Human Rights Watch: EU agency "complicit" in Greek migrant abuse

Sep 21, 2011, 9:04 GMT

Brussels - Overcrowded cells where unaccompanied minors are jumbled together with adults, sewage runs over the floors and detainees complain of having to drink out of urinals, being denied medical care and beaten by guards when they misbehave.

'I am originally from a land of war, but I never saw suffering like I see here,' one Iraqi man said.

That is what researchers with Human Rights Watch said they found when they visited Greek detention centers for illegal migrants, in a report released on Wednesday that blames the European Union's border protection agency for being part of the problem.

Frontex first sent a 200-member force from 25 EU countries to the Greek-Turkish border last November, to provide Greece with emergency assistance in patrolling one of the main points of entry for illegal immigrants into the EU.

The deployment was made permanent in March under the code name Operation Poseidon. Human Rights Watch visited the Greek border areas in late 2010 and early 2011, interviewing detained migrants as well as Frontex and Greek police officials.

The group takes issue with the fact that Frontex delivers migrants they catch to the Greek detention centers - even though the deplorable conditions there have been criticized internationally - thus making them 'complicit in human rights violations.'

In at least one community, the detention building 'is in plain view of the prefabricated container that serves as the Frontex office,' the Human Rights Watch researchers noted in their report.

'Frontex has become a partner in exposing migrants to treatment that it knows is absolutely prohibited under human rights law,' Bill Frelick, who heads the Human Rights Watch refugee program, said.

But a spokesman for the European Commission on Wednesday rejected the idea that the agency has 'operational control of what is going on in Greece,' noting that they are under Greek command and only tasked with apprehending illegal migrants, not detaining them.

'The report does not seem to contain specific and direct evidence ... of human rights violations committed by Frontex officers themselves,' Michele Cercone said. 'Frontex should not be held responsible for the failings of a member state, in this case Greece.'

He added that Frontex border guards have been essential in reversing 'a failed border control and migration management situation' in the Mediterranean country.

'In their absence, the effective control of the external border with Turkey might well collapse, carrying the risk of a large influx of migrants,' he said.

Human Rights Watch, however, argued that Frontex could at least transfer detainees to other holding centres with better conditions in Greece or the rest of the EU.

'The onus is on the EU to work with Greece to rectify detention conditions before it cooperates ... in activities that are intricately linked to the task of detaining migrants,' it said.

The EU's home affairs commissioner, Cecilia Malmstrom, will meet with Human Rights Watch representatives on Wednesday afternoon to discuss the report, Cercone said.

'After a first study, it seems that most of these recommendations raise issues which are already being pursued, but ... the suggestions will be closely scrutinized and taken very seriously,' he said.

Online: http://www.hrw.org/reports/2011/09/21/eu-s-dirty-hands-0

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