Some news from Greece

On the morning of Friday December 23, a demonstration was held in the city of Patras. It was organized after a 16-year old Afghan was left severely injured during a police operation in an informal settlement set up by Afghan refugees in the near-by town of Rio.  The demonstration started from at the deserted building of Piraiki Patraiki, a former factory, used by Afghan refugees for shelter. About 400 people, mainly immigrants and people in solidarity participated in a demonstration that lasted 2,5 hours and went through various neighborhoods as well as through the center of Patras, all decorated for christmas.
The immigrants held up four banners, saying:
- What about our future and our destiny?
- We too are humans and we have the right to live
- Stop police brutality, we want to live with security, we need human rights (this banner was in both Greek and English)

Meanwhile:

•  One of the 300 hunger strikers (of the immigrants’ victorious hunger strike between January and March 2011)  was deported. The police claims that he had a Schengen warrant pending in Italy. Lawyers and solidarity groups tried to help, but could not prevent the deportation.

• On December 22 the corpse of a man, probably between 25 and 30 years old, was found near Peplos, in the Greco-Turkish border region of Evros. He died attempting to cross the border by swimming through the river Evros/ Maritza.

• For two months, since October 2011, a building in the center of Thessaloniki owned by the French Catholic Church, which had been deserted for almost a decade, was squatted  by over 40 homeless Greeks, immigrants and activists.  EPIVIOSI (=”Survival) was the first such experimental occupation in Greece: It was an open place with a general assembly, where anyone without shelter could fix themselves their own room and benefit from the construction workers’ collective in the squat, as well as enjoy common meals and language lessons. It was evicted, under pressure by the French State, on December 13th.

• On December 12, the general assembly of street vendors from Bangladesh, Pakistan, Senegal, Nigeria, Turkey and other countries entered Thessaloniki town hall during city’s council weekly meeting and addressed the mayor. One of them read out their text, demanding the city council end police attacks against street vendors and stating that they will not become scape goats for the crisis.

• On the 7th of December, one day after the anniversary of the murder of Alexandros Grigoropoulos by a cop in 2008 and the demos that were held all over Greece, a group of African street vendors on the central street of Patision in Athens, were attacked by municipal police. Such attacks are not uncommon, neither are the reactions. This time the street vendors fought back furiously, forcing municipal police to leave the spot and call riot police forces for help. The immigrants counterattacked again and managed to push away the riot police squadron. Shocked with what they saw, some right-wingers recorded the retreat of the riot police and uploaded it on youtube for all to enjoy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjxtswszm-M

Europe needs migrants despite the crisis, says commissioner

http://euobserver.com/9/32646

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS – Migrants are often an unexploited asset that national governments should be using to help lift their economies out of crisis, EU home affairs commissioner Cecilia Malmstom has said.

“Many member states have failed in migrant integration. There is so much competence around us, trained physicists, engineers cleaning our stairs, doing jobs they are clearly overqualified for,” Malmstrom told reporters when presenting the results of an EU-wide survey on the integration of migrants.

Noting that integration is firstly a matter of local and then national authorities, with the EU able only to facilitate the sharing of good practices, she recalled how the region of western Sweden recruited 65 doctors among existing migrants who were working as bus drivers and in other jobs for which they were over-qualified.

“With one year of language training and a little updating of their skills, these people were able to be hired as doctors. In the end it was much cheaper than educating for six-seven years someone, giving him or her training and waiting to have enough experience to be hired,” she said.

But Malmstrom admitted that things have changed in the past ten years and that xenophobia is on the rise even in the traditionally migrant-friendly Scandinavian countries.

“We can see out of the analysis that there is a fear of migrants. The scepticism towards migration is there and big,” she said about the results of the first Eurobarometer on migrant integration.

Some of these negative feelings are related to bad integration, the feeling that migrants don’t make enough effort to learn the national language, the study shows.

“But it’s also because people knew very few migrants. They live parallel lives, they have no Swedish friends, their kids have no Swedish classmates.”

Malmstrom invoked economic and demographic arguments – that migrants are needed to fill the gap of a national working force going abroad, as is often the case in eastern European countries, and that of an ageing population in western Europe.

With migrants having contributed, for instance, to 30 percent of Spain’s economic growth before the crisis hit, the commissioner insisted that migrants continue to be needed even as the crisis forced many Spaniards into unemployment.

“Why should people pay for the collapse of the boom? Many businesses still say we can’t find people to do jobs such as picking strawberries,” she noted.

Amid budget cuts all over Europe, social programmes for migrant integration are often a preferred target.

“Here is where EU money could help. I’ve proposed to the European Parliament for only two funds to be set up in the big home affairs area – security and migration – to replace the existing six funds with six different legal bases,” the commissioner said.

VALENTINA POP

Last winter Corfu shipwreck sans papiers death toll: a 16-year-old afghan refugee testimony

source: http://w2eu.net/2011/07/20/dublin-deaths-between-kerkyragreece-and-bariitaly-15th-of-january-2011/#more-3027

Dublin-Deaths between Kerkyra/Greece and Bari/Italy

The following testimony of Amin Fedaii, a 16-year-old afghan refugee, is alarming. On January 15th 2011 more than 20 refugees (mainly from Afghanistan) died while trying to flee from Greece and to reach their relatives and friends in other European countries.

The asylum system in the crisis-ridden Mediterranean country has entirely collapsed. Refugees cannot find protection neither any income and often even no accommodation. Against this background deportations to Greece according the Dublin II-regulation have been stopped in many European Countries, but the affected persons got stuck in unbearable conditions in Athens or in the harbour-cities of Patras and Igoumenitsa. While EU-citizens can travel without any problems, refugees are trapped: a regular exit is refused, although they have – particularly if they come from war-zones like Afghanistan – good chances to receive a residence permit on humanitarian grounds in many EU-countries.

Amin survived and is now living in an accomodation for minor refugees in Hessen, Germany. But he had to experience the meaningless death of 20 persons by drowning, because firstly entry and afterwards their rescue has been refused: 20 more victims of a merciless european border regime, which obviously is calculating with the death of refugees.

Greece: Detention centres make migrants more ill

Athens, 15 June 2011 – Inhumane living conditions in migrants’ detention facilities in the Evros region of Greece are causing major health concerns for detainees according to a new report published today by the international medical humanitarian organisation Médecins Sans Frontières MSF (Doctors Without Borders).

According to MSF medical data, more than 60 percent of the medical problems faced by detained migrants – who have attempted to cross the border between Turkey and Greece – are directly caused by or linked to the degrading conditions in which they are being held.

Out of the 1,809 patients treated by MSF doctors between December 2010 and March 2011, 1,147 were diagnosed with respiratory tract infections, body pains, diarrhoea, gastrointestinal disorders, psychological complaints and skin diseases.

“Most of the migrants we have treated were not ill when they first entered the detention facilities. They fell sick having being held in overcrowded cells lacking proper ventilation, with water and sanitation problems, no quality food and no possibility to spend time outdoors,” says Ioanna Pertsinidou, coordinator of MSF’s project for migrants in Greece.

During the first two months of 2011, at least 22 people died in their efforts to cross the border in Evros.

From MSF’s experience working in the detention centre at Filakio and border police stations at Tychero, Soufli and Feres, there is no evidence indicating that migrants entering Greece pose a public health risk to Greek society, as recently stated by Greece’s Minister of Health.

On the contrary, it is the inhumane living and hygiene conditions in these facilities – where some migrants are kept for up to six months – that are causing significant deterioration to their physical and mental health. These conditions increase the risk of communicable disease outbreaks, as was also stated in a report published in May 2011 by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control and the World Health Organization.

MSF urges Greek authorities to ensure dignified living conditions in detention facilities, including appropriate accommodation, sufficient distribution of food, clothing and personal hygiene items, and adequate periods of time outdoors.

It is essential to ensure migrants receive adequate medical care and mental healthcare, to initiate systematic medical screening for new arrivals, and to support timely follow-up of chronic diseases. The Ministries of Health and Citizens Protection should ensure coordination among the involved stakeholders – locally, nationally and at EU level – and maximise the timely use of existing funds and resources.

In early March 2011, MSF handed over its medical activities to teams deployed by the Ministry of Health, but continues to distribute relief items to detained migrants. Despite the availability of European funds, conditions in the detention facilities have not improved.

ENDS

For more information or interviews, please contact Alice Klein on 020 7067 4230 or via alice.klein@london.msf.org

Notes to editor

To download the full report, click here.

MSF has been providing medical care and psychosocial support to migrants and asylum seekers in Greece since 1996. Since the beginning of December 2010, MSF teams have been providing healthcare and working to improve living and hygiene conditions in the border police stations of Tychero, Soufli and Feres and in the detention centre of Filakio. MSF doctors have treated 1,809 migrants, 18 of whom were under five years old. MSF psychologists have provided mental health support to 75 migrants. MSF staff have distributed over 8,480 sleeping bags, over 15,500 pairs of socks, 4,500 pairs of gloves, 4,500 hats and 10,000 hygiene kits.

http://www.msf.org.uk/Greece_migrants_160611_20110616.news

“We were persecuted in our home countries, now we are persecuted here!” – Interview

From http://infomobile.w2eu.net/

Interview with the refugee N., from Eritrea
23rd of May 2011, Komunisia
by infomobile

N. spent a very long time in the mountains of Igoumenitsa. With 10 months he belongs to the experienced men on the mountain. He has been deported from Italy several times. Still he never lost his hope that one day he will get out.

The truck to the other Europe

“I promise to see you in a better place,” N. says and his eyes are full of energy.How long are you in Igoumenitsa?

In Komunisia here? I have longer than ten months. More than ten months here!

What did you expect from coming here to Igoumenitsa?

You know, the reason for my coming to Komunisia, I am suffering too much bad in this country. I need to leave this country. For this reason I came to Komunisia. Unfortunately, during these days we are suffering from a very bad situation: from the police and from the racist people, from the civil society here in Komunisia.

It was better ten months before compared to now, how was it?

Before, we were living in a better situation but now during these days we are living a very bad situation. We are suffering. Even the food … it is too much difficult for us to get food. For example, if you want to get food from the supermarket the police they will arrest you and they will take all the food from you, which you buy it from supermarket and throw it into skoupidia (Greek: rubbish). Second, they will send you immediately to the prison.

Just because you wanted to take food?

Yeah, only for food. This is our problem.

What do you eat then?

You know, just now here there are some people with us they have two days / one and half day that they never eat at all. They never eat at all! For example, I have my friend yesterday since morning time until night time at one o’clock the police they never give him a chance… by secret ways they want to enter the town so that they get some food. They never eat for one day or one day and half.

How difficult is it to collect the money to buy food?

All of us we have no money at all, you know. We collect this money by sharing everyone one Euro, 50 Cent, 20 Cent. We collect all this money so that to give it to somebody to go to the supermarket. To bring to us food or to go to the bakery to bring for us bread. Before two days we were waiting for our friends here to bring us food. We are still waiting for him, but unfortunately he never came. Today at morning time he called us from the prison. He says, that I am in the prison. The police they will send him to prison directly from the supermarket and they took all the things he bought and they throw it in the skoupidia.
Also, there was an old man with us, his name is Ahmad, this guy at morning he can see but at night-time he cannot see at all. He becomes almost blind. This old man he went to the supermarket to buy milk. When he entered the supermarket the police came to him and they said: ‘Put all the things down. Don’t take anything from the supermarket!’ Immediately they took him from the supermarket and send him to prison. Just now they took him to another prison – from Komunisia to Florina. In Florina the police they said to him: ‘We don’t have any money for your transport. Until now he is walking with his foot. Yesterday he called us. He said there are so many dogs, they follow him and they want to bite him. He said that, it is too much difficult for him to come back to Komunisia.

You yourself, you have also been arrested?

Yes, I myself two times I have been arrested. One day they arrested me from the bakery. I take bread from the baker and the police they will send me. And another time I needed to go to the hospital. Also the police saw me. I left the hospital…also they will send me to the prison.

Can you describe this experience that you walked from Florina until Komunisia?

Unfortunately when the police send me to Florina, when they take a life from Florina I have no any money for transportation. Four days I come on foot from Kasarakasia. Kasarakasia exactly this is a small village in Florina and nearly of Yugoslavia and Albania. We are three persons. We come from Florina until Ioannena four days on foot.

What do you suggest as a solution?

We are suffering from very bad situation. No one can eat. Now we are arrested in mountain. We stay in the mountain. Just like the monkey. For 20 days or 21 days in mountains. Now, there is too much difficulties for us. It is too much difficult for us to go buy food from supermarket. I hope from the police, that they allow us to go one hour or two hours to supermarket to take food, no problem. But just now we are too afraid to go to supermarket. I hope that the police give us the chance just one hours or two hours to get food from supermarket.
I myself I am one from the black people. Our problem, our coming here to Komunisia is only for to leave this country. You know that the situation in this country is too much bad. We are in need to go from here. We are really persecuted in our home countries. The life, which you get it here in Greek is too much bad with us. Worse than Third World country. We were persecuted but were living in very good situation, in very good situation before. Even the refugees whom they are living in Third World countries they are living in very good situation. Here we are living just like animals. Like animals! There is no human rights here. The police will never respect human rights. At last god he created all of us – even black people and white people. At last all of us god created us. It is supposed to be. The Greek police they will know that. We are human beings like them. But the police people and the racist people they never respect the human rights here.
I myself I have been as a refugee in Sudan. I left from my country because I have very big problem there. I am condemned to death at the international court in my home country. For this reason I escape. I came another country. I seek asylum with United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. I have been living in camp, open camp. I am studying in this country which I seek asylum for six years. Even the university, I studied in university there. I am graduated as electrical engineer.

“Everybody is welcomed in my house!”

I have worked in this country for three years and half. And despite of the fact that we have been suffering from a little problems, we didn’t feel one day that we are persecuted. We consider our selves just like the civilians of this country. See the deals in Third World country and see the deals in Europe here. According to my own imagination, I don’t think Greece is Europe. I hope to be in Third World country. I hope that I will be deported in Third World country. We are really persecuted people in our homes. Until here they are following us. We escaped from our country because of persecution, but also we are suffering from other things here.
We have our friend he die here. Nearly to port here. But unfortunately the police they allow the driver which he kill my friend to go. No problem? Why did they allow the driver go? This guy which he is dead, he is not human being? He is human being. But here there is no human rights. You know that. Why the police they allow this driver go? He killed our friend here. We are suffering from so many problems here. We are really persecuted people here. We are suffering from very bad persecution in our home country and in Greece country!
My friend he died. He needed to cross the road. The driver he shoot him by car; he accident with him by car. He died. He died here and we go to the police, to the asfalia to explain to them. We gave them the number of the car. We said to them this is the car. They take fiche. He was one of our friends. The police he said to us: ‘Ok, no problem. Wait!’ We wait two days, three days… Even we call somebody, he come from Athens representing the UNHCR in Greece. He come here and he knows that…

Look! I am talking to you now and see the people the police is following them. Now, now the police are following them.

This guy that he is dead, he is from Sudan. We call also someone who is working for the embassy of Sudan. He come here and he talk to us, he talk to the police. We took this guy, which he is dead from Komunisia to Ioannena and we took him to the grave in Ioannena. We buy it 2.500 for him. 2.500 Euro so that to give us chance to put him here in Ioannena – in Greece! We made a sharing all of us. We buy it 2.500 Euro from the government of Greece.

Why do you think did the police not find the driver?

I am not talking by myself. I am talking representative for all immigrants, I mean from various countries: Sudan, Somalia, Eritrea… all… Marrocco, Algeria… all of them. Maybe this happened to somebody who is from Sudan, but this could happen for me, for another person. The police here never respect us. We respect the police and we respect the rules of the police. But the police will never respect us!

Does this make you loose hope, or make you think that you want to go back?

According to my imagination, the police they do this, because they need us to go back to our home country. But we are persecuted in our home country. If we are not persecuted in our home country can we stay here on the mountain just like monkeys? Even if the monkey sometimes leaves the mountain, here the police never allows us!

Police hunting the refugees and pushing them back to the mountain.

We are really persecuted people in our home country. The police they maybe need us to go from Greece to return back to our home country. If we are not really persecuted person in our home country why we stay in the mountain? Immediately we would return back to our home country.What are your biggest fears?

The biggest fear, first, we have from the prison. See, see now, you see the police following some people, you see? … Very fear for us prison! They send us to prison. Yes, we know ourselves, that we enter without documents. All the police will give us hartia (Greek: paper, it is a deportation order valid for 30 days). The police will give you Hartia (Greek: paper, here meaning the deportation order valid for 30 days that all sans-papiers get upon release from prison) for one month, two months, three months…to leave this country. If today you come out of the prison and the police catches you in same day, immediately they will send you again to prison. Here, there is no any rule here. There is no any rule here!

What do you wish?

For me, for everyone living here in Greece not only for us here on the mountain, all the ones living here in various towns in Greece, I hope that to leave this country, to go from this country! Because I am sure, even the people, who are now living in Athens are in a bad situation. You know, I hear very bad information about Athens. I heard very bad information. Just now, just during these days the racist they will make so many problems with the immigrants people or with the refugees people in Athens, in Komunisia, in various country. For me I wish that, all those people that they are immigrants, they leave this country out. This is my hoping to them.

How can you protect yourselves?

Here we have not any protection. Everyone he protect himself. Three weeks ago there is a great demonstration here. The racist they make a demonstration here against us. And we know that there is a demonstration against us and we have some other people form another organization they help us, they come here and they tell us: ‘Today racist people they will make a demonstration against you. Don’t go down near control so as to join yourselves with them. Maybe they will make problem with you.’ We respect the saying of the organisation. We did not go to them. We stay on the mountain. There are only some people of us they are still playing football down. We didn’t join the Greeks, but the racist they come to the mountain and they fight with us. They throw us by stones and despite of the fact that the police is supposed to protect us, the police they will be with the civilians of Greece against us.
There is no any protection for us here! Everyone protects himself. Now we are living in mountain. We are living in mountain! The snakes living with us, the rats living with us, the scorpions living with us. Believe me, when the night-time comes we are never able to sleep. First, we are afraid from the police. Second, we are afraid from the second police. Second police it means: the snakes, the scorpions, the rats and all the other animals living with us here on the mountain. From 8 o’clock in the night-time until 7 o’clock in the morning time, we are not sleeping at all.

Making tea in the dark. Lighting fire with plastic rubbish.

Maybe in the morning hours we will get one hours or two hours of sleep. But the rest of the day…no we are never sleep at all. We are watching what happens with the police. We expect the police. We really feel persecution here. Of the police… We are afraid from the police, we are afraid from the asfalia (Greek: civil police). We expect them at any time on the mountain.What is your worst thing you experience here?

There are so many people, if you see them they are youngest people, but because of the hunger, the bad situation, never sleeping, they are destroyed already. They become just like old men, because they are thinking, they are afraid of the police, they are afraid from the very bad situation here.

Where do you want to go, in which country?

I want to go British, German, Sweden or Norway, because these are progressing countries. We will get human rights there. We will get good deal there, I think. We are feeling there are human rights in various countries, but here in Greece… We were living better in Africa! Better than Greece. Greece is too much bad!

What do you wish from the Greek people?

I know they don’t want us. I said to you, they don’t want us to stay in their home country. And we don’t want to stay in Greece. We come here so that to leave this country. First, we come from our home country because we are persecuted people in our home country. We escape from the persecution in our home country and we come here to Greece and we get the persecution again – there is real persecution in front of us. How should we seek asylum in Greece? I can’t seek asylum in Greece! I saw so, so many persons who seek for asylum in Greece, but the government in Greece they give you only a Red Card. Sometimes I saw that the police they will take the red card of some people, they will torn it and they will send him to the prison. It means that this red card do nothing for you, can never protect you. How to get asylum here?
We have no house, we live just like homeless people. Homeless people in Africa, in Third World country, better than us! Better than us in Greece.

“We are being besieged. They keep us on the mountain like in a prison.”

What I need from the Greeks: We don’t want to stay with you in Greece. All of us… Thus, the only thing that we need is to allow us to go from your home country. Only this I need from you. Because the Greek people they never respect the human rights.Did ever a racist attack you?

Two times. Two times, and so many times I escape from them. So many times I escape from them. And now I have someone who is my friend. He is from Somalia. The racist they attacked him inside the town and they broke his mouth. Just now he is in hospital. He went to Athens to cure himself.

Are you trying to go to get food at the moment?

No, I am afraid. I am afraid I don’t try every day to go. You know when night time arrives, immediately I am not going to go. Not at morning time. Because we have no protection! Even if the police they sometimes they saw people beating you they are just watching.

And you try every day to go to Italy?

Every day I try. Every day. Since morning time until night time I am trying. If I get a chance, I will go! Four times they deported me from Italy. And we have so many people here they deport them 5 times, 6 times.

This journey means risking your life again for finding protection

When they deport you, they will put you in the prison here. Then they will send you to a prison far away. Why they send us to prison? They never want to give us travel documents. They don’t want to give us documents to leave their country by legal way. We are in need to go by illegal way. If you go by illegal way, if the Italian government, – meaning the Italian police – they saw you and deport you to Greek, here the government, the police government, they will send you to the prison. Sometimes you spent 2 months, 3 months in prison. There is no rule! Sometimes you spent 1 day, 2 days. Then they will give you free to go. But here there is no rule. There is no law. Sometimes you spend 6 months; sometimes you spend 7 months. According to the law of the police; according to their moods.There are people here that have been deported from other European countries?

More! We have more. Just now there is two people who have been deported 5 months ago from Belgium. Also, did you know France? They deport many people from France before. 9 months ago.

Is there something that makes you happy?

I myself will be happy when I leave from Greece – when I leave from Greece, when I leave from Komunisia! But this town I never forget it because I am living very difficult life in this town.

Thank you!

download the whole interview in English as pdf:
Interview with N. from Eritrea (in English)

“You always wish it’s your last day here in Komunisia.” – interview

From http://infomobile.w2eu.net/

Interview with the two refugees A. and Y., from Sudan

21st of May 2011, Komunisia
by Infomobile

A. and Y., refugees from Sudan talk about their living-conditions in Igoumenitsa, the second largest port from Greece towards Italy. We are sitting in the mountain, looking at the port-area of “Komunisia” how the refugees call it. A few hundred refugees from all war-zones of the world are living on this mountain. Some days ago, at the 3rd of May, the refugees’ settlements in the mountain have been attacked by fascists out of a demonstration.

Waiting room Komunisia: One minute feels like one year on this mountain

Afterwards the police drew an invisible ‘red line’ and prevented refugees from entering the city. More than 450 refugees have been arrested in May 2011 – double than the average monthly arrests of 2010. Police guards the garbage cans and so the refugees are starving from hunger. We are sitting on this mountain in Europe and we hope for their chance to go!What is Komunisia?

Y.: Nothing. Only a station to cross. I don’t have any friendship in Igoumenitsa. Only it is a port in Greece that can take me to another country, to another situation. Komunisia is cruel. As a shortcut to your question Komunisia means nothing and anything for me in the same time. I want to cross this country from Igoumenitsa, so it means anything for me. But in my memory nothing.

A.: Oh, bad things: the most bad days in my life. I saw in the world many countries where people are hungry. Now here we become a piece of it. For us this is like big jail. They control you. They want to put you down, they want you to leave. And you get more sad when you see the people all the time, who can pass easy. We don’t belong to European countries and so we are not allowed to go on. To stay in a situation like this because you don’t have paper – for me it’s not enough! I think everybody has a right to go, he has right to leave. And I also don’t think all this land it belongs to anyone. I think it belongs to God, it is not ours. I want to go. Maybe I want to see the world, yes. I want to meet people. Maybe I don’t like this country, I like that country. I have friends in one country. Maybe I want to marry someone from there. Maybe I want to get education or something. Maybe I go for health. It makes you sad because you know this road is very easy. But for us it’s very hard. The price for this ship for us is very expensive. You can stay here like you can die everyday because you cannot have it.

Can you say how long you are in Komunisia? And what do you feel how long you have been here?

Y.: Oh, it is a very long time you know! I have one year and one month in Greece. First I went to Patras trying to travel and when I didn’t succeed I came to Igoumenitsa to try from here. I have six months in Igoumenitsa and I don’t succeed until now. Six months it means 180 days. I think it is 180 years, maybe more. Everyday is equal one year for me. You know how many days we stay without any food? I will be like an animal if all I can think is how to find food. Being human is to think about how to improve myself, how to find a new job for example. I am in Europe, or I imagine I am in Europe. But I always think about food. In Africa in my country I didn’t think about food. And our very, very bad government is even better than this, because it does not lie to the world. You are the big liars of the world. You have a white skin but a black heart.

A.: I am in Greece two years and half. Six months now in Komunisia. Six months, how long they are? I can’t count, it’s unbelievable. I think until now I dreamed. Sometimes I don’t think I am here. I wish I am not. You can’t go back, you can’t pass. I think everybody here if he finally goes out from here, he will need a doctor. Here we cannot think. We cannot get out these problems from inside. I think it is not normal to eat from the garbage. When somebody is looking in the garbage and the others are looking at him… I think someone is not normal when this does not touch his feelings. I don’t think this will finish when he goes far away from the garbage. I think inside this will stay. One day more here in this bad situation is very, very long. Here is the main wish you will go. You always wish this is the last day here in Komunitsa.

Can you describe one day of your life in Komunisia?

Y.: I wake up in the morning and all I think is how I reach Skupidia (greek: garbage). If I reach Skupidia, if I will find something or not and how to keep myself from police. If you find a good police he will say to you “Figi, figi” (greek: Go!). If you find another police he will catch you, arrest you and take you to prison. Come back from Skupidia to share what you find. Perhaps find nothing. Come back to look if any friend find something he shares with you. And than you stay in the mountain. Nothing else. Later when the ports control opens, you will go to try under trucks. Maybe you will crash. Maybe you will ride “dingle”, I don’t know what this word means in English but you can translate it “under trucks”. Maybe you succeed, maybe you have an accident. We have many accidents here and we have many dead in the trucks.

“The passion for freedom is stronger than the bars of the prison”

We know that this is dangerous. And police beats you cruelly. Police will beat you cruelly just as if you have killed his father. In one day you can find police broke more than five legs. You move in the mountain and you see broken people. Sometimes police put his shoes on your neck when you come out. I don’t know if it’s sadism. If you manage to “dingle” okay: Congratulation! If not you will go back to the mountain and start the same again. It is one day, but it is repeated. Today, tomorrow and also the day after: Skupidia, trucks – nothing else.What is your experience with Greek police?

A.: Since I came to Greece I have problems with police. If police is in the same place than you, he will arrest you. Police puts you in one place, they transfer you to another place. They don’t have place to leave you, but still they arrest more. They find bad words for you. They don’t give you food, they don’t give you anything, you just sleep, sleep… They want you all the time to feel: I have to go out from here, because I will go to jail. I think this is politics. And when they put you in jail after they put you far. So far! They bring you far from Komunisia. We don’t have money for the bus. We walk, some they walk for three or four days. When you come back here you need to sleep one week. This is what they want: one month you cannot try to go. Maybe after some days they will arrest you again. Sometimes they don’t arrest you, they just hunt you with the car. When you fall down, when you break your legs or something they just laugh and then they go. And they say “Malaka”. They run after you, they try to make us afraid.

Y.: They give us a paper to leave Greece. I don’t know how to leave Greece. Maybe they want us to fly? To be just like angels and fly across the sea? In despite of all of our problems in Africa made by European Union and America by supporting our governments or supporting wars: Okay, you make war in my country. You want me to stay in war today to loose my life? Why? What you will have from that if I die? I am here because my country is not safe. My government is not justice, they were thieves. They stole my food and they stole my life to kill me if I say no. So I come to Europe because Europe has the responsibility. We want to stay alive until our age is finished. In peace. But you make our countries just as a piece of fire. How can we stay alive?

How is the general situation in Greece right now?

Y.: We know Greece is a poor country, with big economical problems and tying rope on their neck. But the Greek government don’t want us to cross. They say: “We want refugees to go.” But actually, if they want me to go: give me a strong paper to cross!

A view towards “the other Europe” – the one of asylum

All the European countries press Greece to close doors but why Greece accepts this? Now all the world says: “Fuck Greece!” Because you are cruel to us, and they don’t know you are pressed by the European Union. We are here until we die or have a solution. By this money you need for all prisons, print a document to let me go.A.: I blame all European countries, because they know this situation in Greece. And still they are controlling Greece not to let anyone come. They know we have a real bad situation if we cannot go out of here, but they don’t care. If we don’t reach there, we don’t belong to them and it’s not their responsibility. In one thing Greece is right: this is not only their problem, but from all European countries. And fuck: you cannot leave somebody die because you say, you have fingerprint in Greece! You make these rules and you can change it!

What was going at the 3rd of May?

A.: They made a demonstration. There were also people from other villages. They came here and they all say we have to go out. We didn’t understand them. They talk only helenika (greek). They came here and we understand: they are not our friends. They closed the port, the port was not working.

Racist demonstration (3rd of May) – shortly before the attacks

They were playing music. And you feel something is not okay: they are putting music, but they don’t enjoy. We were playing football, we were calm. They attacked us with rocks. Some of us also they throw them to keep them in distance. Then the police came and helped them, the police was using gas and something other, like big balls. Some they cannot see: problems with their eyes. And all are running. You think you are in Afghanistan. We were just playing football and they attacked us, civilian and police together. We go up in the mountain and we know once more not everybody is the same. I think they are just stupid. But after this everything is danger, because more control, everyday they catch us. The problem is we are eating from garbage, and even if someone has money he needs to go to supermarket to buy something. At these places they arrest us. If you go down the hill, you will be in jail. Until that day we played football. Now I don’t know if I have the power.
And after they changed all the truth. They have camera. They make video. They changed the whole story. They show them enjoying down with their music-party there and we attacked them. They changed everything. Okay, they don’t want to help us. But to lie like this! They put it in the internet to show all the world to say: Don’t accept them! If you take them they will make problem. Nothing else was more bad than this! The government helps them also. They put in the media what they want to show. In Athens it is more bad, they kill. I don’t know what other European countries wait for. They wait if they put us in one line to kill us one by one? You go with your organisations far away to countries like Afghanistan. But you have people here in Europe who are hungry. Why you go so far? There are people near to you that need help. Like Greece Europe want to make us fed up and go back. Only back, not in front. And most Greeks they still think this country belongs to them, we have to go out of here. It is their mountain. And still we are here and we don’t die.What would you like to say to the world?

Y.: We can work, all people here are young. Why don’t Greek want us? Look at United States of America. It’s very strong, why? At first they have cultures. Second they take anything from the world that can be good for them to improve their country. Now here in the mountain there are doctors, engineers, lawyers, artists. The Greeks don’t want to know anything from us. They think we are only illness, illness. No one is ill here in the mountain, because if he is ill he will not survive it. Why you stay away from us? We have ideas. Now I am away from my country more than one year. I have no money I have nothing to eat but I am alive. If we put you in my place and my situation, you will die within one week. When we left our countries we knew that we will find hardness. But not like this. We think the biggest hardness is how to reach Europe and we don’t know the surprise we will find more hardness in Europe. What are you waiting for? You must have a solution for us. It is my message to the world, to the real world not to the lie-world. There is a lot of organisations in the world talking about human rights. Aren’t we human?

A.: I knew from European countries past, where people got problems only because of different colour, different skin but I thought it is past! I thought they are living together. They don’t care for your skin or something. But when we come here we find these things still. This is Europe. All the time you say. “You are too many! We can’t help everybody!” They try to make you fed up and angry, maybe you go back. There must be truth in the world, because they don’t tell the situation, they give us wrong pictures. Because we the people here, we don’t have cameras, we don’t have TV to produce pictures about our situation here. I think they must come here and talk to us. And if they come here I don’t even think they have to ask, because our situation here is the answer to any question. Nobody can stay without food, without job, without education without life. Maybe after you are crazy. If really they care and they have good heart they must come here to decide something about Greece. Because what is going on here it’s hell. It’s not only something about food.
What is the most bad thing happened to you in Greece?

Y.: That police woman, on the day I arrived. I will not forget. I arrived in Greece. I find police. We have two days walking without food. We asked the police to give us food. They said: “No. This is no hotel.” Oh, is it Europe? We had cigarettes in out pocket, we asked them to let us smoke. “No. It isn’t hotel.” After that we are tired and hungry. This police woman ordered me to clean all the police station. By force. I am tired and I can’t do that. She tried to beat me. Other police man stopped her. I clean the station. In spite of I am hungry and I am tired. I want to ask this inhuman girl: If you want me to work, give me food! The food is the power for work. I know I am in your country. But I am not an animal! Even if you have animals in your home and you want it to work for you, you will give it grass. Why you don’t give me food and let me to work you for you, when I am so hungry and tired. You are not the president. You are still now police. In all the world police are the most bad people in the country. I felt hate for you. And if I find you again, I will beat you, Malaka! Yes, write this: “Malaka!”

What are you most afraid of?

Y.: I am afraid of police. And afraid to die of hunger. Do you believe someone is afraid of hunger in Europe? We are afraid to be hungry. To die of hunger. Now you are with us, you see we make tea. Because we have nothing but tea. Tea and water to keep alive. Until you find food. Until police will let you look for your food. I can speak more and more about our situation. But anyone who will read this report he cannot imagine.

Drinking tea in order not to feel the hunger

Afraid of police, afraid of hunger, afraid of racists… Afraid to stay here. Afraid not to succeed to leave this country. I don’t not what I am more afraid of. And I don’t know if I cross Greece if in any country I will have a normal life. I don’t know if my life will be in any country of skupidia. My body will be dirty? I will were dirty clothes like the homeless? I don’t know if I ever will live a normal life. Because every year feels like 10 years. I think I will need much time. I don’t feel I will be back to be human. Because in this year in Greece I feel like I’m an animal.A.: Like everybody: afraid that I will stay here. And more if they will start to send back! Deportations to Greece I mean. Some countries in Europe they stopped to send back when they find the fingerprint in Greece. At least now you are safe that you will not come back. Before you were afraid if you go you will come back. You loose time, you loose to many things. Money, some they go from airport they paid some thousands and then they come back.

Decoration from “skoupidia”: even under these circumstances dignity will never die!

Papandreou the president he talks sometimes about us. They prepare something for us and this makes me afraid. The racists attacks here or in Athens is not by accident. If they loose, they try to find reasons to attack you. And maybe then they say: “We want to deport everybody from here to his country. We don’t need.” When you have come here and you were asked about the problem in your country, when you go back it’s a big problem, you know? You will be in jail for long. They beat you and maybe more. I know because UK they deported Sudanese. Someone they beat him and then they killed him in Sudan. If Greece finds a way to deport, they will deport. And even more than in Greece you will be in trouble if they will deport! If they pay for Turkey they will also accept to have us deported there. And Turkey also is bad. Too many things they can do…What about fascism and racism in Greece?

Y.: I want to ask them: What is your own idea? We tell you we have problems in our country. And we don’t want to stay in Greece. What’s the problem? You are against us or against your government? We have no problem with you. We have nothing with Greeks. We only want to cross. So why you are against us? Greece is Europe’s gate. European countries make problems in our countries. We want to save our lives. But anyway, we don’t want to stay in Greece. Everyone knows staying in Greece means to finish your life like this. No one wants to stay! Take these primitive ideas from your mind!

A.: Police or any kind of power they can’t control them. I don’t know what kind of power they have because they can do everything. They can hurt. So how you can be safe? If they give me paper here in Greece I don’t want to stay. After you are legal you can say: Shut your mouth! But it does not change anything. Because you will be always blamed and guilty. I know that here in the jails there are many people that they are not Greeks. They are there for nothing, just because someone blamed them for something or they were in the wrong place in the wrong time. If you are doing the same things than Greeks they are safe but you go in jail. It means you are not the same. This is the problem: also if you get papers always you are down and always they are up. We can’t live here, we can’t feel okay and safe in this country. We have to leave and they have to let us go out from here. The only solution: Give us paper for some months like the Italian government. We pass legally and we will not come back here. After that we choose were we want to go. Not everybody wants to go to the same country. For European countries it is not a problem. Some they will go here, some they will go there. At the end it will be okay. We go out from here and we will see if this problem will finish.

What does respect mean to you?

Y.: In our situation you ask about respect? Before I came to Greece I don’t think there is something like this situation here in Greece. Greek civilization is known in all over the world. It’s an old civilization. It is the same as Chinese civilization or Egypt. But Greeks left it in the past and don’t try to improve it. And don’t try to produce it in a new look to the world. All the world forgets Greek civilization. They forget the country called Greece. Now all the world suddenly remembers there is a country called Greece by the refugees. All the world look now on how they are cruel to refugees. They don’t give refugees any rights. So Greeks have done a crime on themselves. Maybe they robbed their own civilization. They robbed from any mind Sokrates, Platon and all those who made your civilization. I don’t hate Greeks. Really, inspite of all that I see. They had more than 500 years under Turkey. They had time under Germany. And now they have no picture of Greece. Greeks themselves they don’t know what are they. Greece needs to die to have a new life. Because this life is no honour for an old civilization. Now you have nothing. You have nothing, you don’t have any culture to give to the world. You can be more than this! But I’m sorry to say that: you are lazy. You don’t improve your civilization. Now Greece has nothing, only tourism. And if tourism will stop, you will have your food also from Skupidia. Right?

What would you like your life to be like? What do you wish for your life?

A.: My wish? There is only one wish: to leave! Okay, I can remember everybody wish to be happy. To be safe. To find a good life. To find someone to share. To find people to care for and they care for you. I don’t want to loose my hand or my head or my eyes. I saw here in Greece really, some they loose a part of their body. They broke their feet and their hands or more bad. Some get problems with health. You loose your power. For this you can get quickly sick. I wish I will not loose my health before I am out of here. And I told you: I wish another power, help that is coming from outside. Not from Greece, because I don’t think this will be. Other European countries they have the power to change. Only to stop deportation it’s not enough. I hope they will make a real step to finish this problem. Maybe like headache: I have headache and you give me Panadol. Maybe I have headache because I have other problems. You have to find a real solution. Not only now for these days in Komunisia. For Greece forever. Why don’t they punish Greece? It’s not only civilians, it is also the government that treat us like this. And I think in Europe there are many ways to punish them for this. Nobody said: Hey stop this mistake! I wish nobody will have to pass Greece! Because the people coming will be like us. I wish just I will forget one day everything I got here in Greece.

Y.: When I left my country I want to save my life. To be alive. I had a job in my country. I had money. But I had to leave my country to save my life. Now all my hope is to save my live from Greek racists. To cross this country. Maybe anyone in the world dreams to be rich. But I don’t want this. I want to have a home. Have a shower. Have clean clothes. Have work. Because now my mind is stopped. I wake up at the morning and I don’t know what to do, or what is happening to me. I don’t know if I will be safe from police and safe from racists. I don’t know. My mind is stopped. I can’t improve myself now. Only I need a normal life.

Invisible borders: Waiting at the fireline next to the port entry

Is there something you want to say to the Greeks?A.: When they go to their church, I don’t know if they are listening to Gods words. Because if they do, this cannot be their feelings. If they go out after prayer. And people they are near to them in the garbage. What are they doing in the church? The reason to go to the church: if you see something outside like this, you have to stop. You have to listen. You have to share. You have to ask why. Not to blame us. You know exactly why we are doing it. The reason is there are people like you. If there is people kind in this place I will not be in the garbage. More exactly: if you see somebody who needs your help and you can do it, you must do it. If you cannot help, don’t be angry at him.

Prayer on the mountain: Never loosing faith!

Don’t be his enemy and don’t say all these bad words. What are they doing in their church? They only put candles? They are singing only? I know in the Christian songs there are words inside to help. There is too much to do, not only just to sing! This all is not yours. Maybe you are lucky in this place. But you don’t make the sea, make this land, you don’t make this sky or this mountain here. It’s not for you only. Don’t say: “Go out from here!” Before many years Greeks they have much. Now they are poor. Not poor of money, poor of too much things. Money is coming and money is going. But there are too much things, if you loose it you will never get it back.Thank you.

download the interview as pdf (in English):
Interview with Y. and A. from Sudan, Igoumenitsa (May 2011)

Larnaca, Belgrade, Attica Square: Connecting the dots…

Thoughts on some recent events and the tactics of the solidarity movement >>>

Greek town becomes flash point in war against Muslim immigrants

By Edward Cody

Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 11, 2010; 10:15 PM

NEA VISSA, GREECE – This little farming town on the edge of Europe, where the crosses of Greek Orthodox churches face Turkey’s minarets scarcely a mile away, has become the latest battleground in the continent’s war against a flood of unwanted immigrants from the strife-torn Muslim world.

The European Union’s joint border patrol force, Frontex, dispatched armed international guards last week to reinforce Greek patrols around Nea Vissa, seeking to seal an eight-mile stretch of frontier that has become the main corridor for illegal entry into Europe for thousands of fortune-seeking Afghans, Iraqis, Iranians, Pakistanis and North Africans. The 200-member pan-European deployment marked the first such Frontex operation along the borders of one of the European Union’s 27 member nations. Greek officials called it a belated recognition that the onrush of immigrants here is a problem that must be dealt with by all of Europe.

The French immigration minister, Eric Besson, said the posting of French and other foreign border guards should be seen as a sign of determination by Europe to stanch the flow. “France is totally mobilized to struggle with Greece against the networks that exploit immigrants in defiance of the most basic humanitarian laws,” he said on a quick visit to the border.

The growing presence of immigrants, particularly Muslims who bring with them their own customs and religious practices, has become one of the main irritants in Western European societies. Immigration has become a prominent and sometimes sour part of the political debate even in countries with long liberal traditions, including Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands and France.

Over the bridges

Nea Vissa, surrounded by cotton and garlic fields in a tongue of Greek territory lying between Bulgaria and Turkey 350 miles northeast of Athens, is where the trouble begins. Most of the 160-mile Greece-Turkey border is defined by the Evros River as it winds down to the Aegean Sea, making passage difficult. But a quirk of history has placed the line a little west of the river, meaning illegal immigrants can cross the waterway over bridges on the Turkish side and sneak across the border in relative safety on dry land.

Greek authorities calculate they arrested about 45,000 illegal immigrants in the first half of the year, most of them near here, accounting for 90 percent of the illegal immigrants taken into custody in all of Western Europe. As many as 350 illegal immigrants a day were being captured in the Evros Valley farmlands around Nea Vissa, according to Maj. Athanasios Kokkalakis of the Interior Ministry.

Besides those taken into custody, at least 15 percent more evade Greek authorities, he said. For almost all, the goal is travel onward – to Italy, France, Germany, Britain and Scandinavia – in search of new homes in societies where the economies are strong, the social welfare systems are generous and, above all, there are no wars.

“We are only a stepping stone,” said Kokkalakis.

Turkey, the other stepping stone, has refused to allow arrested immigrants to be sent back across the border, except nationals of countries with land borders with Turkey. This excludes the bulk of those taken into custody, who are from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and, increasingly, North Africa.

Responding to Europe’s concerns, Turkish officials have noted their country is only a way station, and that they are as much a victim of the immigrant flood as Greece and the other E.U. countries.

Captured immigrants from those countries are taken to Interior Ministry detention centers for processing. Because of crowding, most are freed after a few days with an order to return home within two months. Typically, specialists said, they tear up the order and go on their way.

“It is a cat-and-mouse game,” said Robert Dutfchmann, 28, a German Federal Police inspector patrolling outside Nea Vissa with Frontex colleagues. from the Netherlands.

Charges against Turkey

Turkey has become the source of so many Europe-bound illegal immigrants mainly because of geography, which places two wars near its borders, in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with a large dissatisfied population in Iran. But Greek authorities charge it indirectly facilitates the flow by refusing to take most captured illegal immigrants back and, as part of its pan-Muslim policies, granting entry without visas to planeloads of would-be emigrants from Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco.

The roundabout travel by North Africans in some ways is a tribute to a Frontex operation that began last year. Several European nations dispatched patrol boats to the Aegean to block delivery of illegal immigrants by sea.

As Piruz found out, that left Nea Vissa. Piruz, a 20-year-old Afghan, has made it as far as Istanbul on what he hopes will be a journey to Sweden for medical studies. On an animated square in Istanbul’s Zeytiburnu neighborhood, he held a long conversation the other night with an immigrant smuggler. The sea is too dangerous, the smuggler told him, but for $1,000 crossing is possible over the Evros River. A smuggler will accompany you in a rowboat across the water, the young man was told, and for extra money will get you to Athens.

“I had some friends who went to France, and they got expelled right away,” said Piruz, who wanted to be identified by his first name only. “But the Scandinavian countries are easier. They accept you.”

Greece and its European neighbors have widely advertised the Frontex operation, with international border guards posing for television cameras. On one hand, the deployment is a celebration of European solidarity, an easy sell politically in most E.U. countries. On the other, authorities hope, news that patrols have been reinforced could produce a crackdown by Turkish border guards on the other side of the river and perhaps encourage smugglers to lie low.

There is some indication it is working. Authorities said arrests have dropped to between 75 and 100 in the days since Frontex patrols began. The deployment is to last at least two months and be evaluated to see whether it will be extended. But Kokkalakis says everyone knows that deploying extra border guards will not solve the problem.

“They want to close the border, but it is impossible,” said Wajeed Sherifi, an Afghan who sneaked into Greece and has remained as an activist for immigrant rights. “It is like water. The immigrants will just find another channel.”

Agreeing in their own way, Frontex officials pointed out that nearby Bulgaria will become part of the E.U.’s unrestricted, visa-less travel space early next year. Its 200-mile border with Turkey will make it the logical spot for immigrant smugglers to try next – and perhaps the next destination for Frontex guards.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/11/AR2010111107562_2.html

Larnaca, Belgrade, Attica Square: Connecting the dots

Some info on the recent clashes in Cyprus

“Phinikoudes Beach was turned into a warzone, when marching members of three nationalist movements came into conflict with participants at the antiracism festival, and with members of migrant support group KISA, the organisers of the event”.
Cyprus Mail, November 6, 2010

The rainbow festival is being organized for many years by KISA (Action for Equality, Support and Antiracism) in Nicosia and Limassol. This year, the 13th Rainbow Festival was held in Larnaca and not in Limassol after the nationalist “Hellenic Resistance Movement” announced that it would hold an anti-immigrant demonstration on Friday 5 November in Larnaca, with the participation of the “Pancypriot Anti‐Occupation Movement” and the “Movement for the Salvation of Cyprus”.
The Rainbow festival was moved to Larnaca in order to stop the fascist threat, as it publicly announced.

We must have in mind that the Rainbow festival is sponsored by the Ministry of Interior and the Ministry of Education and Culture of Cyprus and is being organised with the support of the European Commission Representation in Cyprus. That’s why the organizers thought they would have protection and felt no actual preparation for real fighting with the far right groups was necessary.
Far right groups seized the opportunity to describe antiracists as ”the enemy’s fifth column, funded by foreign centers”, accusing the Cypriot state that “from its birth, it fights against the hellenism of Cyprus in order to eliminate it“.

At the beginning of the event, people at the festival were three times more than the far-right demonstrators (mainly old, traditional nationalists) but by the end  neo-nazis were heading the attacks. Late in the evening, it was the police who was rescuing the few antiracists and immigrants who remained at the site until the end of the event.
Nazis not only controlled the streets, they also posed as anti-state and anti-police activists.

Something similar happened a month ago in Belgrade, at the LGBT pride parade, that was protected by the government and co-organized with EU Commission representatives in Serbia. It is estimated that on the day of the LGBT pride parade, over 6,000 fascistoid youths (supported by football clubs and priests) were fighting the police on the streets of Belgrade for hours. According to a report:
“Gendarmerie and other special units were using armored vehicles and tear gas, trying to regain control over the rally. Police clashed with the rioters near Palace Albania, where they were pushed back from Terazije Sq. The protesters were shouting ‘Go to Kosovo’ at the officers.The mobile mammography unit was stoned, bought with the help of donors and B92, in downtown Belgrade while the doctors were examining their patients.The headquarerts of the ruling Democratic Party were also under attack and were set ablaze for a short while. The building of the national television RTS did not escape the attack of hooligans, who also tried to storm the parliament building, but failed. A number of vehicles were damaged (…), including several parked cars and 11 police vehicles, two buses and two trolleybuses.”

Yesterday, at the local elections in Greece, the nazi (“Golden Dawn” party) candidate got 5% of the votes for the municipality of Athens. In the last few months, a central square in Athens (Attiki Square – see video) has evolved into a hothouse for fascists, who  have organized pogroms against migrants’ shops and apartments, as well as attacks with knives against refugee families sleeping in the park.

Why are these three incidents connected?
As we have already implied in our text On Crisis and Migration, the immigrant/refugee struggle is a lost cause, unless it is connected with the present crisis.
Last March, almost coinciding with the arrival of the IMF in Greece, a round of discussions began amongst people and groups aiming to prepare a series of no-border actions in Greece during the summer of 2010. Despite the important work  especially by people from abroad towards that goal, the actions were either poorly attended, or were canceled altogether. We feel there is a deeply political reason for this: At the moment, any struggles which are not connected to the new capitalist attack against (this time) its own strongholds in Europe, are doomed to fail. Let us explain:

The nature of the crisis and the far-right as a ”popular movement”

Two years ago, leftists and anarchists were celebrating the imminent end of capitalism after the collapse of the US banks. With the breakout of the greek crisis we started reading analyses about “over-accumulation [being] the main cause of the crisis”, or conspiracy theories about the “bad bankers winning over the productive capitalists”.

Things are clearly different though:
Migration flows are created by the same globalized capital that attacks populations through financialization, after having moved production from the developed to the developing countries, initiating the destruction of the middle and lower classes in the west.
In the past, the shock of the ”discovery” of the deaths at the frontiers of Fortress Europe or of the horror prisons in Greece, or even of the threat of a hyper-militarized Frontex Agency could be a viable tactic for the solidarity movement, but no more. Last November, in a text on the occasion of the 3rd International Forum for Migration and Development we said that immigrants bring home to the EU the reality of global capitalism and thus give us an opportunity to understand global reality beyond the virtual banality of consumerism.
Now that global capital is bringing third world conditions inside the EU (i.e. Aghios Panteleimonas/Attica Square) and is dismantling the middle classes, condemning to poor to utter misery, the serpent’s egg of fascists and neo-nazis appears in the guise of resistance. In countries where there is no organized and widespread social resistance movement, public discontent can be manipulated by mixing liberal politics with abstract, non-clarified cultural issues. In that way, with NGO-, liberal and EU coalitions, the substance of resistance is hijacked, as it is taken away from the oppressed and the radicals and the semblance of resistance is handed by the State, by Authority, to the new fascist riots, disguised as “society that cannot take it anymore”.

This is what happened in Serbia, which has been in deep crisis for the last two decades, and on a much smaller scale in Cyprus, (where it is nevertheless extremely important, since the fascist attack was a response to a Greek-Cypriot and Turkish-Cypriot social movement that has been growing steadily for some years now).
Athens is a similar but different case. After the December 2008 riots, the attack against immigrants, climaxing in the summer of 2009, was part of a full-scale counter-attack (a kind of counter-insurgency) by the State. During that time, a social laboratory, testing the creation of fascist reflexes, was gradually being allowed to develop in the center of town, not far away from areas practically dominated by the social movement. It is now evident that if we do not organically connect our responses to the crisis to the issue of solidarity and struggle with immigrants, we are leaving a void that will be filled by the “fascist response to the crisis”.

Events in Larnaca, Belgrade and Aghios Panteleimonas/Attiki Square in Athens alert us to the possibility of a return of the far-right as a ”popular movement”.
No NGOs, no liberal alliances, no multicultural festivals or rhetorics of tolerance can be effective against it, neither is it enough to condemn Frontex on a humanitarian basis. To walk round Attica Square and still romanticize immigrants as ”neo-nomads” seems as irrelevant as interpreting the IMF-attack on developed countries and unemployment through Negri’s “end of work”. We have to see the current ”crisis” for what it has always been – a full-fledged war against the unprivileged, a war where you have to identify allies and enemies. Only in this context can we speak about the issue of immigrants and solidarity, poverty and the crisis.

Modern migration and the current crisis are products of the same move of globalized capitalism.
You cannot fight against the causes of one if you do not fight against the causes of the other. It is now obvious that we need a grassroots movement for social justice, a movement of self-organization and action, freed from disguised vanguardists and supporters of electoral politics, freed from the spectacle of violence.

EU to deploy armed patrols at Greek-Turkish border

Greece has asked Brussels for help in stemming migration

http://euobserver.com/9/31116

Today @ 09:23 CET

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS – The EU is to deploy border patrols in Greece in a bid to stop the increasingly high numbers of irregular migrants crossing over from Turkey, days after Athens was criticised by the United Nations over its “appalling” conditions for detainees.

“The situation at the Greek land border with Turkey is increasingly worrying. The flows of people crossing the border irregularly have reached alarming proportions and Greece is manifestly not able to face this situation alone. I am very concerned about the humanitarian situation,” home affairs commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom said in a statement on Sunday (24 October).

Following a request from the Greek government, the EU will deploy its Rapid Border Intervention Teams (Rabit-s) for the first time since their creation in 2007.

Drawn from the member states’ “national reserve” put at the disposal of Frontex, the EU’s border control agency, the Rabit-s are mandated to observe national and EU law and will be embedded with Greek border patrols.

The Rabit-s have authorisation to access Greek databases and “when necessary, use force.” They are authorised to carry their service weapons and national uniform, but will wear a blue armband with the EU and Frontex logo.

During their deployment, Rabit-s are regarded as Greek border patrols if any offence is committed against or by them.

Frontex naval patrols have in the past come under fire for assisting Italian border guards in pushing back migrants crossing the Mediterranean Sea without offering the minimum humanitarian assistance required under international law.

Ms Malmstrom said that she expected “proper assistance to be given to all person crossing the border and that the request for international protection will be considered, in full compliance with EU and international standards.”

Earlier on Sunday, Greek home affairs minister Christos Papoutsis said that “a mass influx” of irregular migrants was registered every day at the Greek land border with Turkey “with the aim of accessing other EU countries.”

“The increasing pressure of illegal migration flows on Greek borders is a clearly European problem that demands a European solution,” he said.

Last week, the United Nations also called on the EU to do more to lighten the migrant burden on Greece, which it said has “catastrophic” conditions for detainees.

In 2008, 50 percent of irregular migrants arrested in the EU were detained in Greek prisons, but in the first eight months of 2010 the figure rose to 90 percent, the UN said. The detention conditions, as described by UN’s special investigator on torture and cruel treatment, are “inhuman and degrading … appalling … dysfunctional.”

After neighbouring Mediterranean countries such as Spain, Malta and Italy tightened up their border controls in past years, a bigger influx of migrants is now registered in Greece.

According to Frontex, more than three-quarters of the 40,977 people intercepted while trying to enter without proper documents into the EU in the first half of 2010 entered through Greece, mainly coming via Turkey.

Politically at odds over the island of Cyprus and with Ankara pressing the EU for visa-free travel, Turkey and Greece nevertheless recently announced “systematic bilateral co-operation” in the area of migration.

Speaking at a joint press conference in Athens on Friday, Greek premier George Papandreou said that a “xenophobic climate” is being cultivated in Europe and hoped that bilateral co-operation with Turkey would help alleviate the trend by reducing the wave of migration.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan meanwhile noted the potential benefits for Greek tourism if the EU visa regime for Turkish citizens was relaxed.

VALENTINA POP