Greece urged over migrant treatment November 16, 2009
Posted by Yilan in Human rights abuses, Turkish minority of Bularia.Tags: EU, European Union, Greece, Migrants, Yunanistan
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Greece has experienced an influx in illegal immigrants arriving via the Aegean Sea in the past year
An international rights group has urged the European Union to pressure Greece into ending its “abusive” treatment of illegal migrants, as the country struggles to cope with an influx of arrivals.
A Human Rights Watch report released on Tuesday accused the Greek government of detaining migrants, including unaccompanied children, in poor conditions, and denying them proper access to the asylum process.
“Greece’s abusive detention and illegal expulsion of migrants has gone unchecked for too long,” Simone Troller, a researcher at the rights group, said.
“With a new government in place, ending this abuse, protecting migrant children and reforming asylum practices should be urgent priorities for Athens, and for Brussels.”
But Giorgos Petalotis, a spokesman for the Greek government, said the new Socialist government was committed to protecting human rights, citing their “decision to create a new citizen’s rights ministry” as evidence.
The Socialists, who won a snap election earlier this month, have pledged to crack down on illegal immigration while also granting citizenship to all immigrant children born in the country.
Human Rights Watch, a New-York based agency, said it had interviewed migrants who claimed Greek police had forced themselves or others to cross back into Turkey, from where they had travelled into Greece.
“Migrants are now being arrested throughout the country and then pushed back to Turkey. Clearly, people who need protection are not safe in Greece,” Troller said.The report came as Frontex, the EU border agency, urged Turkey to co-operate with Greece and help stop an increasing flow of illegal migrants reaching it by sea.
It said Greece has seen a nearly 50 per cent increase in the number of migrants arriving via the Aegean Sea in the last year, with 14,000 illegal sea arrivals recorded in the first six months of 2009.
Gil Arias-Fernandez, deputy executive director of Frontex, said Turkey’s co-operation was a “crucial element” in cutting down the number of sea arrivals.
“It would be nice if Turkey collaborate with us, as long as Turkey doesn’t collaborate, it’s difficult to tackle the problem,” he said.
Greek officials argue that they are overwhelmed by the volume of arrivals, which are mostly from Iraq, Afghanistan and Africa, and say they receive little help from the EU and neighboring Turkey.
According to government figures, less then one per cent of asylum applications were accepted in Greece last year - with 379 people out of nearly 20,000 asylum requests, making it one of the lowest acceptance rates in the EU.
On Sunday, hundreds of activists marched to a police station in Athens to accuse officers of beating an illegal immigrant who died after being released from custody.
For anyone, there is no place like home. November 16, 2009
Posted by Yilan in Human rights abuses, Turkish minority of Bularia.Tags: EU, European Union, Greece, Somali immigrants, Yunanistan
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What problems are the Somalis experiencing in Greece?
The life- issue of Somali immigrants in Greece is really ineffable and seems strange. There is no any one who felt an obligation to write and verbalize about dire complaints and hardships of the immigrants, especially Somalis in Greece. Most of Somalis in home, Africa and Asia are obsessed about going to Europe by any means, believing that poverty, ignorance, lack of healthcare, poor education, unemployment and uncertainty of the future are the only signs in the life outside Europe. To avoid those horrendous and aching scenarios in Africa and Asia, most of Somalis choose more than other immigrants in the world to wildly embark upon death – life journeys to get to – as they believe – the most comfortable and prosperous countries in Europe, Scandinavian nations or Great Britain in particular in search of unfailing future together with what the best life in those countries can offer to everyone. Although there are many travel routes in which Somalis exert, all of them don’t succeed in accomplishing the painful travels they face so some all the time take a risk and lose their lives on their way to their desiring destinations after they drown in either Mediterranean sea or red sea. A great number of Somali prisoners who are immigrants – because their country already turned to a ghost land – are in the jails of the countries like Libya, Tanzania Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique and others.
Some Somali immigrants successfully completed their adventurous trips to Europe but some got trapped in Greece where in recent times became only route for Somalis illegally departing to Europe. There their dreams of life changing came to an end in despair. These people have encountered a lot of hardships in the life and lacked any way to get out of Greek country while their families who arranged the travels financially and morally for them anxiously wait to find any kind of life – support from them.
Ms. Safio Isaq Anshur, a Somali female immigrant in Greece’s capital Athens talked at length about the living conditions of Somalis and said, “The living standoff between Somali immigrants and Greek officials had been frequent and there were arrests conducted against immigrants especially Somalis in Greece after complaint demonstrations were held. There are many Somalis here who failed in resumption of the travels to their already allocated countries
Ms. Safio Isaq Anshur who genuinely talked in her magnificent report which she forwarded to most of Somali speaking websites went on and said, “Greek security forces
at all times without indiscrimination shackle Somalis youth in groups after they demonstrate how they are not pleased with the ways Greece deals with them,”
After arresting the biggest number of Somali prisoners in the last week, Greek foreign Minister held talks with representatives from Somali-Greek Diaspora. Among the discussed matters in meeting was Somali inmates who some of them had been in jails for long
HRW slams Greece for abusing migrants November 15, 2009
Posted by Yilan in Human rights, Human rights abuses, Turkish minority of Bularia.Tags: abuse, EU, European Union, Greece, Migrants, Yunanistan
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Human Rights Watch (HRW) accused Greek authorities of detaining migrants, including children, in poor conditions while blocking their access to the asylum process and even forcibly expelling people to neighbouring Turkey.
Greece is trying to cope with the swelling number of migrants, many of whom arrive by boat via Turkey seeking a better life in Europe.
Nearly 50 percent more made the journey in the first half of this year, compared to the same period last year, a senior Frontex official said.
Frontex Deputy Executive Director Gil Arias-Fernandez said Greece needed Turkey to take back illegal migrants that have crossed its territory. With similar agreements in place with their north African neighbours, other EU members Italy and Spain have cut down numbers of risky sea arrivals, he said.
“As long as the Turkish authorities do not cooperate, things will not become much better. This is a crucial element,” Arias-Fernandez told a news conference.
About 14,000 migrants arrived by boat in Greece in the first half of 2009, Arias-Fernandez said, adding that eastern Aegean islands close to Turkey such as Lesvos and Samos were the top destinations.
“The trend and the situation will not change dramatically for the rest of the year,” he said.
More migrants cross into Greece by land, but most of them come from Albania and are sent back. Some 18 percent fewer migrants crossed Greek land borders in the first half of 2009.
The EU has long tried in vain to convince Turkey, which aspires to become a member nation, to do more to control departures from its Western coast towards Greece.
“Abusively detaining”
Greece itself came under criticism over migration on Tuesday as Human Rights Watch (HRW) said it was abusively detaining and expelling migrants and needed to reform its asylum laws.
Although Greece is one of the main entry points of immigrants to Europe, it granted asylum to only 379 people out of nearly 20,000 asylum requests in 2008; one of the lowest acceptance rates in the EU.
“Greece’s abusive detention and illegal expulsion of migrants has gone unchecked for too long,” said HRW researcher Simone Troller.
“But with a new government in place, ending this abuse, protecting migrant children and reforming asylum practices should be urgent priorities for Athens,” he insisted.
Socialists, who won a snap election this month, have pledged to crack down on illegal immigration while at the same time granting citizenship to all immigrant children born in the country.
HRW urged the EU to push the new government to improve the condition of asylum seekers.
“Clearly, people who need protection are not safe in Greece,” said Simone Troller, researcher at Human Rights Watch.
Greek police brigadier general Vasilios Koussoutis, who took part in Frontex’s news conference, said this was not true. “When (people) are in danger in their own country they are never sent back,” he said.
Agencies
Bulgarian sets himself alight over TV Turkish news November 11, 2009
Posted by Yilan in Turkish minority of Bularia.Tags: Bulgaria, Bulgaristan, EU, Turkce, Turkey, Turkish, Turkish minority, Turkish population, Turkiye, turks
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Rosen Markov, the eccentric leader of the “Party of Bulgarian Men” set himself on fire this evening in front of the Bulgarian National TV in protest against the broadcasting of news in the Turkish language. Markov, who is a native of Varna and is known for his weird and unconventional public initiatives, set a table on the San Stefanov street earlier today with a banner saying, “No to the news in Turkish on the BNT. They are an outrage. Who needs them?”
At one point, the man just set himself on fire in front of the main entrance of the state-owned TV station. He was saved by the policemen on duty who took off his coat immediately and put it off with a fire extinguisher. After the incident, the man returned to his table.
For one week in August 2009, Markov collected 20 000 signatures in the city of Varna against the broadcasting of news in Turkish on the Bulgarian National TV.
The ten-minute afternoon broadcast of news in Turkish on the Bulgarian National TV was introduced by the UDF government of PM Ivan Kostov in the late 1990s. It usually follows the Bulgarian-language news at 4 pm every weekday afternoon. The broadcast is a courtesy to the ethnic Turkish minority in Bulgaria but has been violently opposed by nationalists over the years, many of whom even claim the Bulgarian Turks don’t understand the literary Turkish language spoken in the broadcast.
A ten-minute afternoon broadcast of news in Turkish was introduced in the late 1990s as a courtesy to Bulgaria’s Turkish minority. Nationalists have opposed it ever since.
The big excursion of Bulgarian Turks November 11, 2009
Posted by Yilan in Human rights abuses, Turkey, Turkish minority of Bularia.Tags: Bulgaria, Bulgaristan, EU, Turkce, Turkey, Turkish, Turkish Cypriot, Turkish minority, Turkish population, Turkiye, turks
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In Bulgaria, a few months after the fall of the Wall in 1989, the Communist regime triggered the exodus towards Turkey of 360,000 Bulgarian citizens of Turkish ethnicity. The mass exodus, gone down in history as the “big excursion”, has left deep scars on the people who lived it.
“I was beaten twice until I bled and lost consciousness. It was early May of 1989. The men from the ‘milicija’ told me that if they saw me talking to ‘reported’ people , they would kill me. Then one day they told me: ‘you’re about to emigrate. You choose: Austria or Sweden’. I got ready. I had no choice. On the 29th, though, Zhivkov announced that the borders with Turkey would be opened. I packed and left with my family. A week later I crossed the border, right here, in Edirne”.
Rasim Ozgur’s eyes, framed by deep wrinkles, sparkle of an intense black. His is one of the hundreds of thousands of stories linked to what is probably the least known collective tragedy of the European twentieth century: the “big excursion” of 360,000 Bulgarian Turks who, from May to August of 1989, abandoned their homes to seek refuge in Turkey.
“Ozgur means ‘free’, I chose this name once I crossed the border”, Rasim tells in Bulgarian, a language he has not spoken in years, but still masters in all its rich nuances. “After struggling against those who were trying to force me to change my name, being able to choose it was my taking back”.
We are in the center of Edirne, the ancient Adrianopolis. For centuries, the city, laid down on a hill overlooking the Thrace plain, was the door from the Balkans on the road of the imperial capital (first Constantinople, then Istanbul) and itself the Ottoman capital from 1365 to 1453. What mostly bears witness to its greatness is the elegant figure of the four minarets at the Syleiman mosque, an unequalled masterpiece of the great architect Sinan.
Edirne is the first Turkish city those coming from Bulgaria and Greece encounter, only a few kilometers from the border. Today it has the sleepy and somewhat provincial look of a decayed capital, lazily mirroring itself in the waters of its two rivers, Tundzha and Maritza. Nothing shows the size of the tragedy for which it was stage in 1989.
A painter, sculptor and Arts Professor at the University of Izmir, Ozgur is the guest of honor of the day organized by the University of Thrace to remember the events of 20 years earlier. Tragic and unreal footage images run along a wall: a train incredibly overcrowded with people, tens of children sitting by the tracks, elder women dimmed with a lost look, the white tents of a temporary Red Cross refugee camp. Everywhere, confusion and tears.
The “big excursion” is one of the most tragic chapters of a long and complex history: the troubled relationship between Bulgaria and its substantial Muslim minorities, Turks and Pomaks (Slavs converted to Islam during the Ottoman rule).
Viewed as unreliable and potentially dangerous people, in the decades following the birth of the modern Bulgarian state (1878), Muslims, and Turks in particular, were marginalized, when not persecuted, by the Sofia authorities.
The coming to power of the Communist Party in 1944 marked the beginning of an opening phase. With the conviction of being able to unite the nation on class belonging, able to oust ethnic and religious identity, the Communists initiated a phase of cultural protection of minorities, including the Turkish one.
The effects, however, were far from the Party’s expectations: thanks to the rights granted to it, the cohesion of the Turkish community increased instead of decreasing. The year 1956 marked a new change in course: frightened by the “Turkification of part of the nation”, the Communist élite decided to gradually suppress the rights granted.
The party’s strong man, Todor Zhivkov, bound to lead the country until the fall of the Wall, was a staunch supporter of the strategy that aimed at absorbing Turks and Pomaks, depriving them of their own collective identity. Education in Turkish was first limited, then suppressed. Meanwhile the propaganda machine was started up to show that in Bulgaria there were no Turks (or Pomaks), only Bulgarians, “Turkified” by force during the Ottoman rule.
According to the Communist authorities, this premise led to the conclusion that it was right and due to “straighten what is wrong” by helping the Bulgarian Muslims to “re-discover” their own identity and to be “re-born pure Bulgarians” (the assimilation campaign would go down in history as the “revival process”).
The focus in this strategy was the forced name changing which, in the Islamic tradition, has a transcendental and quasi-magic value, and is the first and foremost element of (self)recognition of the members of the community.
During the 70s, the Pomaks were the first to experience the name changing policy. Esma Bozadzhieva, native of Southern Bulgaria, today general practitioner in Edirne, comes from a mixed family: Turkish father and Pomak mother.
“The whole family was to be ‘re-baptized’ as early as the 70s, Bozadzhieva tells in a crowded outdoor café along the banks of the Maritza river. “My father then decided we should move to Northern Bulgaria, where the situation was more peaceful, moving from city to city. In 1974 we were living in Aytos, near the port of Burgas. One morning, while I was in school, the teacher called me to the board. She said, ‘comrades, from now on Esma’s name is Sema’….”.
Only in 1984, however, does the regime decide to launch the offensive against the Turkish community. The reasons leading to such a rash move are difficult to decipher. Among the decisive factors was the fear for the high demographic increase of the Bulgarian Turks and their concentration in compact and strategic areas on the border with Turkey.
The Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974 and some episodes of terrorism, allegedly by separatist groups, supplied the Communist élite with further justifications. The final decision, by Zhivkov’s admission, was encouraged by the perception that Turkey could not react, considering Ankara’s difficulties with its minorities.
Everything started on Christmas Eve of 1984, in the highly Turkish populated region of Kardzhali. The name changing operation, carefully prepared by the regime, was supposed to proceed with no major hitches. The news, however, spread quickly, and the campaign was met with harsh and unexpected resistance.
“I had just come home to Dzhebel [a small town near Kardzhali] from Sofia, where I had been working on the Christmas decorations”, Rasim Ozgur remembers. “It was the 26th of December of 1984. The atmosphere was heavy. They had started changing changing names to people in the surrounding villages. The police was everywhere. We took the streets to protest and rebel. The next day they arrested me. I was sentenced to 18 months in the Belene lager, on the Danube. The first six months were the worst of my life, I can only remember the inhumane cold and hunger”.
Between December 24th, 1984 and January 14th, 1985, the names of 310,000 people in Bulgaria were changed. The operation was marked by violent protests and repression. There was talk of tens of people dead and thousands arrested, about 1000 of whom locked up in the prison camp of Belene with Rasim Ozgur.
For the party’s leadership, the “revival process” was a success. “We have not solved the Turkish problem, but we have made a decisive step forward. In 15 or 20 years everything will be forgotten”, Zhivkov declared at the Politburo on March 30th, 1985.
For those who suffered it, though, the name changing was a deep trauma. “The director summoned me and told me straightforward that I had to choose another name for myself. Then they changed all my students’ names. From that day on the children stopped answering the roll-call, they felt lost, confused. It was terrible”, recalls Vesile Yildiz, in 1989 a teacher in the town of Tzar Kaloyan, today a teacher in Edirne.
“They called me at the factory meeting, the ‘Breza’ in Kardzhali, and in just a day I was Raycho Karov”, Rahim Karoglu tells me with a half smile, while we are sitting outside his small joiner shop in the suburbs of Edirne. “Our family was lucky”, he adds. “We all kept the same last name. Not everyone was that lucky”.
In addition to the name changing, talking in public, wearing the veil and circumcising boys was forbidden. It is difficult to say which would be the long-term effects of the “process of rebirth”. It is a fact, though, that while the Bulgarian Communist regime launched itself into this political adventure, the world around started transforming at an increasing pace.
The coming into office of Mihail Gorbachev in the Soviet Union and the start of the perestrojka opened scenarios that had been unthinkable until then. Dissident groups and organizations developed in Bulgaria too, which stated the issue of human rights and asked for a revision of the “revival process”.
In the spring of 1989, while the cracks in the socialist system in Eastern Europe became more and more visible, the times were mature and the Turkish issue came back with all its strength. Protests and hunger strikes began to claim the rights previously denied. The repressive apparatus of the regime then reacted with the partial extradition of the political élite of the Turkish community, mainly towards Austria and Sweden.
Demonstrations, initially peaceful, reached village and city squares in early May of 1989. When the police forces intervened, marches turned into chaotic and bloody clashes. There were tens of confirmed casualties and hundreds of injured people.
“We were protesting for our names and our rights, but they responded with the use of weapons”, tells F. from Medovetz, a town not far from Varna, stage for a particularly violent demonstration. Even though 20 years have gone by F., who is today owner of a beauty salon in the Fatih neighbourhood in Edirne, does not feel like telling me her name. During that demonstration, a bullet killed her sister-in-law, Nazife Hasan, who was then only 22 years old.
On May 29th, Zhivkov unexpectedly announced on TV the will to open the borders with Turkey “to allow tourists to visit the neighboring country”. At the same time, “undesired” Turks were given by the police a brand new passport and an invitation to leave the country that did not allow for reply.
After brief hesitation, on the 3rd of June, the Turkish government in turn decided to open up the barriers. The confused atmosphere contributed to creating a real “emigration psychosis”, which the regime wisely cultivated.
“We are on the verge of a huge emigration psychosis”, Zhivkov confidentially declared to the party’s leadership, on the 7th of June. “We need it, we welcome it […]. If we are not able to take away 2-300,000 members from this community [the Turkish community], in 15 years Bulgaria will no longer exist. It will become like Cyprus, or something like that”.
The mass exodus of the Bulgarian Turks thus started. They left by car, bus, train. They left whatever they could carry. Many sold everything at give-away prices, including their house. Whole towns were emptied, often with the help of the “milicija”, which carefully followed the operation.
Long lines were soon formed on the borders of Malko Tarnovo and especially Kapetan Andreevo, at the gates of Edirne. It took days to cross the border – and once crossed it, many did not know where to go or what to do.
Turkey had to manage a flow of refugees (officially “tourists”, since those entering the country did so with a 3-month tourist visa, hence “the big excursion”) a lot greater than expected and compared to what it was actually capable of managing.
In the suburbs of Edirne a refugee camp was hastily set up with the help of the Red Cross. It soon became overcrowded. “Our living conditions in the tents were very poor”, Vesile Yildiz recalls. “The situation became unbearable when a cloudburst poured over the camp, turning it into a sea of mud”.
On August 21st, 1989, Turkish authorities, in a state of emergency, decided to close the border, even though thousands of people were still waiting to cross it. From the 3rd of June to the 21st of August of 1989 about 360,000 “tourists” emigrated to Turkey. Those who did not have relatives and friends in Turkey were sent to stay in schools or hotels. A difficult process started: integration not only in another state but also from a socialist socio-economic one to a market state.
“What struck me most upon my arrival in Turkey? The fact that here you had to work for real”, and
Rahim Karoglu’s smile stretches to fill his whole tanned face.
The fate of many refugees was changed once again by the speedy fall of the Communist regime, only a few months later, in November of that same year. Forty-thousand go back to Bulgaria before the expiry of the 3-month visa. By the end of 1990, 150,000 Turks went back to their home country.
The new democratic regime gave the Turks their names back and, although not completely, granted them the possibility to organize themselves politically. In the following years, while the near country of Yugoslavia was torn by ethnic wars, Sofia revealed itself to be an isle of stability thanks to what politicians and the media call, perhaps with a little too much emphasis, “the Bulgarian Ethnic Model”.
Many of those who emigrated, however, decided to remain in Turkey. Strong communities established in Istanbul, Izmir and of course in Edirne, first stop of their journey. Today they are well-integrated in Turkish society. “We Bulgarian Turks are hard workers, and on average we had a higher degree of education compared to Turkey. And we help each other, that’s why many of us were able to make it”, says Basri Ozturk, President of the Bulgarian Turks Association in Thrace.
Notwithstanding the success in integrating in a new reality, the life of many “tourists” remains suspended between Turkey and Bulgaria. “We have relatives on both sides of the border, we often go back to Bulgaria, to our home towns, and almost all of us have both passports. We are integrated but we cannot forget our roots”, Esma Bozadzhieva says.
In 20 years, in the life of those who were then forced to leave their homes and country, other toil and happiness have settled, and for many time has soothed, if not healed, open wounds from the “revival process” and the “big excursion”.
Not for everyone, though. “Nazife is dead and no one can bring her back. On her death certificate they wrote ‘cause of death: pneumonia’, :smack says now moved F. from Medovetz. “She left two small children, whom nobody paid back, not even symbolically, for the loss of their mother. Nobody has paid for this”.
