middle-east/iraq
8 ‘Rauði krossinn ítrekar …’ April 8, 2009.
http://redcross.is/Apps/WebObjects/RedCross.woa/
wa/dp?id=1000727&detail=1014239
9 The hunger strike started on October 19th and was
still ongoing November 26th.
See http://iranianrefugeesfromtipf.blogspot.com/
(Greek).
10 ‘UNHCR Position on the Return of Asylum-Seek-
ers to Greece …’ April 15 2008.
http://www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/refworld/
rwmain?docid=4805bde42
11 ‘The situation of persons returned by Austria
to Greece …’. http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/
country,,AUT_RC,,AFG,4562d8cf2,4a93fbbf2,0.html
12 No Refuge – Migrants in Greece. Human Rights
Watch, 2009.
13 ‘Amnesty International Report 2009 - Greece’
http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/
country,,,,GRC,,4a1fade846,0.html
14 ‘Report to the Government of Greece … Sep-
tember 2008.’ http://www.cpt.coe.int/documents/
grc/2009-20-inf-eng.htm
15 ‘ECRI Report on Greece’. Published on 15 Sep-
tember 2009. http://www.coe.int/t/dghl/monitoring/
ecri/Country-by-country/Greece/GRC-CbC-IV-2009-
031-ENG.pdf
16 See for example: Kaveh P. ‘A ray of hope’ in The
Atlantic Times.
http://www.atlantic-times.com/archive_detail.
php?recordID=1895.
17 See for example: ‘Don't send asylum seekers back
to Greece: Dutch court’
http://www.eubusiness.com/news-eu/1215445622.82.
18 For example: ‘German court ruling a severe blow
for Greece’ Sept. 11 2009.
http://www.eurotopics.net/en/dienste/medienindex/
media_articles/archiv_article/ARTICLE57497-Ger-
man-court-ruling-a-severe-blow-for-Greece
19 ISee the 2009 Governmental Report:
http://www.domsmalaraduneyti.is/media/Skyrslur/
Skyrsla_nefndar_um_medferd_haelisumsokna.pdf
– chapter 6.
20 And that’s not being really fair to Cyprus, which in
cases of Iraq refugees had a 90% acceptance rate in
2008, a figure certainly far away from Iceland’s, but,
must be noted, probably ignores Dublin transfers –
that is measures only the outcome of cases taken for
substantial consideration. See ECRE’s report on Iraqi
refugees here http://www.cir-onlus.org/ECRE_RI-
CERCA_IRAQ.pdf. Globally the positive recognition
rate of asylum claims was 45% in 2007, rising from
38% in 2006. See the UNHCR 2007 Yearbook:
http://www.unhcr.org/4981c37c2.html.
Feature | Social Justice
“nothing wrong”
Icelandic authorities repeatedly
claim that there is “nothing wrong”
with Dublin transfers to Greece.
The following disagree: UNHCR
‘advises Governments to refrain
from returning asylum-seekers to
Greece under the Dublin Regulation
until further notice’10. The Red Cross
highlights that recent regulation
changes mean ‘the vast majority of
asylum seekers might not have the
substance of their claims examined’11.
Human Rights Watch express worries
about ‘the harsh and demeaning
conditions in which detained migrants
are often held’12. Amnesty International
gathers that ‘ill-treatment by police of
detainees, particularly migrants and
members of marginalized groups,
was reported throughout the year’ in
200913, The European Committee for
the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman
or Degrading Treatment or Punishment
‘reiterate that the conditions of
detention of the vast majority of
irregular migrants deprived of their
liberty in Greece remain unacceptable’
and that they ‘run a considerable risk
of being ill-treated by law enforcement
officials’14. The European Commission
against Racism and Intolerance
reports15‘that as at June 2008, the
11.273 cases examined both at first
instance and on appeal resulted in 61
persons being recognized as refugees
and 10 receiving humanitarian status’.
The European Council on Refugees
and Exiles called for the suspension
of Dublin Transfers to Greece, in
April 2008. Norway had then already
decided not to transfer asylum seekers
there, and Germany not to do so in
cases of children or vulnerable people.
On July 20, 2009 a court in Frankfurt,
Germany, cancelled a deportation to
Greece due to unfair processes there.16
A Dutch court reached the same
conclusion in 200817. And in autumn
2009, the German Constitutional
Court ruled against deportation to
Greece in two separate, exemplary
cases.18
When the supposedly left-wing
government in Iceland committed
their first Dublin transfer, in October
2009, one of four deportees, Wali
Safi, managed to escape from police.
He went into hiding long enough
for the European Court to intervene
and request that Icelandic authorities
cancel the deportation and take his
application into consideration. Still,
Iceland maintains that there is nothing
wrong with these transfers.
Mohammad Askarpour, from
Iran, stayed in prison for a month
after the October deportations, and
is now on the street in Athens while
appealing in Iceland. Henry Turay,
from Sierra Leone, is currently hiding
from Icelandic police for the same
reason as Wali Safi did, fearing for his
life. Mohammad Jabar, deported in
October, is back in Iraq, finding war-
ridden Iraq preferable to bare life in
foreign streets.
as trash
The Dublin II regulation is part of
Europe’s collective effort to make itself
a gated community, and outrageous
on its own. Statistically, however, no
country implements it as ruthlessly as
Iceland. In 2006-2008 10% of asylum
claims in Iceland receive a positive
outcome, 15 of 154 applicants.19
In 2008 the ratio was 45% in
Denmark, 40% in Finland, in France
30%, Germany 38% – in Sweden 21%
of a total 42 thousand applicants.20
Iceland’s asylum policy has never
been stated in the political arena,
but silently left to bureaucratic
implementation. Accordingly, during
the latest deportations, no minister
defended them publicly, but merely
apologized for them as being ‘not
illegal’. The policy amounts to treating
humans as trash. Mass-murder would
be misleading, for death is never
a certain outcome of deportations.
People are systematically removed,
like you take out the trash, and left in a
place outside civil rights. ‘Disappeared’.
Whether they will then be burned,
buried or recycled is supposedly
nobody’s business.
Nour Aldin has been given a
temporary residency and work permit
in Iceland. Many people fight on his
behalf, and still as this is written, Nour
has been stuck in Athens for six weeks,
waiting for a signed letter, waiting
for his passport, waiting for a visa,
waiting, waiting …
Hopefully his wait will soon be
over. A temporary permit, however, is
not the end of this brave young man’s
Odyssey, and certainly not the end of
the scandal: Iceland quietly sustains
an outright murderous policy towards
asylum seekers that must be brought to
an end.
Many thanks to Olga Laf, Giorgas
Pittas and Nour Aldin Alazzawi for their
help in writing this article.
Footnotes