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General News
Meropi Kyriacou Honored as TNH Educator of the Year
NEW YORK – Meropi Kyriacou, the new Principal of The Cathedral School in Manhattan, was honored as The National Herald’s Educator of the Year.
ATHENS – In report on its late 2023 visit, the Council of Europe’s Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT) said it had found abuse of refugees and pushbacks, denied by the government.
The agency urged improvement in detention centers and camps, especially in newly-built and European Union funded facilities on Aegean islands near Turkey – from where the refugees come after going there fleeing war, strife and economic hardships in their homelands, primarily Syria and Afghanistan.
The panel also said that refugees and migrants should be treated with dignity and humanity after saying it had found credible and constant allegations of beatings of detainees in police and border guard stations on Lesbos, Kos and Samos as well as Amygdaleza, Corinth, Tavros and Athens police stations.
The report said refugees and migrants – referred to as foreign nationals – were still being held in poor conditions, including in police stations, the New Democracy government which said it’s trying to keep them out rejecting the accusations.
The CPT said it had found problems in the EU-funded Closed Controlled Access Centers on the Aegean Islands that did not meet the basic reception and protection needs of applicants for international protection.
It said many detained there were “deprived of their liberty way beyond the time limits provided by law and without benefiting from the legal safeguards related to detention, including access to a lawyer and interpreters.”
It added that the living conditions for many “could only be described as inhuman and degrading,” especially on Kos and Samos and that it was unnecessary to have barbed wire around them, especially in areas holding children and the vulnerable.
As troubling, it said that it received believable complaints about “violent, forcible removals” of refugees and migrants along the Turkish border near the Evros River, although it didn’t mention at sea, where human rights groups said pushbacks were being conducted, backed up by videos and major news outlets.
The CPT said the government’s response was the the conditions in police stations and detention centers the panel’s investigators found was brutal and inhumane met international standards for treating detainees and renovations are being planned.
