Tag Archives: Greece

BBC News producer Will Vernon tweets from Lesbos island, Greece where 4,345 people are currently being detained.

Meanwhile…

Last night at the detention centre in Moria, on Lesbos Island:

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Andrew Connolly, for Raw News, reported:

A mass riot has broken out between refugees and police inside the Moria detention centre on the Greek island of Lesbos during the night of April 26.

On Tuesday afternoon, thick, black plumes of smoke could been seen floating above the facility and Raw News witnessed numerous refugees being carried out injured and suffering from tear gas inhalation.

NGO sources inside confirmed that [the] riot started in the wing which detains unaccompanied children, which then intensified after police beat a child, and subsequently used tear gas.

Riots break out at Moria refugee camp in Lesvos Island (Raw News, includes video)

Previously: ‘A Beautiful Thing To Do’

Pic: Emma Hett

Human Rights Watch released a report today in relation to the deportations that have taken place from Greece to Turkey, as part of the EU/Turkey deal – of which Ireland has contributed €22million.

The report paid particular attention to Chios island where the UN claimed 13 people – 11 people from Afghanistan, and two people from the Democratic Republic of Congo – were wrongly deported on April 4.

The report states:

In visits to the VIAL detention center on Chios on April 7 and 8, Human Rights Watch spoke with 12 friends and one relative of 19 Afghans who were deported from Chios on April 4.

Based on those interviews and text messages exchanged between those interviewed and the deportees, Human Rights Watch documented an array of irregularities and violations.

The authorities did not inform people that they were going to be deported, did not tell them where they were being taken, and did not allow some of them to take their personal possessions.

According to the UN Refugee Agency, thirteen of those deported from Chios had expressed a desire to seek asylum in Greece, and that number could be higher,

The Greek authorities appear to have hurried the forced returns from Chios, and the 136 other deportations that day from the nearby island of Lesbos, to meet a publicized deadline for the start of returns under the ill-conceived EU-Turkey deal that went into effect on March 20, 2016.

That deal allows the return of asylum seekers to Turkey on the presumption that Turkey is safe for asylum seekers and refugees.

…The deportations from Chios began around midday on April 3, when Greek police at the VIAL detention facility took dozens of people to the main building [Tabakika] where police and Frontex register new arrivals, and where the Greek asylum service is located.

The authorities separated the 66 people they had identified for return, witnesses said. The 12 friends and one relative of the 19 deportees, who did not want their names published, told Human Rights Watch that the police had called people on the false pretext that they were to be registered, including for asylum.

“Salim,” a 24-year-old man from Afghanistan, said the police took three of his Afghan friends, Ilias Haqjo, Mohammad, and Reza (full names unknown), all between 20 and 25 years old, without their possessions.

“They came here and told them they have to go to register,” he said. “They left happy and when they came out the police were waiting for them…. If the guys knew they were going to be deported, they would have taken their bags, their papers, their money.”

On the other side, in Dikili, Turkey, the authorities hung blue tarps on the fence around the registration tents to block journalists and human rights monitors from contacting the deportees. The police commander at the area denied a Human Rights Watch request to access the site.

The deportees were then loaded onto buses and driven away. Police at the site told Human Rights Watch that they were headed to Kirklareli, near Edirne, and the media subsequently reported that the people deported from Greece were being held at the Pehlivankoy removal center in that town.

The deportees on the buses in Turkey, however, seemed not to know where exactly they were going. “Now we’re in the bus, they’re taking us to a camp,” Mohsen Ahmadi wrote his friend “Amir” around 3 p.m. “Why there?” “Amir” asked. “I don’t know, the camp is near Istanbul,” Ahmadi replied.

“When you arrive, let us know,” “Amir” wrote. “OK,” Ahmadi wrote back at 8:28 p.m., but that was the last message that “Amir” received.

Human Rights Watch collected the phone numbers of four of the people who were deported from Chios on April 4. As of April 18, none of them had replied to messages on Viber, the application they had been using. When called, three of the phones appeared to be shut off and one of the numbers was not working.

The legal basis of confiscating phones from people being deported, if any, remains unclear. Given that asylum seekers and migrants rely on their phones to stay informed and to keep in touch with family, such measures appear unnecessary and cruel, as well as a violation of the individuals’ personal property rights, Human Rights Watch said.

EU/Greece: First Turkey Deportations Riddled With Abuse (Human Rights Watch)

Previously: Meanwhile, On Chios

‘Is Our Response To Be Defined By Barbed Wire, Tear Gas And Rubber Bullets?’

UPDATE:

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The amount of powdered baby milk each infant in Vial allegedly gets every day

Further to the picture (above) circulating on social media last Thursday…

Patrick Kingsley, of The Guardian, reports:

Babies detained in Greece under the terms of the EU-Turkey migration deal are being denied access to adequate supplies of milk formula, refugees and aid workers have alleged.

Approximately 25 babies under the age of six months, whose mothers are unable to breastfeed, are being given roughly 100ml of milk formula just once a day on the island of Chios, according to photographs sent by detained refugees and testimonies provided by phone.

… A 35-year-old Afghan construction manager, detained in a detention centre on Chios since 21 March, said he had been forced to mix water with bread to stop his five-month-old daughter going hungry.

The man, who said he worked as a contractor for the British army in Afghanistan but asked not to named for fear of victimisation, said: “They are only giving us half a cup of milk for all 24 hours – but that’s not enough. There’s no more milk for lunch or dinner or during the night. This is a big problem. There are maybe 24 or 25 babies under six months.”

The Norwegian Refugee Council, which maintains a presence on Chios, confirmed the claim and said the number of infant children may even be higher. “It’s clear that baby milk [formula] is not being routinely distributed,” said Dan Tyler, the NRC’s protection and advocacy officer on Chios. “I did a series of meetings with refugees last week, and mothers brought up [the issue of] baby milk all the time.

Refugee babies detained on Greek island ‘not getting adequate milk’ (Patrick Kingsley, The Guardian)

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Moria detention centre on Lesbos island this morning

You may recall yesterday’s deportation of 202 migrants from Lesbos and Chios islands in Greece to Turkey, with the assistance of 180 Frontex officers.

The deportations are a part of the €3billion EU/Turkey deal, of which Ireland is contributing €22million.

Last week the Department of Justice announced it will send three case workers from the Office of the Refugee Applications Commissioner (ORAC) and the Irish Naturalisation and Immigration Service (INIS), and two members of the Refugee Appeals Tribunal to the Greek islands.

The department said it is also considering a request from Frontex for border guards to assist them with the deportations – even though Ireland is not a member of Frontex.

Last night on RTÉ One’s Drivetime, Lesbos-based journalist Andrew Connolly spoke with Mary Wilson.

Mr Connolly said:

“I’ve just been at the Moria detention centre talking to Pakistanis… based on my conversations with some of them, it’s very, I find it difficult to believe that some of the deportees this morning might have even understood the concept of asylum.

Again it’s being claimed by the Greek authorities and the European Asylum Office and also the UNHCR they seem to be satisfied that everyone was told their rights but they didn’t claim asylum in Greece.”

Further to this, Patrick Kingsley, in The Guardian reports this afternoon that the UN has told how 13 of the 202 deported yesterday may not have been given the opportunity to seek asylum before they were deported – as police officers “forgot”.

Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that everyone has the right to seek asylum. Mr Kingsley reports:

Some of the first people to be deported from Greece under the terms of the EU-Turkey migration deal may not have been given the chance to claim for asylum, the UN refugee agency has said.

Police “forgot” to process the asylum claims of 13 of the 202 asylum seekers sent back to Turkey on Monday, the first day the deal was put into practice, according to Vincent Cochetel, director of UNHCR’s Europe bureau.

… Cochetel said on Tuesday that 13 Afghans and Congolese asylum seekers – who reached the Greek island of Chios after 20 March, and who were deported back to Turkey on Monday – were not allowed to formally register their asylum claims, due to administrative chaos on the island.

… Cochetel told the Guardian: “For four days after the 20th, the Greek police did not register any intention to seek asylum as they were no prepared [or] equipped for this, so we started providing forms to people who had declared their intention to seek asylum.”

“The police received most of the people with these forms and … forgot some apparently. It is more a mistake than anything else, we hope.”

…On Monday, more asylum seekers landed in Greece from Turkey (228) than were deported in the opposite direction (202).

Meanwhile…

UPATE:

Listen back to Drivetime interview in full here

Greece may have deported asylum seekers by mistake, says UN (Patrick Kingsley, The Guardian)

Pic: Andrew Connolly

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From top: People at Moria detention centre in Lesbos; acting Taoiseach Enda Kenny in Brussels for a meeting between Turkey and the EU heads of government on March 7

Further to the EU/Turkey deal

On Tuesday, journalist Oscar Webb, from Lesbos island, reported:

Up to 190 shipping containers are on their way to Lesvos, Samos and Chios, to be used as offices by 600 EU asylum officials and 430 interpreters. According to the terms of the deal between the EU and Turkey that came into effect on 20 March, ‘all new irregular migrants crossing from Turkey to the Greek islands … will be returned to Turkey’.

Sixty judges will preside over appeals committees – also to take place in containers – for people who do not immediately accept deportation orders. And 2500 police, security and army personnel from Greece and other EU states, with eight ships and thirty coaches, will enforce the deportations. Until the material and manpower arrive, the refugees and asylum seekers are waiting in detention camps on the islands.

On Lesvos, close to a thousand refugees – the unlucky ones who arrived, in some cases only by minutes, after the 20 March deadline – have been placed in the island’s only detention centre, near the village of Moria.

They were met at sea and on the beaches by police who took their photos, gave them numbered wristbands, issued them with arrest papers (‘you have been legally arrested … currently you are being held here legally and temporarily … please be patient’) and took them to the camp. More arrive almost every day.

Conditions are bad in the Moria camp. The Greek authorities are struggling to look after the detainees without the help of charities and volunteers. Last week, the UNHCR, Médicins sans Frontières, the International Rescue Committee, Save the Children and the Norwegian Refugee Council all said they were pulling out.

Further to this…

The Department of Justice released a statement earlier this morning, saying:

Ireland will shortly be sending three international protection case work experts to the Greek Islands. The experts will come from the Office of the Refugee Applications Commissioner (ORAC) and the Irish Naturalisation and Immigration Service (INIS).

Ireland will also be offering the services of two members of the Refugee Appeals Tribunal to support the establishment of Appeals Committees. This is also being coordinated by EASO [European Asylum Support Office].

The agreement requires that the return of irregular migrants to Turkey will take place in full accordance with EU and international law. Furthermore, all migrants must be protected in accordance with the relevant international standards and in respect of the principle of non-refoulement.

This contribution will be on top of the four Irish experts sent earlier this year from the Irish Naturalisation and Immigration Service and the Office of the Refugee Applications Commissioner to Greece and Italy to support the relocation of asylum seekers under the EU Relocation Programme.

Ireland is also considering a request from Frontex to EU Member States for the deployment of border Guards to assist in the return of people from Greece to Turkey in compliance with international law. There are some limitations on what Ireland can do, given it is not a member of Frontex, but it would like to help where it can.

Meanwhile, Hannah Lucinda Smith, in The Times reports:

Turkish border forces are shooting refugees dead as they flee the civil war in Syria, The Times has learnt.

Sixteen migrants, including three children, were killed by guards as they crossed into Turkey over the past four months, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring organisation.

An officer in the British-backed Free Syrian Police and a Syrian smuggler living in Turkey said that the true number was higher.

The deaths cast further doubt on an EU migrant deal struck 11 days ago. It classes Turkey as a “safe third country”, meaning refugees can be returned there without fear of persecution.

Update on implementation of the EU – Turkey migration agreement (Department of Justice)

Waiting for the containers (LRB blog, Oscar Webb)

Turks shoot to kill as refugees cross border (The Times)

Previously: ‘Can Ireland Not Do Any More?’

Ireland And The Turkey Refugee Facility

Turkey Basting

Top pic: Oscar Webb

H/T: Subpri.me

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At Piraeus near Athens

There are 48,795 refugees in Greece today.

Further to this…

A report, published today by Human Rights Watch, states:

In a visit to Piraeus (the main port near Athens) from March 8 to 22, 2016, Human Rights Watch interviewed more than 45 asylum seekers and migrants who had recently arrived at the port from Greek Aegean islands or Greece’s border with the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. An estimated 5,000 women, men, and children are sleeping in squalid, unsanitary, and unsafe conditions in passenger waiting areas, in an old warehouse, in tents outdoors, and even under trucks.

In the absence of any visible government support or personnel, the day-to-day operation of the camps is dependent on volunteers. These volunteers work to coordinate, among other things, the provision of tents, blankets, food, and clothing; identify vulnerable groups; and provide activities for children. For the most part, medical care is provided by aid groups.

….With no presence of the Greek Asylum Service, nor of any other officials who could provide people with much-needed information about their options in Greece and elsewhere, rumors are creating uncertainty and confusion, Human Rights Watch found.

Some people interviewed said they were afraid they would be deported to Turkey if they boarded one of the government-run buses transferring people to official reception camps in an effort to clear the port.

Many others had heard that conditions at the government-run camps were not good, prompting them to stay at the port until the “borders open.” Others said they had gone to the camps but found the conditions so bad that they returned to the port.

“I’ve been here [in Greece] for one month and not even one drop of water has touched my body,” said Nawael, a 34-year-old Syrian woman in a wheelchair who has been in Piraeus with her husband and three children for more than 10 days.

“Here it is very hard for me to go to the toilet. My husband helps me at the door and random women help me inside the toilet. I don’t sleep at night because my body is itchy. My husband helped me and I washed my hair with cold water, but then I got sick. Ten days ago, I got my period and I swear to God, I still haven’t had a shower. And I [usually] pray, but given that I haven’t had a shower [to perform required ablutions], I can’t pray.”

Meanwhile, at an open refugee camp recently built in Ritsona, some 70km north of Athens….

Greece: Humanitarian crisis at Athens Port (Human Rights Watch)

Previously: ‘Facilitating The Very Circumstances That Made These People Refugees’

Yesterday: Meanwhile In Lesbos

Thanks Damian Mac Con Uladh

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Refugees, who were forcibly returned from Idomeni at the Greek/Macedonia border to Athens on Wednesday night, queue for food outside Tae-Kwon-Do Stadium in Athens on Thursday morning

After spending Autumn working with refugees arriving in Lesbos Broadsheet’s Olga Cronin returned to the Greek island this week.

Olga writes:

On Sunday, November 29, the EU struck a deal with Turkey. In return for €3billion, visa-free access to Schengen zone countries for the citizens of Turkey and a speeding up of the process of allowing Turkey into the EU, Turkey promised to stem the flow of refugees travelling from Turkey to the Greek islands.

The agreement was made as high numbers of people seeking refugee protection – the majority of whom are from Syria and Afghanistan – continue to travel from Turkey to Greece on inflatable rubber dinghies.

The number of people who have died this year while trying to cross the Aegean Sea is unknown while, according to the UNHCR, more than 3,440 people have died trying to make the journey across the Mediterranean.

After the EU/Turkey deal was struck, the chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel – named this week as Person Of The Year by Time magazine – said the agreement would help “keep people in the region” and out of Europe.

According to the latest figures from the UNHCR, 768,916 people in total travelled across the sea to Greece between January and December 8 of this year – 58 per cent men, 26 per cent children and 16 per cent women.

A total of 447,958 – or 58 per cent – landed on Lesbos alone.

Chios and Samos islands have seen the second and third highest number of arrivals with 105,691 and 91,243 landing on its shores respectively during the same time period.

Although it’s less than two weeks since the EU/Turkey deal, and fluctuations in the number of people arriving are common – with numbers commonly dropping in tandem with political events such as a visit of a politician or dignitary to an island or Turkey’s recent general election – the UNHCR figures indicate the smugglers, perhaps inevitably, may be changing the route upon which they send people.

The winter weather is also likely to be a factor, but smugglers offer those travelling in bad weather a discount.

The daily number of people arriving on Lesbos island decreased dramatically in just a matter of days, from 2,462 on Sunday, November 29 to 1,337 on Friday, December 4.

Boats are very much still arriving on Lesbos, with the figure rising to 3,231 on Monday, December 7, but the location of where the majority of boats are arriving has changed dramatically from the north of the island – where the Turkish coastguard activity has been most visible to date – to the south.

The coastline of northern Lesbos – just six kilometres from Turkey – is unrecognisable from how it looked just a few weeks ago and volunteers and rescue teams present in northern Lesbos now feel it’s a waiting game in regards to deciding where they should place their efforts.

Gone is the necklace of washed-up bright orange lifejackets along the northern coastline, due to a substantial clean-up operation – with a mountain of thousands upon thousands of lifejackets piled high in a dump outside Eftalou – while the unofficial camps outside Skala Sikaminias and in the car park of nightclub Oxy, outside Molyvos, no longer have the swarms of people huddled outside trying to sleep on cold, muddy ground, often without any shelter or blankets.

The south of the island is receiving more and more boats every day, prompting volunteer and rescue groups to send teams to the south, and volunteer groups to increase their night-time operations in Camp Moria where, as of the weekend, all nationalities must register and where those not from Syria must sleep – often outside, in mud or on a section of pavement, without blankets.

Sadly, the change has come at a time when the north has seen a substantial increase in both volunteers and returnee volunteers arriving.

New infrastructure and provisions have also been put in place.

The International Rescue Committee has built a camp on the so-called dirt road between Eftalou and Skala Sikaminias, equipped with enough tents to provide shelter for 1,500 people and is scheduled to open in a matter of days, while Médecins Sans Frontières and Greenpeace have launched three rigid hulled inflatable boats (RHIBs) – strengthening the huge rescue efforts of the Spanish Pro-Activa Open Arms lifeguard volunteers who have been present on the island since September.

Much like the south of Lesbos, the other Greek islands have also experienced significant change. Chios, which lies south of Lesbos, saw a sudden spike in arrivals from Turkey with the figure jumping from zero on November 28 to 2,139 on November 29 – placing tremendous pressure on the locals who have led the effort to provide for those arriving, along with the skeletal number of volunteers who were present at the time.

Those working at Tabakika in Chios – a freezing cold and rundown former factory building which serves as a Frontex hotspot and where smoking area-type heaters heat the area officers register arrivals while those waiting to register go without – are currently trying to work out how to provide food to those arriving as the prospect of opening a food station has prompted fears of attracting rats.

Refugees waiting to register may leave the camp to buy food in local stores but, for those who don’t have any money, they could face remaining in their wet clothes and living off of water and crackers provided by the UNHCR for up to three days.

A clothes distribution hut is in place in the camp but it is only opened when there are three volunteers present. If there are fewer than three present, as is often the case, men, women and children sitting in wet clothes must remain in them.

Those helping people off boats try to offset this by hurriedly trying to provide dry clothes – mostly donated – from the back of their cars as soon as refugees reach the shores.

Depending on the number of volunteers present at a given time, and what they have in their car at the time a boat arrives, this can amount to just a pair of socks with a small plastic bag in lieu of dry shoes.

In an effort to prevent – in children especially – hypothermia, volunteers hand these little bundles out, telling people to take their wet shoes and socks off, to place the dry socks on, followed by the plastic bag, and to then put their feet back into the wet shoes.

A bus system is in place in Chios whereby, once a boat arrives, volunteers can call for a  bus – which is organised by the local authorities – to come and collect people and take them to Tabakika. The police running the buses charge €3 per adult while children on the near 60-seater coaches can travel the 10-minute or so journey for free.

After registering, refugees can go to a makeshift camp set up in the shadow of the Castle Of Chios, called Souda, to sleep. Just a few minutes’ walk from Tabakika it is equipped with two 250-capacity tents and multiple IKEA shelters. Souda is cleaned daily.

On Samos, between November 28 to 30, the number of arrivals rose from zero to 517 while Kos saw the number of arrivals rise from less than 50 on November 29 to 229 on November 30, rising again to 378 on December 7.

Leros also saw the number of arrivals rise from zero on November 28 and 29 to 264 on November 30.

In the meantime, as the number of arrivals from Cesme in Turkey to the shores of Chios rises, so does the death toll.

On Tuesday, it was reported that six children, including a baby, died when a dinghy – believed to have been bound for Chios – capsized off Cesme.

Separately, it was reported Wednesday that at least 11 people, including five children, drowned and 10 are missing after a boat sank off Farmakonisi island.

But change isn’t only afoot on the Greek islands.

On Wednesday night – the eve of the 67th anniversary of the United Nations General Assembly adopting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which states that “everyone has the right to seek and enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution” – approximately 2,400 refugees were rounded up and forcibly put on buses in Idomeni, at the border between Greece and Macedonia, and sent to Tae-Kwon-Do Stadium in Athens.

The move followed several weeks of authorities only allowing the citizens of Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq to pass through the border, putting a blanket ban on those from other countries and prompting smugglers to offer those stranded other methods of getting further into Europe.

The ban disallowing those not from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq to pass forced them to camp out in squalid conditions while some sewed their lips shut in protest. Last week a Moroccan died after he was electrocuted. It’s been reported he had climbed on top of a train carriage when he came in contact with electric cables.

It’s also been reported that, prior to these people being put on the buses, journalists were removed from the area to a place two kilometres away and that some were asked to delete photographs. Volunteers were also removed.

Following the eviction of those at the camp a volunteer in Idomeni wrote on the Facebook page, Forgotten In Idomeni:

“When the camp was re-opened, it was clear that people didn’t have time or weren’t given the opportunity to gather possessions. Refugees reported from inside the camp that people were dragged from tents and some were beaten. Others gave up and left peacefully. All hope lost.”

After refugees register on the Greek islands, Syrians are given a document which allows them to stay in Greece for six months while all other nationalities are given a document which orders them to leave Greece, or return home, within 30 days.

Many of those who had been in Idomeni were there for three weeks meaning their deadline to move is fast approaching.

Different treatment for different nationalities isn’t uncommon in Greece.

In Lesbos, only Syrian families can sleep in a camp near Mytilene called Kara Tepe – which has facilities much more favourable to those provided at the barbed wire-fringed former prison that is Camp Moria, just two miles from Kara Tepe.

As thousands of refugees continue their journey from the Greek islands, via ferries, to Athens and more and more buses return from the border with Macedonia to the Greek capital, many long-term volunteers and solidarity groups on the islands – who are largely dependent on the testimonies of other volunteers via Twitter and Facebook for details of events on the ground – are starting to feel that perhaps Athens will be their next stop.

It’s likely smugglers feel the same.

Previously: A Drop In The Aegean

Don’t Look Away

Letter From Lesbos

Pic: Daphne Tolis

Related: Smugglers are least bad option for border returnees (IRIN, Andrew Connolly)

lesbos

Caoimhe Butterly writes:

I’ve spent the past few months working with various volunteer and solidarity structures in Greece, Serbia, Croatia and Calais. In response to the degrading conditions, dislocation and discrimination that many of those seeking refuge face as they travel, volunteer networks have attempted to embody practical solidarity and real welcome.

These groups have spent time with and learnt from the courage, resilience and dignity of the women, men and children who are journeying such long distances in the hopes of re-building lives of safety and stability.

I’m travelling back to Lesvos/Lesbos on November 10 with a group of experienced, calm and dedicated medics from Ireland- nurses, mid-wives, paediatric doctors, EMTs and a surgeon- and logistical support volunteers.

We will work alongside existing medical groups and volunteer networks as a mobile unit, responding to the medical and other practical needs of those surviving the winter crossing in rubber dinghies and decrepit wooden boats. We are covering our costs through friends and family so the money raised here [link below] will be spent on procuring additional medical supplies and vital medical equipment…

Medical support/solidarity, Lesvos (GofundMe)

Yesterday: A Drop In The Aegean

Pic by Radu Buema

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Taoiseach Enda Kenny speaking with Sean O’Rourke this morning

Taoiseach Enda Kenny was on Today With Sean O’Rourke this morning.

At one point in the interview, they discussed Greece and Mr Kenny told how he gave advice to Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and how he told the Eurozone leaders to ‘hold on a second here now’.

He also addressed those claims that Ireland didn’t increase income tax, VAT and PRSI.

Sean O’Rourke: “Right now, you and colleagues, around Europe, the European Union and the Eurozone are grappling with the Greece situation. I don’t know if you’ve time to read the letters page in the Irish Times but there was one yesterday, from a man in Limerick, a man called Michael Mahony and he talked about, and you’re somebody who admires Michael Collins and he said, you know, ‘The parallels are striking… The Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed under threat of “immediate and terrible war”, just as Tsipras has been threatened with economic annihilation of Greece if he did not accept the terms of the bailout agreement’. You effectively, along with colleagues in Europe, you threw the Greek Prime Minister under the proverbial bus didn’t you last week.”

Enda Kenny: “Certainly not. The position, in so far as Ireland was concerned, was that we were being used as a reference point by other countries as to an expression of common sense: what did you want here? Greece is about 2% of the European economy. Clearly, the Prime Minister himself had said on many occasions at the European Council meetings that I attended at, that Greece did not want a default, that Greece didn’t want to leave the Eurozone, that Greece would pay its way, that what Greece wanted was an infrastructure investment programme, that he was prepared to deal with corruption, that he was prepared to put in place a functioning taxation collection system and that he was prepared to go down to the OECD and take best advice from them and from every other country.

But I would say this Sean, you see, to be straight about this now, I have attended I suppose maybe 25 or 30 European Council meetings and we’ve had Prime Ministers from Greece before, who came before the European Council and said, ‘I tell ya we’ve got a problem, we’re nearly out of it, almost around the corner, another €5billion and we’ll be there and help us out. Prime Minister Samaras had a primary surplus brought in, he was approaching a 1% growth pattern and Greece was actually able to get back into the markets. All this…”

O’Rourke: “Yes but the people voted him out in the election last year and then it came to this new Syrizia government and they said, and Varoufakis was talking to the New Statesman a couple of days ago  said that their “most energetic enemies” in trying to get a better deal for Greece, one that people could live with, were countries like Ireland, Spain and Portugal. And it’s not just him saying things like that. And there’s a quote in from an Irish businessman, Patrick Coveney of Greencore. He said, ‘If you have kept a country together and inflicted shared and collective pain from some medium or long-term benefit, and someone else comes up with the political equivalent of a get-rich-quick scheme, it undermines the entire narrative.‘ Said Coveney, now whose brother happens to serve in your Cabinet – it just did not suit your political purposes to see the Greeks get some relief that they badly needed.”

Kenny: No I disagree. You see in the run-up to the election in Greece, which was triggered after the presidential election, the rise of populism brought about all of this instability, there was a pattern of growth and a pattern of movement in  the right direction but Syrizia came along and said, ‘Ok, you don’t need to pay for this, we want to reemploy all the people who’ve lost their jobs and everything. And that’s, that’s their right as a political party. The people made a democratic choice. And now that’s put it back further than ever before and yet the Prime Minister himself said, ‘look, I recognise the scale of the challenge that  we face here now’. I have never met the former [Greek] finance minister Yanis Varouvakis, Michael Noonan met him a few time and he said, ‘well, a lot of his comments are, you know, general rather than being specific – where you need to be if you’re in that business of being a minister for finance.’ But I would say this. From our point of view, before last week’s meeting, the all-night meeting, I actually spoke to Prime Minister Tsipras myself, before the meeting started and I said to him, ‘Alexis, let me give you a piece of advice here, if I may, there are people around the table who don’t trust you. You have got to show them that you’re serious about what you say here because you won’t build trust the way it’s being happening. You’ve got to have a step-by-step demonstration and proof of your conviction and you’ve got to go back to your parliament.‘ And I just say on your show here while the pressure was on to introduce X amount of legislation by a particular date, I did say to the Eurozone leaders, ‘Hold on a second here now, you can’t drive that extent of legislation through just like that and gave, for example, the  marriage equality referendum here which the people voted in but which the Government haven’t been able to put through the House yet because of an objection to the Supreme Court which must hear it. So I said like, in any case, there might well be objections, I’m not sure what the situation in Greek is about court objections or injunctions to prevent legislation but he himself, he himself, Alexis Tsipras was very clear and this went on all night between the involvement of the IMF and the monies that were being talked about. He said, ‘I’ll have these four pieces of legislation done by Wednesday’.”

O’Rourke: “Ok, and when you were talking to Alexis Tsipras, did you say to him, as you said publicly afterwards, in Ireland’s case, we did not income tax, we did not increase VAT we did not increase PRSI  and you were flatly contradicted – there was a torrent of contradiction from all sorts of economists because…”

Kenny: “I explained all that.”

O’Rourke: “…because we did it to the tune of €7billion.”

Kenny: “We didn’t increase income tax and what I was talking about was what the Greeks were talking about, they said their hospitality sector was absolutely critical to them and that the island, of which there are thousands have a very different system then operates on the mainland and and they were very concerned about that and I made the point that VAT in this country for the hospitality sector – you could you know  have tinkered about with it, reduce it by a half per cent. You could have put it down by from 13.5 down to 9, stabilises and created 35,000 jobs. I just made the point that our minister here, Minister Noonan and Minister Howlin, actually built a relationship with the Troika and said, ‘we don’t like that’. We’ll give you an alternative but the alternatives were focused on not creating obstacles to work and not taxing employment. Now, when you say, when you quote there that, Ireland didn’t want Greece to get any benefit here, it wasn’t just Ireland that was really upset about the extent of what might be called a write down because Spain, France and other countries have been exposed to Greek banks in a huge way but we always said that debt reprofiling and rescheduling – such as happened in our case with the promissory note and interest rate reductions – were always things that we support and do support and did support in the case of Greece.”

Listen back to the full interview here

Previously: The Man With One Point

Hello Greece

Yanis-Varoufakis_TINIMA20150127_0150_20

Former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varouvakis.

Into the eyes, not around.

Varoufakis, who resigned a week ago, has been criticised for not signing an agreement sooner, but he said the deal that Greece was offered was not made in good faith – or even one that the Troika wanted completed. In an hour-long telephone interview with the New Statesman, he called the creditors’ proposals – those agreed to by the Athens government on Friday night, which now seem somehow generous – “absolutely impossible, totally non-viable and toxic …[they were] the kind of proposals you present to another side when you don’t want an agreement.”

there was point blank refusal to engage in economic arguments. Point blank. You put forward an argument that you’ve really worked on, to make sure it’s logically coherent, and you’re just faced with blank stares. It is as if you haven’t spoken. What you say is independent of what they say. You might as well have sung the Swedish national anthem – you’d have got the same reply.”

There were people who were sympathetic at a personal level, behind closed doors, especially from the IMF.” He confirmed that he was referring to Christine Lagarde, the IMF director. “But then inside the Eurogroup [there were] a few kind words and that was it: back behind the parapet of the official version. … Very powerful figures look at you in the eye and say ‘You’re right in what you’re saying, but we’re going to crunch you anyway’.”

Varoufakis was reluctant to name individuals, but added that the governments that might have been expected to be the most sympathetic towards Greece were actually their “most energetic enemies”. He said that the “greatest nightmare” of those with large debts – the governments of countries like Portugal, Spain, Italy and Ireland – “was our success”. “Were we to succeed in negotiating a better deal, that would obliterate them politically: they would have to answer to their own people why they didn’t negotiate like we were doing.”

Yanis Varoufakis full transcript: our battle to save Greece (Yanis Varoufakis, The New Statesman)

Thanks Nelly Bergman