Human rights stop at Europe's borders

Human rights stop at Europe’s borders

Illegal detention, degrading conditions, deprivation and abuse. It is a real nightmare that refugees live daily in the Samos camp, funded by Brussels on the Greek island of the same name. Amnesty International has asked the government of Athens to review its migration policy, to prevent asylum seekers from being systematically consulted on the most basic human rights. At the same time, the European agency for human rights has also pointed the finger at the conduct of national law enforcement agencies, which are not prosecuted by judicial authorities.

Amnesty’s complaint

In a report published on Tuesday (July 30) and titled “Samos: ‘We feel like we are in prison on the island'”, the non-governmental organization denounced the unsustainable situation at the reception facility on the Aegean island, documented between December 2023 and July 2024. The research is based on meetings and interviews with guests at the center and with representatives of Greek authorities, civil society organizations and UN agencies.

The Samos camp, which opened in 2021, is a “dystopian nightmare” according to Amnesty: overcrowding, inadequate health and sanitation, unlawful and arbitrary detention and systematic deprivation of personal freedoms. All this while the highly guarded facility is surrounded by barbed wire and security cameras, making it more like a prison than a place of welcome.

The report highlights that there is often a lack of access to running drinking water and, in some cases, even to beds. Some numbers: last October, following an increase in arrivals on the island, the center reached 4,850 people compared to a maximum capacity of 2,040. Refugees were also housed in non-residential areas such as kitchens, classrooms and containers. The nominal capacity of the camp was increased to 3,650 places, but without taking action to actually increase the number of accommodations.

The sanitary situation is also precarious and assistance to the guests of the facility cannot be guaranteed, given that the contracts of the health workers expired a month ago and the “Ippocrate” project (funded by the EU and managed by the IOM) has not yet started. Sometimes, the guests of the camp are prevented from leaving the facility for weeks or even months.

The new European migration policy

A model described as “punitive, costly and full of abuses” by the NGO, and which must not become “the” model for the implementation of the New Pact on Migration and Asylum, definitively adopted last May and whose implementation will be one of the central priorities of the second Commission Ursula von der Leyen. “Samos is a window on the future of the Pact and offers a crucial opportunity for the EU and its Member States to change course,” said Deprose Muchena, who deals with the impact on human rights in the region.

“Under the pretext of registering and identifying people,” the document reads, “the Greek authorities are effectively detaining all people upon arrival, including those in vulnerable situations, violating their rights.” Amnesty urged the EU executive to hold Athens directly accountable for the documented violations, considering Greek rules on the restriction of the freedoms of asylum seekers (which would produce “racialization” and would harm ethnic minorities in particular) in contradiction with both international law and thepurchase community.

The one in Samos was the first of the new “multipurpose centers” built after a fire devastated the Moria camp in 2020, the largest in the Hellenic country and sadly known for the precarious conditions of the refugees who were locked up there, off the Turkish coast on the island of Lesbos. For these centers, the European Commission allocated 276 million euros with the promise of “better conditions” for asylum seekers. A promise that seems to have been seriously disregarded.

The impunity of the police

To the I accuse Amnesty has also been joined by a report from the EU agency for fundamental rights (Fra in the English acronym), according to which there is not enough seriousness on the part of the national authorities of the Twenty-seven in investigating – and punishing – human rights violations especially at the external borders of the block. This is a topic that has always been politically thorny, especially in the eastern and southern member states, more directly exposed to migratory flows and often left alone to manage them.

The report highlights the persistence of “a sense of impunity”, given that “there are very few national investigations into incidents involving loss of life and alleged ill-treatment of migrants and refugees at borders”. And even when an investigation is carried out, “very few national prosecutions lead to convictions”. For this reason, the report explains, several victims are turning to the European Court of Human Rights (the ECHR, a non-EU body based in Strasbourg) rather than to the national courts of member states.

The FRA report lists a series of allegations involving physical violence, abuse and mistreatment of various kinds (for example, people being forcibly stripped of their clothes or having their personal property destroyed), as well as the failure to rescue refugees in obvious danger, the forced separation of family units and the summary expulsion of asylum seekers.