106 M.S.S. v. BELGIUM AND GREECE JUDGMENT – SEPARATE OPINIONS The Court accepts that the applicant suffered degrading treatment as he alleges. This acceptance is based on general assumptions. The evidence relied upon is the general negative picture painted by international observers of the everyday lot of a large number of asylum-seekers with the same profile as that of the applicant1. For this reason, the Court sees no reason to question the truth of the applicant’s allegations (paragraph 255 of the judgment). Likewise, for the Court, given the particular state of insecurity and vulnerability in which asylum-seekers are known to live in Greece, the Court considers that the Greek authorities should not simply have waited for the applicant to take the initiative of turning to the prefecture to provide for his essential needs (paragraph 259 of the judgment). I do not consider asylum-seekers as a group of people who are incapacitated or have lost control over their own fate. General assumptions alone are insufficient to establish the international law responsibility of a State beyond reasonable doubt2. Let us turn to the specifics of the applicant’s case. The applicant was in possession of considerable means, as he paid 12,000 United States dollars to a smuggler to get him out of Afghanistan, managed to get from Greece to Belgium and had the means to obtain false Bulgarian identity papers and a ticket to Italy. Moreover, as a former interpreter he was capable of communicating in a foreign environment. While the Greek asylum procedures are generally marked by too many problems, this does not exempt an asylum-seeker in the applicant’s position from cooperating with the authorities in good faith. Lack of such cooperation would further undermine the system. The applicant failed to cooperate with the immigration system and, when a place in a reception centre was offered to him once he finally asked for it, he failed to cooperate. He did not allow the authorities to examine his alleged complaints. Therefore, he cannot claim to be a victim of the system, which is otherwise generally degrading and humiliating. The insufficiencies of the system and the applicant’s desire to live in Belgium are insufficient reasons not to rely on the asylum procedure available in Greece as the country of entry. The applicant, by his own actions, failed to give the domestic authorities an opportunity to examine the merits of his claims. To conclude differently 1. Once again, it is hard to accept that the typical asylum-seeker or refugee has the same profile as the applicant, who had money and speaks English. 2. The Court’s case-law required there to be a link between the general situation complained of and the applicant’s individual situation (see Thampibillai v. the Netherlands, no. 61350/00, 17 February 2004, and Y. v. Russia, no. 20113/07, 4 December 2008). Where there is a mandatory procedure the general situation will apply inevitably to the applicant, therefore the nexus is established, and Greece is responsible; likewise Belgium, as it was aware of this fact. But it was not inevitable that M.S.S. would be kept for three days at a detention centre, as this does not follow from Greek law and there is no evidence of a standard practice in this regard; Belgium cannot be held responsible for the degrading detention.