Every year, tens of thousands of irregular migrants and asylum-seekers from the Middle East, Asia and Africa cross the Greek land and sea border with Turkey in search of shelter, refuge or just a better life within the European Union (EU). Few of them find it in Greece.

“Greece’s failure to respect the rights of migrants and asylum-seekers is taking on the proportions of a humanitarian crisis. Against a backdrop of sustained migratory pressure, profound economic crisis and rising xenophobic sentiment, Greece is proving itself incapable of providing even the most basic requirements of safety and shelter to the thousands of asylum seekers and migrants arriving each year,” said John Dalhuisen, Europe and Central Asia Program Director at Amnesty International.

While the burden on Greece is great, there is no excuse for the obstacles asylum-seekers face in registering their asylum claims. A new agency set up by law in 2011 to hear asylum applications is yet to process a single case on account of staffing shortages.

In the meantime, at the Attika Aliens Police Directorate in Athens, only around 20 people succeed in registering their asylum application on the one day a week it opens. The queue forms days in advance and stretches hundreds long down the street. Amnesty International spoke to numerous asylum-seekers who had had to fight their fellows to keep their place.

The majority who do not manage – or give up trying – to register their asylum claims run the risk of arrest in mass sweep operations and of being detained in overcrowded, unhygienic detention facilities for up to a year or more.

“The Greek authorities continue to systematically detain asylum-seekers and irregular migrants including unaccompanied children in breach of international standards and seem to use detention – often in appalling conditions – as a deterrent,” said Dalhuisen.

“The situation of unaccompanied children, who are amongst the most vulnerable, is particularly worrying. We found several children detained among adults in very poor conditions during a recent visit at the Corinth detention center.

“Amnesty International has even received reports of people fleeing conflict and war in countries such as Syria being pushed back to Turkey through the river Evros”  said Dalhuisen.

There has also been a dramatic rise of  in the number of racially motivated attacks throughout 2012. Asylum-seekers, migrants, community centres, shops and mosques have been the target of such attacks which have been reported on an almost daily basis since the summer.

A draft presidential decree creating the specialized police units to curb racist violence is a first step towards the right direction, but falls short of  guaranteeing the effective investigations and prosecutions for crimes where victims are reluctant to approach the police for fear of arrest and detention themselves.

EU asylum policy requires asylum-seekers to return to the first country they entered upon arrival in the EU. However, after the European Court of Human Rights concluded in 2011 that Greece lacked an effective asylum determination system, many EU countries have halted the return of asylum-seekers to Greece.

“Most European countries have taken the right step in stopping the return of asylum seekers to Greece until the country reforms its asylum system. However, they must share responsibility for processing asylum applications and supporting asylum seekers more equally among member states,” said Dalhuisen.

“The current situation in Greece is totally unworthy of the Nobel Peace Prize winning European Union and so far below international human rights standards as to make a mockery of them. Greece needs help but it must also accept its own responsibilities.”

A large number of those arrested were reported to be of Asian, African and North African origin. Many have since been released because they were found to be legally residing in Greece.

According to Greek police, around 2,000 of those rounded up were found with no papers and were placed in administrative detention. People are being held in overcrowded conditions at the Attika Aliens Police Directorate or at other police stations in Athens. Others have been transferred to police academies in Northern Greece which are being used as detention facilities.

“While Greece has the right to control migration, it does not have the right to treat people in the street like criminals purely because of the colour of their skin,” said Jezerca Tigani, Deputy Director of the Europe and Central Asia Programme.

“The scale of the police operation in Athens at the weekend raises serious concerns about discrimination on the basis of perceived ethnicity.”

According to reports some people were transferred to police stations despite showing police papers proving their legal residence in Greece.

One of the men arrested on Saturday told Amnesty International that he was held at Petrou Ralli in a room with around 170 people. He said he was only given water on the day of his arrest and later could only eat bread because religiously inappropriate food was provided. Many detainees were sleeping on the floor and because of the overcrowding many were taking it in turns to sleep.

In view of the sharp rise of racially motivated attacks against foreign nationals in the past year, Amnesty International said it is concerned that such a massive and discriminatory operation will fuel further attacks and xenophobia

“Greece may be going through financial difficulties while at the same time facing one of the highest migration flows among the EU countries, but these police sweep operations violate international human rights standards and should stop immediately,” said Jezerca Tigani.

“Such arrests may put at risk of deportation individuals who are in need of international protection but are unable to apply for asylum.”

Two men (from Guinea and Cote d’Ivoire) were arrested and detained during the recent sweep operations and sent to Attika Aliens Police Directorate (known as Petrou Ralli) where they were detained until last night when they were transferred to another facility in Northern Greece.

An Amnesty International delegation met with the two men last month while they were queueing outside Petrou Ralli to apply for asylum.

One of them told Amnesty International how he has repeatedly requested to apply for asylum during his detention at Petrou Ralli and that his requests were ignored by the police.

“The Greek authorities must ensure that anyone wishing to apply for asylum is provided with effective access to it. They must also act to ensure that immigration-related detention is used only as a last resort. Those detained should be notified of their grounds of detention and of their rights and ensured access to their lawyer and the outside world,” said Jezerca Tigani.

Asylum-seekers in Greece often face serious obstructions when attempting to access asylum procedures. The vast majority try to apply for asylum at the Attika Alien’s Police Directorate at Petrou Ralli in Athens. Only a small number of applications are registered by the authorities each week.

Long queues of asylum-seekers wait in appalling conditions for two to three days outside the Directorate to lodge asylum applications each Saturday morning.

An Amnesty International delegation witnessed the poor conditions in immigration detention centres in Athens during a recent visit to the country last week.

The organization’s delegates visited six detention facilities in Athens including Petrou Ralli. While the wings visited at Petrou Ralli were clean at the time of the visit, the facility was in need of repairs. In two other facilities, those of New and Old Elliniko, conditions were inhuman and degrading.