A Greek Tale of Forced Evictions and False Promises to Roma
30 April 2015
By Antonis Pesinis
For more than a year, the threat of forced eviction has hung over 74 Roma families in the Athenian suburb of Halandri. The community has been settled in the area for almost four decades. Hopes that SYRIZA’s victory in the Greek elections might mark a break with the past, an end to forced evictions of Romani communities, and the start of a politics of inclusion for Roma may prove to be groundless.
Background: segregation, deprivation and forced evictions
Roma in Greece have long faced systemic discrimination and denial of basic human rights such as access to education, health and housing by the authorities. Approximately half of the 400,000 Roma people, who are estimated to live in Greece, reside in desolate slums outside cities and towns. In the public compulsory education system, segregation of Roma children is also an enduring problem, for which Greece has been condemned three times by the European Court of Human Rights. Following the most recent ruling in Lavida and Others v. Greece in 2013, Amnesty International stated “This situation demonstrates that EU standards on discrimination on grounds of race and ethnic origin are not being adequately implemented in Greece, in education as well as many other areas of life.”
Authorities routinely deny Roma access to electricity and running water on the pretext of unauthorized residency, whereas these services are habitually provided to unauthorized residents of non-Roma origin. Greek police forces frequently raid Roma settlements on the pretext of fighting criminality; a practice of ethnic profiling which has been condemned by the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, Nils Muižnieks. Roma communities are often illegally evicted by the Greek police without being granted relocation assistance.
Back in 2001, Josephine Verspaget from the Council of Europe visited four Roma settlements in the Athens area, and described the conditions as ‘institutionalized apartheid’. One of the settlements in the town of Spata was just a few months old, created after a forced eviction and relocation of an entire community to a former NATO waste dump, five kilometres from the outskirts of the town. The exiled community was left without electricity, or transport links and the children were unable to attend school.
In the 14 years since the eviction of the Roma of Spata, this shameful practice by local authorities, condoned and assisted by successive governments, has become even more widespread. In the run up to the 2004 Olympic Games, local authorities used the pretext of beautifying the city to evict Roma communities. Since 2004, more than 30 forced evictions of Roma communities have taken place throughout Greece. The European Committee of Social Rights has condemned Greece twice in five years “for continued serious and widespread discrimination against Roma in respect of housing rights”.
Between 2012 and 2013, the first years of implementation of the National Roma Integration Strategy, at least 10 forced evictions were reported to have taken place throughout Greece, in some cases without any provision of relocation.
It is noteworthy that the authorities use a Ministerial Decision concerning temporary settlements of “itinerant” Roma as legal basis for the evictions of sedentary Roma communities, which as in the case of Halandri have been settled for several decades. But even this Ministerial Decision provides that the itinerant community should be consulted and that certain sanitary conditions be fulfilled, requirements which are not being respected. In most cases the Roma communities are not consulted, while the resettlement locations are isolated and often close to dumpsites.
The Halandri case
The pretext to evict the Roma community from their homes in Halandri is unauthorized residence on privately owned land. The decision to evict was taken by the then Secretary General of the Decentralized Administration of Attika, contrary to an injunction issued by the UN HRC. This decision also runs contrary to a decision, taken two years previously by the same Secretary General, in agreement with community representatives, which provided for the relocation of the families to a state-owned space within the same municipality. In defiance of this agreement and the legal and policy framework on the right to housing, the latest decision would effectively exile the families to a remote area, an old NATO American Radar base on top of Patera Mountain, far from schools and health services.
This decision met with active opposition from the Roma community and allies, and as a result has not been implemented. Following victories for the left in the municipal and regional elections of May 2014, and SYRIZA’s victory in the general elections in January 2015, came the promise that human rights standards will be respected.
In the specific case of the Roma from Halandri, SYRIZA had actively opposed the relocation, while the SYRIZA affiliated political leaderships of both the prefecture of Attica and the municipality of Halandri had also been vocally opposed to any plan of relocation prior to their election.
However until now no concrete steps have been taken to honour those commitments. On the contrary, there are worrying signs that the new local authorities might stick with their predecessors’ decision.
The municipality of Halandri, contrary to the law, continues to deny the Roma the necessary certificates that would allow them to appeal the decision to demolish their houses. At the same time, the municipality appears to have negotiated relocation sites with the Decentralized Administration of Attica, and without consulting with the community. Moreover, the prefecture of Attica, despite its pre-election promises appears to have approved construction works to begin on Patera mountain.
In a somewhat unexpected move, the High Administrative Court which recently heard the case, circumvented the procedural requirement that community members must submit certificates and proceeded to examine the merits of the case.
What was even more unexpected though was the stance taken by state’s legal counsel at the hearing, which took place only last week. The counsel was insistent in supporting the decision to relocate the families, as if there had been no change of government. More precisely, he failed to address the obvious issues of the illegality of the decision and of its incompatibility with international human rights standards. He basically repeated the same racist line of argumentation linking problems of criminality in the area to the presence of the community.
Conclusion
The Greek state has repeatedly failed to comply with its obligations towards its Roma citizens under international, regional and domestic law. The still pending case of Halandri is an example of a continuing pattern of discrimination that violates the dignity and fundamental rights of thousands of people and is in direct violation of their fundamental rights.
SYRIZA campaigned with the slogan “hope is coming” and came to power with a political agenda that prioritizes anti-racism and anti-discrimination policies. If the current government holds to its egalitarian vision and its ambition to make a historic break with the past, it should revisit Greece’s National Roma Integration Strategy, which has manifestly been a failure so far, call an immediate halt to forced evictions and publicly pledge its commitment to close the gap in living conditions and access to public services between the Roma and non-Roma.
SYRIZA should make a start with the Roma community in Halandri. There is no need to wait for a court decision, which is expected in June - all that is required is simply to repeal the decision to relocate the community, and follow that by providing official assurances that no illegal forced eviction will take place in the future. The government should pressure the Municipality of Halandri to comply with the law and provide its Roma residents with the certificates they need to exercise their rights and have access to justice. And henceforth the municipality should commit to comprehensive consultation with the Roma community on any future plans that have an impact on their lives.
If the politics of social solidarity and hope are to prevail over those of hate and marginalization, the Greek government should ensure that Greek citizens of Romani descent enjoy equal opportunities and full protection of their fundamental rights. It is time to break with the habits and practices of systemic discrimination against the Roma in Greece, and to live up to the campaign promise that “hope is coming”
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1. Antonis Pesinis is a lawyer, with a Master in Philosophy of Law from the University of Athens. He is currently completing his thesis on hate speech regulation for the Human Rights LLM program at the Central European University in Budapest.
