A family of seven beneficiaries of international protection was recently evicted from the Closed Controlled Access Centre (CCAC) of Kos, Greece, and found themselves homeless, in precarious conditions, pending the completion of certain administrative procedures.
The family includes an infant less than 30 days old, whose extreme vulnerability was not taken into account by the authorities when they decided to evict the family from the CCAC.
The family had been homeless for two weeks, exposed to extreme temperatures, bacteria and viruses, without access to food, facilities or medical care when they contacted Equal Rights Beyond Borders (Equal Rights).
Following a Rule 39 request for interim measures submitted by Equal Rights, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) decided on 23-07-2024 to indicate to the Government of Greece “to ensure the accommodation of the applicants in living conditions that respect human dignity and that take into consideration their vulnerability, and to provide the applicants with medical care appropriate to their state of health, until 6 August 2024”.
The family was readmitted to the CCAC in the evening of July 24. They did not receive food but bread and some water. The container, in which they were put, was destroyed, without doors, windows and electricity and extremely dirty. The family was placed there even though the CCAC has plenty of capacity with functioning containers. While electricity and doors were reinstalled in the cause of the day, the family did not receive food nor water on July 25 and is also not allowed to leave the fenced area there are kept in.
“Not only do the authorities disregard an order by the highest European Human Rights Court and, therefore, the judicial system, they also disrespect in the cruelest way the right to life exposing a newborn to a real risk of death”, says Maria Eleni Kosmopoulou. “The family has to be treated in a humane way; instead they are punished for using their legal rights, left in deplorable conditions and essentially detained”.