Interview with Minos Mouzourakis – Greek attorney-at-law registered with the Athens Bar Association and Legal & Advocacy Officer at ECRE member organisation Refugee Support Aegean)
Dear Minos, you and your colleagues at Refugee Support Aegean (RSA) have successfully appealed to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). Τhe Court repeatedly protected asylum seekers in Greece from immediate deportation before their individual situation was assessed. How is it at all possible that Greece, an EU member state, is ordering the deportation of people without examining their situation beforehand?
In mid-July this year, Greece took the radical decision to ban access to asylum for people who arrived from North Africa, mostly via Libya. For the moment, the suspension on asylum is valid for three months, until 14 October.
The Greek government reacted to an increase in arrivals on the southern Greek islands, Crete and Gavdos. While the level of arrivals remains low and declining in other parts of the country, the increase in arrivals in the South has been ongoing for almost two years now. In all this time, the Greek ministry responsible for reception failed to set up structures to ensure basic reception conditions for new arrivals. There was simply no response – until now.
Given this geographical focus, those affected are likely to be people seeking protection from the African continent…
Amongst those denied access to the procedure are mostly men but also women from Sudan, South Sudan, Yemen and Eritrea. Countries of origin which are in armed conflict and which, according to the Greek asylum authorities, have a high chance of obtaining protection. They, as everyone who arrives via Libya, are caught in detention, cut off from access to the outside world.
Upon arrival after a long and dangerous flight, they are transferred to a detention facility on the mainland. In the detention facilities, some of which were previously open camps, asylum seekers falling under the suspension immediately receive a return order to the country of origin or transit. These return decisions are made without an individual assessment of potential risks. We are talking about standardised forms; the destination country is not even named. The situation is very similar to what we saw in March 2020, when Greece unlawfully suspended access to asylum. Again, we do not only have a ban on asylum, but the decision to immediately deport.
Since the suspension, an estimated 1,000 people have been detained. How are the conditions in detention?
We are mostly in touch with asylum seekers detained in the north of Athens, in the Amygdaleza detention facility. Based on the reports we receive from there, but also across the various detention facilities, the situation is alarming.
Even after days and weeks, some detained asylum seekers are still wearing the same clothes they arrived in Greece with. Neither clean clothes nor clean bed sheets are provided. Amygdaleza consists of containers with poor maintenance. Some are completely unsuitable due to damage.
In some of the containers, there is no running water nor electricity or air conditioning – people cannot even take a shower and suffer under the extreme temperature in the summer. Maintaining personal hygiene becomes extremely difficult.
Refugees detained there are cut off from the outside world. Only a few still have their cell phones. Also for them, contact with the outside world is extremely limited.
In this situation, you and your colleagues at Refugee Support Aegean (RSA) are taking legal action. Can you describe what that looks like?
There are efforts by our organisation and others to support people, first of all by giving them information about their current situation, their rights and possible legal steps. We try to support them in accessing the asylum system, which is a human right that can never be taken away. We assist asylum seekers affected by the suspension in asking for asylum in Greece, in person and in writing. This is, of course, ignored.
I am stressing that this happens in a situation of complete absence of free legal aid in detention. Greece is actually required to provide legal assistance in detention, but there is no legal aid scheme. There are thousands of people in detention who should have access to a lawyer, but they have not. This places the burden on civil society to support people in accessing their rights. Of course, on our end, capacity is too low to cover the needs.
Instead of access to the asylum procedure, the people you meet in detention receive the standardised return decisions you mentioned already?
Yes. Their return, either to their home country or to the transit country, is ordered without prior assessment of their safety and of the risks they might face. Even if an asylum seeker manages to file an appeal against this decision within the extremely short deadline of five days and then files for judicial review before the court, this application does not protect them from deportation. This is a significant and well known gap in judicial protection in Greece. To protect our clients from deportation until the case is assessed properly by the domestic court, we called on the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) for interim measures.
You are talking about the first interim measures which the Court granted on 14 August?
On 14 August, the ECtHR secured the right of eight refugees from Sudan to remain in the country until the examination of their suspension applications in the administrative courts is completed, yes. It was the first time since July that the eight applicants were actually protected from deportation and the threats they might face in their home or transit country. This order also signals a recognition of the serious risks the eight face upon removal, which constitute valid grounds for their asylum applications. Four of the applicants are represented by RSA, the other four by the Greek Council for Refugees.
Only a few weeks later, on 29 August, you received another decision on interim measures in the case of four Eritrean refugees. Did the Court decide the same way?
The ECtHR went further this time. It stressed that four refugees from Eritrea should be allowed to remain in Greece until they have had access to asylum procedures. The refugees, represented by RSA, had previously had their appeals against their return orders dismissed by the police without examination, due to the fact that they were submitted after the five-day deadline.
The Court’s decision comes as no surprise. RSA, PRO ASYL and 107 other organisations have strongly condemned the suspension as a clear violation of binding international human rights law as well as EU law.
The suspension has attracted sharp criticism not only in Greece, but also across the EU and at international level. To name a few, the Greek National Commission for Human Rights, the Union of Greek Administrative Judges and officials from the Ministry of Migration and Asylum in Greece, as well as the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights and the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), have opposed the decision.
However, the silence of the European Commission, whose institutional duty is to ensure compliance with the treaties and rules of the European Union, is striking. It’s the second month since the suspension entered into force. The Commission has so far only expressed that they are monitoring the policy as Greece is confronted with an extraordinary situation. This position is permissive and is construed by the Greek government as support.
Do the decisions by the court stop Greece’s plans?
It is hard to assess this. We have very little hope that there will be a review of it on a political level. The government has already hinted at interest in prolonging the suspension.
So far, we are at least not aware of any removal that actually took place. If we look back in history, also in March 2020, no one was really returned. But we have a situation of unnecessary human suffering, unnecessary rights violations, which continues only for the asylum claims of people detained now to be received later. And I want to add that this is creating an unnecessary burden for the administration, too. It is one thing to assess asylum applications one after the other, and another thing to receive thousands at once after the suspension eventually comes to an end.
At the same time, the return orders could be carried out at any time, deportations could take place at any time. This is the real threat and the reality the people experience.
Following the first intervention by the Court, government representatives said that NGOs involved in the cases are “undermining political decisions”. NGOs such as RSA are being targeted.
Not only do the recent statements target civil society organisations (CSOs) supporting people in accessing their legal rights, they also undermine the individual right to legal remedies, judicial scrutiny and the rule of law more broadly.
Plans to tighten the registration rules NGOs have to comply with were also announced. For five years now, the infamous NGO Registry has been at the forefront of efforts to restrict the ability of CSOs to act. Following the ECtHR order, the Minister of Migration and Asylum himself targeted civil society, suggesting that organisations that support asylum applicants contesting state decisions should be de-registered from the registry. This would have a massive effect on our ability to do our work as registration thereon is a prerequisite for any activity in the area of asylum and migration. Further, it would also exacerbate the existing absence of support for people.
We take these threats very seriously. We have reached out to institutions at the national, EU and international level in order to ensure that this is not only clearly documented but also condemned as an attack to the rule of law in the country. We will continue to support and represent our clients in claiming their rights and to defend the rule of law.
This interview was conducted by ECRE member organisation PRO ASYL. The original version is available on their website (in German).