The government has vowed to keep its election pledge to shut down migrant detention centres after a Pakistani man committed suicide at one in northern Athens last Friday.
“I am here to express my embarrassment. We are done with detention centres,” said Alternative Minister for Citizens’ Protection Yiannis Panousis after visiting the Amygdaleza centre on the weekend.
He said the government needed a few days to prepare the relevant legislation.
“We are going to do what we said before the elections, we are going to do what we said in Parliament,” he said.
A group of around 50 people demonstrated outside the centre during Panousis’s visit after the Pakistani man took his life. He was named as Muhammad Nadim by activists on social media but authorities did not confirm his identity.
The man had been arrested on December 12 in Rethymno, Crete, for entering Greece illegally. He was moved to Amydgaleza on Friday. He is the fourth migrant to die at the centre since last summer and the second to lose his life there last week, according to activists.
During the election campaign, SYRIZA pledged to shut down the centres, which consist of either collections of prefabricated huts or are based at disused military camps. The promise was repeated recently by Alternate Minister for Immigration Tasia Christodoulopoulou.
Source: Kathimerini