Dozens of organisations, trade unions, immigrant communities, student associations, left-wing groups, and refugee solidarity movements are called for the punishment of those responsible for Kamran’s death. The demonstrion proceeded from Victoria Square to the Agios Panteleimonas police station, with a stop at Agios Panteleimonas Square where the family of Mohamed Kamran, a delivery driver, addressed the crowd.
KEERFA’s statement:
“We are demonstrating on Saturday across Greece: Athens, Victoria Square 2:30 p.m.; Thessaloniki, Venizelos Statue 12 p.m.; Ioannina, Periphery 12 p.m.; Chania, Market Square 12 p.m.; Heraklion, Lions 12 p.m.; Xanthi, Central Square 12 p.m.; Volos, Agios Nikolaos Square 12 p.m.
The New Democracy government cannot cover up the murder of Mohamed Kamran, 37, a father of three who had lived and worked in Greece for 20 years. The trail of responsibility leads directly to the government, which bears guilt for deaths ranging from Gaza to Pylos, Tempε, and the police stations.
On 21 September, Kamran was found dead in a cell at the Agios Panteleimonas police station, bearing signs of torture. The slander spread by the Greek police (ELAS) is a shameless attempt to cover up the fact that Kamran was illegally detained for eight days without being allowed contact with his family or lawyer. Arrested repeatedly for document checks, his identification papers and mobile phones mysteriously disappeared after his details were registered at Omonia police station.
On 1 October, another immigrant, 29-year-old Mia Halis, died just an hour and a half after being detained at the Omonia police station for damaging a patrol car mirror. He was found hanged in a cell shared with 11 other prisoners.
KEERFA has reported these crimes to the UN Committee for the Prevention of Torture. The government’s racist policies have transformed the Coast Guard into a mechanism for drowning refugees at sea, as demonstrated by the shipwreck in Pylos that killed 600 people, and police stations into death chambers for immigrants.
The attempt to cover up these atrocities is an affront, with the very perpetrators now leading the investigations.
There must be no cover-up, no impunity for these racist crimes, which are turning entire police departments into death camps akin to Abu Ghraib. The government’s law-and-order agenda, steeped in racism, has led to the murders of Kostas Manioudakis, Nikos Sampanis, Kostas Fragoulis, Christos Michalopoulos, and Alexis Grigoropoulos.
The deadly combination of racism, killings at borders and police stations, and Islamophobia is directly linked to the government’s support for the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and Israel’s invasion of Lebanon. This is part of a broader agenda to distract workers and youth from their anger over low wages, poverty, cuts to education, and healthcare, while billions are spent on military equipment, border fences, and the persecution of refugees in both neighbourhoods and at the borders.
These are the policies through which New Democracy has aligned itself with the far right and fascist forces in Greece and across Europe, even inviting Marine Le Pen to the Democracy Forum and applauding the initiative by Italy’s far-right leader Giorgia Meloni to detain refugees in Albanian camps.
We call on striking unions, students, and young people in schools and universities to unite in this fight. We must defeat the government’s racism, which is fuelling the far right, and hold accountable those responsible for the deaths of immigrants in police stations and at sea. We demand open borders and papers for all refugees.”
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