by Basir Ahang

Sunday 12th July, at 5 o’clock in the morning, the Greek police and army commandos have entered the camp of Patras, destroying and setting fire to everything. The migrants had built this camp in 2002, and since then thousands of people had found refuge there. Here lived Iranians, Iraqis, Africans, but mostly Afghans fleeing the inferno of war.
The destruction of the camp was decided by the Greek government in April, although this violated the Human Rights and was legally prohibited by the Geneva Convention.
Mustafa, a young resident at the Afghan camp, phoned me in tears telling that at 5 in the morning the police entered with bulldozers in the area, but, realising that the boys had no intention of leaving the only place that had left, began to threaten them by saying that they had permission to shoot if their orders were not obeyed. As this threat proved entirely ineffective, the police began to set fire to the shacks.
Once they exited the camp, the boys were immediately arrested. They were one hundred in all: 60 of them were transferred to prison in Komotini, while the other 40 have been deported to a town on the border between Greece and Albania. Among them two boys, Najib Haidari and Saeid Mustafa, were certainly among those who were able to appeal to the European Court. Yet Mustafa, during the same call, said he was scared because 240 people had already been deported in the days before the destruction of the camp, first to Turkey, Istanbul, and from there many were deported to Afghanistan. Najib and Mustafa were in possession of a document sent by the European Court in which it was expressly declared the prohibition to touch these people. When the guys showed the document to police officers, they just answered that the document was written in French and therefore it was valid in France, not in Greece.

So one wonders: who is responsible for the protection of these boys?
The UNCHR? The European Union? Nobody in the world?

If the Geneva Convention and Human Rights were respected these people should be protected from the violence of the Greek government, and they are all still there, those who fled, those already on the way home, condemned to death by a state that passes this sentence only for immigrants.

Here is a list of addresses and phone numbers useful for those who want to tell those responsible what they think about the attack to the refugee camp of Patras:

Ambasciata di Grecia presso lo Stato Italiano Via S. Embassy of Greece to the Italian State. Mercadante 36

Via Mercadante 36
00198-Rome
Phone 06.8537551
Fax 06.8415927 Fax 06.8415927
 gremroma@tin.it

Office of Defense at the Embassy of Greece in Italy
Viale Rossini, 4 Via Rossini, 4
00198-Rome
Phone 06.8553100
Fax 06.85354014

[ mercoledì 15 luglio 2009 ] [Wednesday 15 July 2009]

Translated from Italian by Chiara- from  http://www.meltingpot.org/