EN. In Greece Police Uses Torure Regularly

Beating, raping, foot thrashing (phalanx), use of Taser guns, cigarette burns, humiliation, bio-piracy (forced DNA extraction)…

The ‘bodies’ which are subjected to Police brutality alternate: protesters, migrants, detainees, sex workers, even minors; harassed randomly in any place, in the streets, in detention centres, in detention camps.

Yet the ‘hands of the abuser’, ‘the ‘hands’ of the Police, that is to say, remain the same.
Most incidents either they do not get officially reported or they get ‘investigated’ superficially. In any case the guilty ones go unpunished.

Is there really anyone who still thinks that these are single, isolated incidents? No!
 

Even the Ministry for the Protection of Citizens (nicknamed Ministry of Public Order), which shamelessly published the photographs of the 4 anarchists arrested in Kozani on February 1st, with the faces of three heavily bruised and badly disfigured, claims in its official report that only ‘legitimate and justified use of force was exercised during the arrest’.

The three detainees, via their parents and their lawyers, accuse police of brutality (detained for several hours, handcuffed behind their backs and extra cuffs applied on their ankles, faces covered with black hoods whilst policemen were taking shifts thumping them!).

Even though the photographs released in the press were evidently edited it was not possible to hide the shocking reality (or maybe no real effort was ever made on purpose).

The 8 o’clock news ‘flashed’ the photos with no commentary.

This is of no surprise as there was no media coverage whatsoever of a blatant case of police torture a few months ago, the brutal arrest of 15 protestors in an antifascist motorcycle demonstration.

The incident only became significant after it received international attention when it was covered by non-domestic media.

On the other hand, no light was ever shone on the cases of an arrested migrant whom police tortured by removing his nails with pliers in the Aegaleo police centre, or of an arrested minor, who during interrogation, suffered spleen rupture at the Amygdalesa detention centre, or of a migrant who was raped with a police baton, in the Chania Port police centre and many more incidents.

We, the citizens of this country, we feel concerned.

This must stop now. Now is the time to raise our voices, to state openly:

• We shall not permit Greece to turn into an extensive Guantanamo.
• We shall not allow a return to the practices of the junta.
• We shall not get addicted to the horror of media pushing upon us images of brutality.
• We shall not be seized by the terror that the media presents to society.
• We shall not let barbarian practices be allowed to occur with impunity.
• Torturing is a crime and the charge is felony.

Greek Committee Against Torture