Council of Europe criticises Greece

“Credible” allegations of ill-treatment, tuberculosis epidemic: the Council of Europe published a critical report on Friday on Greece’s migrant detention policy, calling on Athens to review it and “put an end to pushbacks”.

The Council of Europe’s anti-torture Committee (CPT), which visited Greece from 21 November to 1^er December 2023, “once again urges the Greek authorities to improve living conditions in the country’s detention centers” and calls on them to “ensure that foreign nationals are treated with both dignity and humanity,” in a statement.

“Inhumane” conditions of detention

The CPT has issued several critical reports on Greece in recent years, notably in 2020 when it already denounced the “inhumane” conditions of migrant detention.

The organization said it had this time “once again collected several credible and consistent allegations of physical mistreatment” which “were allegedly deliberately inflicted by police officers in certain police stations in Athens and in the detention centers prior to removal in Amygdaleza, Corinth and Tavros.”

“Several people also reported that they had been mistreated by coastguards when they were intercepted at sea” (beating with batons and rifle butts, kicking and punching, slapping, insults, racist insults), notes the CPT.

Corinth, a “catastrophic” center

The report refers to the Corinth centre, where people are held “for periods of up to 18 months, in extremely poor material conditions”. Due to the “catastrophic health situation” in this centre, “an open tuberculosis epidemic has begun to spread among a large part of the detained population”, the Anti-Torture Committee further warns.

As regards the new EU-funded closed centres with controlled access on the Aegean islands, “the living conditions of many of the people encountered by the CPT cannot be described otherwise than as inhuman and degrading”, particularly “in the centres on Kos and Samos”.

The Committee also reports “numerous consistent and credible allegations of informal, often violent, forced removals” of foreigners on the Evros, a river separating Turkey from Greece, or at sea towards Turkey (refoulements or “pushbacks”), “including of unaccompanied and separated children”.

Greece claims to be up to standard

In their responses, the Greek authorities state that the conditions of detention in the country’s police stations and pre-removal detention centres “are in line with international standards and that major renovation works are planned in three centres”.

The police and coastguards also ensure that they act “in full compliance with their international obligations, in particular the principle of non-refoulement and the protection of the lives and dignity of people,” the report also states.

The Council of Europe, which has its headquarters in Strasbourg, is the international organisation that brings together the 46 signatory states of the European Convention on Human Rights. Several thematic committees, including the Anti-Torture Committee, monitor compliance with this Convention.