The European Court of Human Rights condemned Greece for its bad treatment of refugees

According to the report of the international group Tasnim news agency quoting “Süddeutsche Zeitung” newspaper, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) condemned Greece twice in eight days for mistreatment of migrants.

In a decision on the day On Tuesday of this week, Strasbourg judges ruled in favor of a claimant from Afghanistan who, as an unaccompanied minor asylum seeker, was homeless in Athens between November 2018 and May 2019 and, according to the ruling, alone in an environment that was completely It was not suitable for minors. He lived in extreme material poverty, although the Greek authorities were obliged to guarantee him decent material conditions. They faced complex challenges, especially given the number of unaccompanied minors entering the country at the time. But this does not release a state from its obligations under Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which states, among other things, that no one shall be subjected to “inhuman or degrading treatment”. Greece must now pay 8,000 euros in compensation to the plaintiff.

In recent years, critics have repeatedly accused the Greek government of deliberately exposing asylum seekers and refugees to material hardships. have given . German courts have ruled several times that asylum seekers traveling to Germany should not be sent back to Greece because, as the Supreme Administrative Court of North Rhine-Westphalia ruled at the beginning of 2021, they face a serious risk of inhumane and degrading treatment there. /p>

Last Tuesday, the ECHR accused Greece of violating Article 2 of the Human Rights Convention (“right to life”) in another judgment. The complaint was filed by relatives of the passengers of a motorboat that sailed from Turkey to Greek territorial waters in September 2014. Near the island of Pasreimos, not far from the Turkish port city of Bodrum, Greek coast guard officials asked passengers to stop their journey. These two boats collided several times.

When the occupants of this migrant boat did not pay attention to the warning arrows in the air, the coast guard started shooting at the boat itself. Kurd. Two of the 14 passengers were seriously injured, one in the shoulder area, the other in the head area. After spending several months in the intensive care unit of a clinic in Rhodes, Syrian father Bilal Tello was transferred to Stockholm, where his wife and children live. He died there after several months in a coma.

The judgment of the European Court of Human Rights said that this court certainly did not underestimate the fact that the migrant boat, With its “dangerous” and “ill-advised” maneuvers, it can be perceived as a danger to life and shore members. However, it cannot be understood that the potential threat was so great that the boat had to be stopped with a total of 13 “potentially fatal shots,” the ruling said. According to the judges, the use of force cannot be proven to have been “absolutely necessary” in this case. Another has been proven. Now the court has awarded the relatives of the deceased man 80,000 euros in compensation.

“Karl Kopp”, the CEO of the German refugee organization Pro-Asylum, welcomed this verdict and said: This is part of a whole chain of cases in which the Greek Coast Guard ill-treats or even confirms the death of people seeking protection. Among other things, he asked the European Union to start “constitutional measures against Greece”.

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