What use is being recognised as a refugee, if you still cannot survive?
When people are recognised as refugees in Greece they have their cashcards cut and face eviction from camp / NGO accommodation if they have it. They are left street homeless and without support.
When people claim asylum in Europe, they are asking for protection. When a person receives a positive asylum decision, the host state is acknowledging that they would face serious harm or persecution in their home country. As well as whatever the person has suffered at home, they have endured a journey and they have waited months or years in limbo before being ‘recognised’.
RECOGNISED REFUGEES ARE LEFT HOMELESS, UNABLE TO MEET BASIC HUMAN NEEDS
In the last two months, upon receiving positive decisions in the ‘hotspot’ island of Lesvos, refugee families have filled the central Athens square of Victoria. Sleeping on UNHCR blankets with their possessions in bags beside them, people sit in the heat of the summer with their children.
The children have open wounds all over their bodies — impetigo, scabies, chickenpox — the wounds multiply and deepen as the days pass. I take photos of their wounds, and send them to volunteer doctors. An international medical NGO sends doctors to the square, but only to see pregnant women and newborn babies — of which there are many.
A woman goes into labour on the square. An ambulance comes to take her away. At the hospital she is told that she is not dilated enough to stay in the hospital bed — she must go home and return when her contractions are closer together. A Greek-speaking friend explains to hospital staff that the woman does not have a home she can return to. But rules are rules and she is sent away. She doubles back to Victoria in a taxi paid for by volunteers, totally out of their depth. She returns to the hospital some hours later and a new life is born.
The heat of the square is no place for newborn babies. Everyone there suffers. There is no way to wash clothes and bedding, no place to bathe. No toilets, no drinking water. No prospect of any respite. People would go hungry if local restaurants and grassroots groups did not come daily with meals in takeaway containers.
DETENTION CENTRES OR CAMPS: NO SOLUTION
The parents explain that their children’s skin became infected after they were forced onto buses by police and taken to Amygdaleza — a “pre-removal” detention centre on the outskirts of Athens, designed for people to stay before being deported. A strange place for the authorities to offer as accommodation for recognised refugees, who by definition cannot be sent back to their home countries.
Refugee families who were sleeping in the square have also been bussed to camps in and around Athens — Eleonas, Skaramangas, Schistou, Thiva. The people we stay in touch with tell us that there is no space for them in the camps, so they are kept all together in makeshift structures. They are still hot and still hungry. It’s unclear for how long they can stay there and how any kind of life will be possible in such conditions, even if their presence continues to be tolerated.
POLICE BRUTALITY AND FASCIST THREATS
These apparent rescue operations whereby people sleeping in the square are taken to camps and detention centres, are undertaken by police who descend on the square, usually at night, using tear gas and batons indiscriminately.
On the night of 4th July arrests were made, pregnant women and newborn babies teargassed and many people beaten. A man from Afghanistan was hospitalised due to injuries inflicted by police.
The state comes to clear up the mess that their own policies have created, using force, causing fear and offering no proper solutions.
The police are not the only section of Greek society who are intent on moving migrants away from Victoria Square. On 15th July, there is a demonstration at the square, Golden Dawn** and other fascist groups say they want to “decontaminate the area”. Again, there is a heavy police presence, terrifying for the square’s new residents. There is more violence and arrests of both refugees and people there in solidarity with them.
SERIOUS VULNERABILITIES BUT NO SUPPORT
Many of the families sleeping in the square have very serious illnesses. There is a child with advanced cancer who is later held in hospital; another child with a genetic disorder has not had his medication for nine months.
The Ahmadi* family have two sons, one of whom, Amir, has autism. Amir is 11 years old and lies on the floor, the thin grey blanket is his only protection from the stone of the square. He is too distressed to eat and his body is skeletal. The family clutch with them a document from a doctor — it was written at the hospital in Mitilini and it says that due to Amir’s condition he must have a stable living environment. The paper is a ticket to nowhere.
Next to Amir’s feet is the small summer tent that his family of four were issued in Lesvos. The family slept in the tent for the months they were in Moria camp, a hell on earth they were happy to depart. Now in the square they don’t know what to do.
Tears roll down Mrs Ahmadi’s face. Someone accompanies Amir and his mother to the Children’s Hospital — the doctor’s are unsympathetic and they say that there is nothing they can do.
HOW IS THIS HAPPENING?
An EU Directive proscribes the minimum “reception standards” that people claiming asylum should have whilst their case is processed in Europe. To ensure Greece meets these standards, the EU gives hundreds of millions of Euros to Greece as well as funding and operating initiatives such as the cashcard system, whereby people claiming asylum can apply for €150 per month to live, and the ESTIA program which provides accommodation for those with evidence of a legally proscribed ‘vulnerability’. These programs and the reception system in general is dysfunctional — people qualifying for assistance face long waits at the very least and others never obtain what they are officially entitled to.
In March this year, the New Democracy (Νέα Δημοκρατία) government changed the law so that people who receive positive asylum decisions have 30 days to leave ESTIA accommodation and refugee camps. Their cashcard should be cut immediately. Previously, the grace period was six months, and even then people were suffering.
Once recognised as refugees, people should have the same access to state support as citizens. But the support that the Greek state can offer anyone is extremely limited, and refugees face insurmountable obstacles to access even this. Work is near impossible to find — for Greek citizens it is hard enough, let alone for those new to the country who are yet to learn the language and who have varying levels of education and degrees of trauma.
For many years it has been well-documented that refugee’s rights in Greece “exist only on paper” and refugees face a “dead end” in Greece. There is a “lack of effective integration policy” in Greece, causing recognised refugees to face homelessness and destitution.
UNHCR have said that they are “deeply concerned” about the mass evictions and destitution that refugees in Greece face. They say that Greece must “ensure a safety net and integration opportunities” for people who have been recognised as refugees — UNHCR propose HELIOS as a solution.
HELIOS
The EU funded integration program for recognised refugees is called HELIOS — meaning sun in Greek. It is a project of the intergovernmental organisation IOM and implemented by NGO partners in Greece. IOM run the ‘assisted voluntary return’ program worldwide, whereby people seeking asylum are given cash incentives to return to their country of origin. They also manage most refugee camps in Greece.
HELIOS offers recognised refugees rent subsidies for six month — extended for another six months in extreme cases, but only if they first sign a legal house contract and have a Greek bank account for the subsidies to be paid into. In Greece, you cannot sign a house contract or open a bank account if you do not have AFM (a Greek tax number). You cannot get an AFM if you are homeless. Only 27% of people currently enrolled in HELIOS have managed to receive rental subsidies.
WHERE NOW?
Given the bureaucratic barriers, the families in Victoria Square have no real prospect of accessing the European funds designated for them. Increasingly hostile Greek immigration laws together with a lack of meaningful support for integration mean that people who are recognised as refugees in Greece will continue to suffer.
People who have received their positive asylum decisions continue to join the families already sleeping in Victoria Square.
Further reading regarding the situation in Victoria Square: https://rsaegean.org/en/recognised-but-unprotected-the-situation-of-refugees-in-victoria-square/
* names have been changed to protect people’s identity
** The neo-Nazi fascist Golden Dawn party has been actively supported by many serving members of Greece’s police force http://www.ansamed.info/ansamed/en/news/sections/politics/2014/05/27/greece-polls-over-50-of-police-voted-for-nazi-golden-dawn_45b5f742-d251-43eb-a8b7-1192beadc032.html
