Painting by Lia Melia [butdoesitfloat.com]
The victims of a recent shooting at a strawberry farm in southern Greece still fear for their livelihoods and safety, Amnesty International said after a visit to the farm.
A group of 33 Bangladeshi workers at the farm in Manolada were shot on 17 April by farm supervisors when they joined other workers protesting because they had not been paid for seven months. Eight of them were seriously injured.
“They hit us and said, ‘We will kill you.’ Three of them were shooting at us while the others beat us with sticks. The shooting went on for more than 20 minutes,” one of the workers told an Amnesty International delegation that visited the camp over the last few days.
While there, the organization observed horrendous conditions where workers – some in their early teens – live in crowded sheds without access to clean water and sanitation.
“The living conditions we’ve witnessed in Manolada are a shocking glimpse into an appalling underworld endured by thousands of migrant workers across the area,” said Kondylia Gogou, Greece researcher at Amnesty International.
Amnesty International
"Our visit to Manolada confirmed the very real sense of fear and ongoing danger for the strawberry pickers, who are still reeling from last week's violent attack and their despair over not being paid and the inability to support their families," said Lia Gogou, our Greece researcher. "The sad reality is that many of them feel trapped and that they have no other choice but to carry on working there."The shooting was just the latest incident highlighting the vulnerability of migrants in Greece. Racist attacks are on the rise with far-right parties like Golden Dawn rapidly gaining public support as the country struggles with a crippling economic crisis. In some cases the police refuse to help, in others victims with no papers fear arrest if they speak out.
Police harassment is common, with migrants frequently stopped by police in sweep operations, ironically code-named Xenios Zeus after the Greek god of hospitality and protector of strangers. If they don't have legal papers they can be hauled off to one of the country's squalid detention centres that wouldn't have been out of place in medieval times, and where reports of ill-treatment by police are common.
Many remain without papers not through choice, but because Greece's chaotic immigration system can be impossible to access. This leaves them vulnerable not only to arrest, but also to the kind of exploitation the strawberry pickers and so many like them face on a daily basis.
The situation is so bad that even people fleeing the conflict in Syria say they would rather go back there than stay in the country they thought would offer them some respite.
"One hundred per cent I will die in Syria, but one hundred per cent I die here too" one man told Amnesty researchers. He had just been released from three months behind bars in a grim detention facility despite having committed no crime.
Greece's asylum and immigration system clearly needs urgent reform and the government must take swift action to address the major, long-term problem of labour exploitation. Racist attacks must be properly investigated and those responsible must be brought to justice. However, this relies on decisive action from a government that reportedly denies racism is a serious problem. In the meantime, human despair mounts.
The EU can also act to relieve the pressure on Greece as one of the main entry points to the EU for undocumented migrants. It must redraft the Dublin II regulations to share responsibility for asylum seekers more equally between member states, taking into account asylum seekers' individual needs.
There are many in Greece today who are horrified at the treatment migrants receive from the authorities, the rise in racism and xenophobia and the image this gives to the rest of the world. For them the flame of the ancient Greek concept of xenia - kindness to strangers - still burns. But across the country, it's rapidly turning into a little more than a flicker.
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