While over a year has passed since the landmark ruling by the Grand Chamber of European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in the case of M.S.S. v. Belgium and Greece, Amnesty International remains profoundly concerned about the treatment of asylum-seekers in Greece.
The organization is deeply concerned that asylum-seekers are routinely detained for prolonged periods of time that can reach up to six months. In particular, the detention of unaccompanied or separated asylum-seeking children continues.
In the Chamber judgment of January 17, 2012, in the case Zontul v. Greece, the European Court of Human Rights held, unanimously, that there had been a violation of Article 3 (prohibition of torture and inhuman or degrading treatment) of the European Convention on Human Rights.
The applicant, Necati Zontul, is a Turkish national who was born in 1968 and lives in London (United Kingdom).
On 27 May 2001 he and 164 other migrants boarded a boat in Istanbul which was bound for Italy.
On Saturday, December 3, 2011, 50 immigrants held at the Alikarnassos Police department in Heraklion, Crete, started a hunger strike. They did this to protest against their imprisonment conditions: they are let to starve, with no medical care. They leave their prison cells only to go to the toilets. When they protested about these conditions in the past, they got beaten up by police officers. So their only solution was the hunger strike.
Last Friday (July 15) Goulam Bamper Khan, a 27-year old immigrant from Pakistan, was found dead in the new detention center of Elliniko (close to Athens). He had asked for a doctor repeatedly, but the only thing the detention center authorities did was to notify an unskilled member of a NGO, who just prescribed some medicine. Hours after this so-called medical examination, Goulam Bamper Khan fainted. Other inmates asked for an ambulance, but this was considered “not necessary”.
In the autonomous region of Catalonia in Spain, COMRàdio is creating a network of syndicated radio programming for local municipal stations with a focus on content aimed at immigrant integration. The programming is offered in Spanish as well as Catalan in an attempt to reach both newcomers and native-born residents.
Since the 1960s, Catalonia has received […
>> Original article at Cities of Migration <<
>> Original article at Cities of Migration <<
>> Original article at Cities of Migration <<
Dr. Maria Ait Rais, a medical doctor from Morocco, arrived in San Francisco in 2005. She had been in the US one week when she came to the San Francisco Welcome Back Center. She had previously practiced medicine for two years but now, new to the Bay Area and with very limited English, medicine no […
>> Original article at Cities of Migration <<
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