M.S.S. v. BELGIUM AND GREECE JUDGMENT – SEPARATE OPINIONS 101 duration. The Greek Government should have proved that the placement was not in an overcrowded place in appalling conditions of hygiene and cleanliness, amounting to degrading treatment prohibited by Article 3, but they failed to do so. Of course, in A.A. v. Greece (no. 12186/08, §§ 57-65, 22 July 2010), where these conditions were found to amount to humiliation, the period was considerably longer, namely three months. For the Court, the duration of the detention in the present case is comparable in its effects to much longer stays in detention because of the assumed vulnerability of the applicant. I do not find the applicant particularly vulnerable (see below) but I do find the short term of detention inhuman because, as a rule, the relatively short-term restriction of freedom under deplorable conditions of people not accused of wrongdoing (as is the case here, at least for the first period of detention) causes considerable humiliation in itself. II. ALLEGED VIOLATION OF ARTICLE 3 OF THE CONVENTION BY GREECE BECAUSE OF THE APPLICANT’S LIVING CONDITIONS According to the Court, the applicant, as an asylum-seeker, is a member of a particularly underprivileged and vulnerable population group in need of special protection (see paragraph 251 of the judgment). To my mind, although many asylum-seekers are vulnerable persons, they cannot be unconditionally considered as a particularly vulnerable group, in the sense in which the jurisprudence of the Court uses the term (as in the case of persons with mental disabilities, for example), where all members of the group, due to their adverse social categorisation, deserve special protection. In the context of the Dublin system, “particularly vulnerable person or people” refers to specific categories within refugees, namely to victims of torture and unaccompanied children only1, and their treatment is unrelated to their classification. The concept of a vulnerable group has a specific meaning in the jurisprudence of the Court. True, if a restriction on fundamental rights applies to a particularly vulnerable group in society who have suffered considerable discrimination in the past, such as people with mental disabilities, then the State’s margin of appreciation is substantially narrower and it must have very weighty reasons for the restrictions in question (cf. also the examples of those subjected to discrimination on the ground of their gender: see Abdulaziz, Cabales and Balkandali v. the United Kingdom, 28 May 1985, § 78, Series A no. 94; race: see D.H. and Others v. the Czech Republic [GC], no. 57325/00, § 182, ECHR 2007-IV; or sexual orientation: see E.B. v. France [GC], no. 43546/02, § 94, 22 January 2008). The reason 1. It seems that in international humanitarian law, “particularly vulnerable group” refers to priority treatment of certain categories of refugees.