12-17 April 2010: Hunger strike in Samos detention centre

On April 12, 2010, 126 migrants detained in the samos detention camp started a collective hunger strike. Their demands are

Freedom, immediate release with the “white paper” (allowing them to travel within Greece for thirty days)
An end to the transfers to detention centres close to the greek-turkish land border in the north, where numerous illegal deportation to Turkey are taking place. Such transfers happen between two and three times a month in Samos, the last one happened on April 9, when 40 migrants were taken.
Transparency about the work of so-called translators in the camp. As it turns out, these often are officiers employed by Frontex, who offer their translation services, but abuse the trust of the refugees and use the access to the refugees to determine their identity and prepare their deportation. There is a particular problem with the Frontex officers who in the process of identification often change the country of origin of the migrants on paper.
In the last days, as many as 14 Frontex officers were in the detention centre. There is also talk about migrants being beaten up, some cell phones were taken, while the phones in the camp also don’t work, making it hard to communicate with the hunger strikers. No laywers seem to be present at the time.

http://lesvos09.antira.info/2010/04/14/hunger-strike-in-samos-detention-centre/

Announcement from Group for the Human Rights-Solidarity to Refugees Samos

Announcement

On Monday, 12 of April the refuges detained in Samos Detention Center came on a hunger strike in which participate the great majority (126 hunger strikers in 150 detainees). The reason was the two massive transportations happened in 21 of March and 9 of April (60 refugees transferred in the northen greek borders each time). They react because they afraid that they will be the next that gone be transferred in the northen greek borders in order to be deported, despite the fact that the massive deportations are illegal and consist clear violation of human rights.

The most of them are palaistinians and they gave us a text in which they announce that it’s better for them to commit suicide than be deported. They pretend on their right to be released with formal papers and tickets and not go through any kind of violence. According their denounce, they have been violated to sign papers in an unknown language without any translator. Also, no one have inform them about their rights. Furthermore, the police change their nationalities in order to deport them, and because they cannot proof their nationalities and their problems, so there is no any concrete asylum procedure because in reality.

They also denounce us that on Tuesday, 13 of April in the morning there happened a violent incident. The police-guards bit a refugee and then they send him in the Samos’ hospital.

The Group for the Human Rights- Solidarity to Refugees tried from the beginning to go near the refugees, to discuss their problems and to hear their demands. On Tuesday, 13 of April ten members of our group went in the detention center so to have a contact with the refugees. Suddenly the police commander denied our entrance because “there is no need any more” according their words. We stayed outside the cump trying to communicate with the refugees from outside the fence. The police terrorized us trying to keep us away. The police accused us that the revolt is our blame and they asked our identities.

We are sure that both the increased deportations and the denial of the access to the group is the result of the taught migration policy and of the permanent and improved role of FRONTEX on the island. We know that FRONTEX works 24 hours per day in the airport.

….

Solidarity to the refugees’ struggle. We demand the acceptance of their demands. Deport FRONTEX!

14 April 2010

Group for the Human Rights-Solidarity to Refugees

Samos

Afghan refugees in Greece on the Patissia bomb explosion.

Yesterday, Wednesday 31, at 8:00 pm circa 200 Afghan refugees made a silent and peaceful protest in front of the Greek Parliament in Syntagma Square, lighting candles and honouring the 15 year old Afghan refugee’s memory (traditionally) on the third night after his tragic death .  This is a translation of the text calling to the protest. The original text has been posted at http://athens.indymedia.org/front.php3?lang=el&article_id=1149594.  As athens indymedia users have reported this critical text was not reported by mass media and mass circulation newspapers.

More on the case of the victims of the Patissia bomb explosion: http://libcom.org/news/boy-dies-athens-mystery-bomb-30032010, http://athens.indymedia.org/front.php3?lang=el&article_id=1149778.

Call for a peaceful and silent protest

We choose a silent protest, not because we are not hurt by the unjust and tragic loss of our innocent fellow Afghan, who perished just as bad as he might have perished in Afghanistan, if he had not fled the country with his family. If we choose a silent protest, its not beacuse we are not angry with the state of refugees in Europe in general and especially in Greece. Its not as if we are not angry with the medieval conditions at concentration camps of refugees and immigrants, which entrap our children and our families; its not as if we are not angry with the daily opppressive treatment in the street, in squares, in our homes, in government services for foreigners, for all  we are subjected to for the crime of being refugees.

We choose a silent protest because we respect our fellow man who died, and we protest against the conditions he lived under with his family as refugees. We respect his family, especially his mother, a woman who experiences the shock of the tragic loss of her son and probably the loss of her daughter’s sight. And finally, we respect the Holy Week and Easter holiday period of our fellow citizens in the country that “hosts” us. All those that the corporate media and the government institutions did not observe by ridiculing all human dignity and by encroaching and violating fundamental human and refugee rights respectively.

Najafi family with the tragic loss of their 15 year-old son and the loss of her 11 year old daughter’s sight in the bomb explosion of March 28 in Patissia adds to the long list of victims of the Greek-European inhuman and repressive policy towards economic and political refugees . There is no doubt that the young Afghan refugee Hamidoullah killed in the bomb explosion at Patissia and his little sister who is in danger of losing her sight suffered these due to the lack of asylum system in the country.  We believe that there are political responsibilities, and we urge the Government to assume them to prevent such tragedies of innocent people from happening again.

We wonder, how comes that suddenly all the ministries now show their “interest” for the family, offering gifts and promotions and making (false?) promises? Or is it that the government is only trying in this way to disguise their zero policy, which is implemented in the daily sweep operations, expulsions, hellish torture and detention of refugees and immigrants everywhere? We also wonder how comes that suddenly for all the media yesterday’s “illegal immigrants [lathrometanastes=clandestine immigrants]” are today’s “refugees”?

We are refugees of a war that has been exported against us and we demand all the rights we are entitled to in accordance with international treaties on refugees. Those rights are: asylum for all refugees, protection of our lives, shelter for families and for unaccompanied minors, medical care for all etc.

We also demand:

• that the government stops playing the philanthroper and assumes its obligations towards refugees and immigrants.
• that particualr media stop disturbing the troubled and shocked family in the hospital and respect their situation.

March 31, 2010, Athens

Afghan refugees in Greece