Immigrant hunger strikers leave from Hania port grete greece

Around 6pm, 200 immigrants boarded Lato boat, and are expected to arrive in Pereus on Sunday morning, while Tuesday they begin a hunger strike demanding the legalization of all immigrants.

They were sent off by hundreds of citizens of Hania. Among them members of the Solidarity Initiative, that came down from Athens to escort the immigrants to the space where the hunger strike will take place. A massive banner, longer than 10 meters, covered the front of the ship... 

“ALL GREEK HUNGER STRIKE OF THE 3OO IMMIGRANTS. GREEK BROTHERS, WE ASK FOR SUPPORT”.

Hanging off like grapes fro the decks of the ship they exchanged slogans with the Greek people that were there to show their solidarity.

FROM http://hungerstrike300.blogspot.com/

Evros: Two immigrants froze to death and news from the demostration solidarity there18/12

At Fylakio detention centre (Evros, Greece)18/12

Friday, December 17. 2010. The dead bodies of two sans-papiers immigrants who tried to cross the greco-turkish border were discovered near Nea Vissa village. The two men from Africa froze to death. Nea Vissa is close to the city of Orestiada, were Frontex headquarters are located.
Frontex: Blood on your hands, now also in Evros region. In the end, not really surprising… Oh, you are just a coordinator?! What do you guys in Warsaw and at the border think, which cameras and patrols forced the dead to hide themselves so long and so far from urban terrain that they froze to death?

Yesterday, i.e. Saturday, the 18th of December 2010, saw a mobilisation from the Greek antiracist movement to the Evros region, where most of the border crossings happened the last months and where many hundreds of migrants are being detained under comparably horrible circumstances as in the infamous prison of Pagani.
Three busses and a number of cars converged on Fylakio (and later on Orestiada for a demonstration), where the detention centre is free standing in the middle of nowhere. No other houses closeby, just an industrial site. It is deep winter these days, snow everywhere and freezing cold, especially when the sun goes down.

Police was taking our visit very serious and had blocked access to the site with a bus and a number of riot police. A delegation of doctors, lawyers and translators was able to get inside and get in touch with the detainees, always under the watchful eyes of the staff. We also brought blankets and shoes and other basic necessities.

The inside conditions are very bad. The water pipe froze, so there is no fresh water, and the hygenic conditions are appaling, there is insufficient medical care (you have the choice between cough syrup and aspirin) and the food consists basically of sandwiches every day. There were reports about mistreatment and beatings.

While we were there, about 350 ppl were detained in Fylakio, but two weeks ago, there were about 1,000. So about two-thirds were released recently, and we suspect it was in preparation for our visit. Nevertheless, the cells were totally over-crowded, not giving adequate space to a human being, and that the detainees are never let outside, not even for a short time, is obvious from experience.

The worst however, and that brings us back to Hamis Abdalah Ghasmi, is the uncertainty. Why am I here, for how long will I stay, what will happen to me? These are the questions that are never answered. The detention period varies betwwen two weeks and several months, and apparently, asylum seekers are routinely detained for several months, while people classified as “illegal migrants” are being released earlier. Detention period is also dependent on other factors, like nationality, deportability, etc. The lawyers working in the area say they find no legal remedy to free the detainees.
The obvious question that remains is: By now, there have been numerous reports about what is going on in the Evros region. It is a well establishd fact that human right, international law, European conventions and regulations are openly breached here. The Greek government doesn’t even try to hide it, it even brought in Frontex, as if to drag down the European border guards into this mess. And indeed, according to Der Spiegel, a german magazine, the German part of the Frontex operation has asked to be excluded from certain parts of the operation. So what is the game the Greek government is playing with the lives of the migrants?

 FROM  athens.indymedia.org/front.php3?lang=el&article_id=1240033
 http://frontexplode.eu/2010/12/18/evros-two-immigrants-froze-to-death/
http://w2eu.net/

Detention conditions in Greece for migrants are frequently "inhuman" due to "filthy overcrowded detention facilities", poor police training and a huge spike in arrivals, a UN official said Wednesday, calling for EU assistance.

United Nations special rapporteur on torture Manfred Nowak also said he had received "consistent" allegations of police beatings, and that at one Athens precinct, police kept a hard line on migrants for fear of far-right militants.
"The time has come for urgent measures to fundamentally restructure the whole way of how asylum seekers and migrants are dealt with," Nowak told a news conference at the end of a 10-day mission to Greece.
"I appeal to the European Union, and the Commission in particular, to assist the government... they are in need of very substantial financial and technical assistance so that the crisis can be solved," he said.
The UN fact-finding mission visited five prisons, nine police stations, two border stations, three migrant detention centres and three hospitals.
In most cases, it recorded severe overcrowding at both jails and police stations. Some police detention cells, where migrants can be kept for up to two weeks, sleeping on benches or on the floor, were so overcrowded and filthy that the UN mission had difficulty breathing, the UN rapporteur said.
"Very often, I was told that cleaning personnel do not dare any more go into these filthy overcrowded detention facilities," Nowak said. "The hygienic conditions are simply indescribable."
At the detention cells of Athens International Airport -- which were built to house 18 people in groups of two -- the mission found 88 detainees. As only two bathrooms are available, the detainees regularly urinate in bottles.
"This is by itself inhuman," Nowak said.
To improve conditions, the UN official said asylum procedures ought to be transferred to civil authorities and that the health ministry should be placed in charge of health care in prisons and police facilities.
He also called for the establishment of an independent police complaints commission to investigate claims of abuse.
According to Greek figures sent to the UN, from 2003 to 2007 only one officer was dismissed out of 238 police ill-treatment investigations, he said.
"We found persons with injuries too afraid to allow a forensic examination, too afraid to speak even," Nowak said. "That is a very negative signal."
But police say they also feel pressured into a hard line, he said.
In one Athens district with a high migrant population that has seen frequent clashes and attacks on foreigners, high-level officers said they felt "at risk" from far-right groups and could not afford to be seen as soft, Nowak said.
About 300-400 persons enter Greece illegally every day, not counting those returned by other European Union states under current EU migration regulations, known as the Dublin II system, Nowak said.
The police this week said they had caught more than 96,000 irregular migrants in the first nine months of the year, and that arrests on the Greek-Turkish border had spiked by nearly 400 percent compared to the equivalent period last year.
The authorities attribute the increase to the success of Greek-EU patrols in patrolling the waters around Aegean Sea islands which were hitherto used by people smugglers to land migrants.
In recent years Greece has had one of Europe's lowest asylum approval rates, with only 0.9 percent of applications accepted.
© ANP/AFP

WORKING AND LIVING BY THE SWEAT OF OUR BROW!
We sell things on the street because we don’t have an alternative way of making a living.
No work is refused in order for us to make a living.
These people that you see on the street , these people that you keep harassing, are people who are familiar with most trades and professions.
Even though we are only vagrant street vendors, we are the ones paying for the houses that were had locked up for a long time, houses crying for a human presence.
A house can’t live by itself. It needs souls, it needs lives.
Water, power, telephone, means of transport and everything else we need to live are not for free.
You will never see one of us involved in affairs of the night and the underworld.
We are honest people, very sociable and open to everyone and everything.
We have obligations, but we also have rights.
We are only asking for understanding and tolerance.
Immigrant street vendors

IN GREECE
I arrive in GREECE in the morning, at 7 o’clock. The GREEK police took us to a camp. This camp was very dirty I have been in this for 23 days.
After 23 days the police sent me to another camp witch was for minors refugees. The director of this camp told me it was full and that I must go to ATHENS.
Then I went to ATHENS but I had just enough money for the ticket and nothing for the hotel. When I reached ATHENS I only had 7 euros. I saw that in ATHENS there was a lot of refugees who were sleeping in the parks. I slept one night with them and after I left ATHENS to PATRAS.
I arrived in PATRAS with my 7 euros. I found that PATRAS was like ATHENS. I have been in PATRAS for 3 months. Most of the nights I had to look for food in the bins because I had nothing. In PATRAS all refugees wanted to go forward but the police didn’t let us go.
After 3 months I came back to ATHENS and then I went to the camp for minors. We were sometimes more than 200 minors there. There I have been for 9 months I became lazy because we only ate and slept . Nevertheless I learnt German and Greek. Sometimes I went by foot to the beach, near Mytilini – 9 hours’ walk. I had no money for the bus. I didn’t have any future there. I found work for 3 months harvesting oranges. With the money I spared, I paid 500 euros to a smuggler and I had 200 euros left.
Then I went again to PATRAS and I succeeded to cross to ITALY


Recently, fascist and nationalist violence has been on the rise once again in the wider area of Ayios Panteleimonas. From September 11th to September 14th, fascist gangs used the cover of some locals and the police to attack, beat and stab migrants and to smash up their shops. Yet the migrants don’t retreat. They defend their lives, they crouch together and defend against far-right attacks and pogroms. Ahead of the [local municipality] elections the far-right is intensifying its shouting against migrants who “steal our jobs” and “are responsible for the crisis”. At the same time [the far-right parliamentary party] LAOS is voting in favour of the IMF agreement while organised gangs support the “average greek tradesman” – that is, the same person who has for years now exploited their employees, whether local or not.

• are supplied by the state

The “citizen protectors” arrest, beat up, torture and arrest injured migrants. The local police station enforces the policy of the state and its bosses against the migrants. A policy which names endless policing as “citizen protection” and equates “organised crime” with “petty thieves”. A policy creating migrant detention centres, spills blood on the borders of the EU and names “illegal” all those forced away from their places.

• they’re sharpened by mass media and the national body

Mass media, regularly hiding away reality, present the groups of neo-nazis, macho greeks, racists and descendants of nazi collaborators as “groups of enraged locals”. They hide away racist pogroms, the stabbing of migrants and police violence and they instead project “a suffocating situation” and “increased crime rates”.
In the midst of the crisis they continue to target migrants as a “national threat to health, national order and security”. They are moulding a national body on behalf of those who sit on our necks, perpetuating national divides, racism and xenophobia.

Common Struggles by locals and migrants

Us locals and migrants must find common ground to breach national unity, to create embankments, to fight together against all sorts of fascists, the attack launched by the state and bosses, the contempt for our lives.

Video about the immigrants and the fascist attacks in Greece

Video-documentary from the Norwegian state media channel about the fascist attacks and the experiences of immigrants in Greece and especially in central Athens. The video exposes the difficulties and the brutality that the immigrants experience by the Greek state and some fascists living in Athens.
Nevertheless, we don’t agree either with the character and the perspective of the documentary or with the terminology used in it (illegal immigrants, the efforts of the police, etc).
The video is not objective about the reactions of Athens’ citizens. The fascists you see in the video chasing immigrants from the squares are not everywhere. It’s a huge problem in some areas in central Athens. There, some fascists, (and not “Citizens of Athens” that they use as a name), with the cooperation of the police and the Municipality, organize pogroms and brutal attacks against the immigrants.
On the other hand, there are many people that fight neo-fascism and pogroms, trying to express their solidarity to the immigrants with actions. Of course the enemy is the whole state and not only some dozens of fascists. We should also mention that the left-wing parties are totally absent in front of the huge problem, preparing for the elections.“The battle for Attica square”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPl9PW7ONIQ

Iranian refugees have sewn their mouths, on hunger strike demanding political asylum, constant updates on their blog

Five  Iranian men and one woman have sewn their mouths and are on hunger strike since October 14th (one more man joined in on the 15th). On Friday, the woman had a tendency to vomit and needed to be transferred to hospital, yet the state-run ambulance service (EKAV) refused to help since “she had sewn her mouth herself”. The refugees and people in solidarity  have now rented a private ambulance, which they can only afford to keep until Monday.
In total, 35 adults and 9 children are taking part in the hunger strike.
More information and constant updates at the campaign’s blog: Iranian Political Asylum Seeker’s Campaign in Athens

THE ILLEGALS OF HISTORY 30 september

Text from a solidarity gathering by the self-organized steki of the philosophical school and the Open assembly of the western neighbourhoods at the french consultant in thessaloniki, protesting the deportations of the Roma in france and in solidarity to every persecuted person: For roughly one year now we have become spectators of a vicious repressive tactic of the french state against the populations of Roma. From June 2010 until today there have been 8000 deportations and more are expected, as has been pre-announced by the french government. Already many destructions of settlements have preceded in the frames of a generalized and racist pogrom against the gipsy populations, as it also happened 2 years ago in Italy. In each system of sovereignty, from feudalism until today, the Roma constitute the first and easier target, while history has shown that the predicaments were and remain a permanent piece of their life. Because of their nomadic way of life and lack of desire or even difficulty of adaptation to the way of life of the majority of the rest of the residents, the Roma often have fallen victims of discriminations. Their resistance toward the individualistic neoliberalism leads to the growth of solidarity bonds between them to cover their daily needs and substantially gives them a form of autonomy towards the law and political-economic frames of the state. They are not under the organization of power and in the laws of the market, and structure their own self-organized communities. With the “repatriation” of gipsy populations, Sarkozy tries initially to bring up his popularity attracting super-conservative parts of society and arousing french nationalism. His additional target is to disorientate society from the scandals in which he has fallen lately, but also the workers from the abolishment of basic social security, working and social rights that the future holds for them, a fact that happens already all over Europe. Sarkozy invests in the feeling of safety and power of the state, precisely in order to remove the question of crisis (political, economic, social, cultural) from the limelight. In this way he seeks the generalized terrorizing of the week classes in contradiction to the safety and the social prosperity that he offers to the privileged classes. This policy, if indeed is proved effective for authority, it is very likely to be also applied from other governments, (as already leaked by the media that is “silently” and indirectly happening) that investing in conservatism, they will try they resolve the problems of their internal policy. On the other side, Romania and Bulgaria receive pressures for the repatriation of the Roma in return for the support of France at an economic and European level. The system and the power use their repressive mechanisms towards the weakest parts of society with a purpose to perpetuate their supremacy. It is something that is basically turned against each one of us and concerns us all. And because we do not believe in the good intention of the European mechanisms, we demand no one gets kicked out of anywhere. We stand in solidarity to all excluded and displaced. We affix and claim a world without borders WHEN THEY CAME TO TAKE THE GIPSIES I DID NOT REACT. I WAS NOT A GIPSY. WHEN THEY CAME TO TAKE THE COMMUNISTS I DID NOT REACT. I WAS NOT A COMMUNIST. WHEN THEY CAME TO TAKE THE JEWS I DID NOT REACT. I WAS NOT A JEW. WHEN THEY CAME TO TAKE ME THERE WAS NO ONE LEFT TO REACT. Bertolt Brecht

Open Assembly of Western Neighbourhoods
Dytikessynoikies.wordpress.com

Riot police violently attack migrants after tonight’s anti-fascist demonstration – photos athens

Saturday, October 9, 2010

Photos from Athens IMC. The attack happened a bit after the main anti-fascist demonstration tonight, launched by the riot police against a group of migrants who went on marching after the main demonstration had ended.
 

 Friday, October 8, 2010

Today, we’ve won a huge bet. Responding to a call for an antifascist demo in Attikis square, more than 1,000 migrants and locals marched together through the streets of an area often marked by fascist attacks, pogroms on the squares, police violence and so much more. Today was a very important day; the first, most probably, where local anti-fascists and (many undocumented) migrants march together, side-by-side. The people in today’s demonstration sensed this; the atmosphere as we were passing through the streets of neighbourhood is difficult to describe.
It is important to keep this momentum, to make sure that the fascist gangs (which didn’t dare make an appearance today) stay well hidden off the streets. Attica square, and the entire area just north of the Athenian centre, is a very volatile area in the past few months and years.

 

The Battle For Attica square – athens Greece

www.youtube.com/user/journeymanpictures#p/c/1/gPl9PW7ONIQ

Posted by clandestinenglish on 6 October 2010

It’s the first time that an EU country has seen its treatment of refugees described as a humanitarian crisis by the UNHCR. This report gets to the heart of the escalating tensions in Greece.
“I’ve seen too many. They cross the river like bees”, sighs a local fisherman. With as many as 400 people crossing the Evros river each day, arrests of illegal immigrants in Greece have exploded from 3,500 to 20,000 in a year. Most choose to turn themselves in, but they have no idea what awaits them. Infested with rats, Greece’s detention centres are now critically overcrowded. Those who try to avoid this fate end up on the streets, such as in Attica Square, home to hundreds of Afghan refugees. With no government support, crime is rife here, and as frustration builds, racial attacks by local vigilantes are escalating beyond control. Ghulam’s family sleep on a bench in the square – his four-year-old son was recently attacked in the middle of the night. “If I’d stayed in Afghanistan I might have been beaten, but they would have at least spared my children. I cannot believe this is Europe.”

---

The court of appeals of the Thessaloniki 4 has been adjourned for January 14, 2011 This morning, the court of appeals of the Thessaloniki 4, the last remaining defendants of the 2003 EU summit demonstration, was adjourned for January 14, 2011. More information on the case and on solidarity initiatives will be published here in the build-up to the court of appeals in January.

This morning, the court of appeals of the Thessaloniki 4, the last remaining defendants of the 2003 EU summit demonstration, was adjourned for January 14, 2011. More information on the case and on solidarity initiatives will be published here in the build-up to the court of appeals in January.

UNHCR alert after attacks

The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) yesterday expressed “extreme concern” following a string of violent attacks involving immigrants in the district of Aghios Panteleimonas, near central Athens.
“The attacks and brawls have created a tense and explosive atmosphere which is unsettling local residents,” the UNHCR said. The agency called on authorities to avert similar attacks and “promote initiatives to tackle social exclusion.” The UNHCR’s appeal follows a recent wave of violence that started with a vicious attack on an Afghan aid worker by 20 assailants last Saturday. On Thursday, three Afghan men were charged with attacking an Albanian minor and two Greek nationals who came to the latter’s aid. Later that day, unidentified arsonists torched a cafe owned by an Afghan and two Bangladeshis stabbed the owner of a local convenience store before fleeing with his takings. from the greekmedia...

Armed robberies
Two post offices and a cafe were targeted by armed robbers in Attica yesterday, according to police reports. The first of the holdups took place early yesterday morning, when two armed men stormed a cafe in the southern suburb of Voula, fired shots into the air and made off with an unspecified amount of cash. Later, at 8 a.m., a gunman walked into a post office in Alimos, also south of Athens, grabbed some money and rode off on a motorcycle. Just a few minutes after that, another armed man robbed a post office in Peristeri and escaped on foot. None of the perpetrators have been identified. greek media...

Truck drivers and railway workers strike in Greece

After the August thaw between the Greek government and the fuel carrying truck drivers, the latter are once again showing their teeth, while railway workers defy court ruling and strike.

The thaw between fuel carrying truck drivers and the Greek government lasted little more than a month, and that month being August, it has proved to be but a tactical move by the union which brought Greece to a standstill for a week last July and forced the government to employ civil conscription against strikers.
The new strike has led to new worries about the availability of fuel across the country, more so as it coincides with a strike by petrol station owners who protest against price controls imposed by the government. The truck driver's strike began on Monday with hundreds of trucks blocking much of the national highway entrances to Athens on North and South. The so called 'siege of Athens' was not resolved as the government was hoping today as the union reps declared the bilateral talks "some more of the same old stuff". The president of the union declared that the mobilisation will continue as drivers had no longer anything to lose. Although the drivers have declared they will provide fuel for hospitals, airplanes and boats, the Minister of Infrastructures Mr Reppas retorted today that "civil conscription does not involve only the means of transport but also the service itself", indicating that the government will seek to persecute drivers who simply allow their vehicles to be used by the State but refuse to drive them themselves. Drivers responded to the Minister's belligerent stance by occupying his political offices in Tripoli.
At the same time, despite a High Court decision that declared their labour action illegal, the Railway Union stopped all train transport on Tuesday while announced rolling stoppages for today, in response to plans of privatising OSE, the State rail monopoly as part of the austerity measures. During yesterday's strike railway workers occupied the headquarters of OSE in Athens.

Today, hundreds of Pakistani immigrants living and working in Skala,Laconia took the decision to go on strike after the pogrom that was unleashed against them earlier.

Today, hundreds of Pakistani immigrants living and working in Skala,Laconia took the decision to go on strike after the pogrom that was unleashed against them earlier.
After returning from their work in collecting oranges, they found the doors of their homes and shelters closed by the owners and their employers and their belongings on the street.
According to a common announcement of Migrant Workers Union, the Movement Working Together Against Racism and the Fascist Threat and the Pakistani Community of Greece, at least 500 Pakistani immigrants have nowhere to stay.
The police pogrom against Pakistani immigrants began immediately after the intervention of the prosecutor, which led to the arrest of an accommodation owner in Skala and then his sentence to 58 years in prison for the inhuman conditions in which he hosted large numbers of immigrants.
Police initially made around 60 arrests of immigrants going from house to house, and then released them after they gave them “notes on administrative deportation”. At the same time, police created a climate of terror to the house owners/employers, sparking the mass expulsion of immigrants from the homes they lived.
The workers, immediately after these facts, gathered in the Square St. Friday where they held an assembly and decided to go on strike to demand their rights. Specifically they demand the ending of the Pakistani immigrants workers pogrom by ensuring human housing, providing decent wages and they requested the government to legalize the immigrants and give asylum to refugees, something that Labour Centre of Athens has also requested.
The Migrant Workers Union supports the decision of Pakistani immigrants to go on strike protesting against the pogroms that now unleashed against them and called the GSEE (General Confederation of Workers) and the Labour Centres to actively support the strike and the fair demands of immigrant workers.
http://en.contrainfo.espiv.netcontrainfo.espiv.net

Actions – Attacks JULY GREECE

• 3.4 Julius Like every year since 2007 when part of Mount Parnes was burned with the responsibility of the casino located on the top, a two-day trek for resistance and action against the destruction and looting of the mountain held in nearby casino space. A few days later on Saturday, July 10, police announced that after research in the area of the action, a high-power bomb was found. In the next day, after misinformation of the media about the bomb, Christos Loukopoulos, a former army serviceman and “night mafia godfather” associated with the neonazi group “Golden Dawn”, surrendered himself to police. The fact that a bomb was put by a para-state mafioso near dozens of people during a political event, was covered-up by the police and the media. actforfreedomnow.blogspot.com/p/case-of-27-activists-of-parnitha-athens.html

• On June 24, a bomb was exploded in the Ministry of Civil Protection (Police Headquarters also) which killed a close associate of the minister and police chief. A newly created group claimed responsibility for it on July 10.

• July 9 Series of arsons in security guard vehicles.
• July 12 Arson of two vehicles of the diplomatic corps.
• July 17 Arson of a Marfin Egnatia bank. SABOTAZactforfreedomnow.blogspot.com/search/label/GREECE NEWS ACTION SOLIDARITY SABOTAZ

• July 19 Socrates Giolias who was editor of a popular blog and a popular newspaper, radio station manager and maybe associated with the Greek Secret Services, was executed. The group “Revolutionary Sect” claimed the responsibilityactforfreedomnow.blogspot.com/2010/08/sect-of-revolutionaries-claims.html

Prisons

• July 14-28 Prisons are a boiling cauldron because of the inhumane conditions of detention, especially for people who need medicines and treatment. As a result of the lack of medicines and hospitalization, dozens of prisoners are dying (being murdered) in greek prisons. Indicatively, within 10 days of July, 6 prisoners died inside prison, four of them in Grevena prisons.

On 14^th of July, 200 prisoners in Trikala prison were abstaining from prison’s food for two weeks and then they went on a hunger strike. On July 15, the hospitalized prisoners of Korydallos prison started abstaining prison’s food protesting against the detention of people with chronic and incurable diseases. After nine days, about 500 prisoners were in hunger strike.

• Police continues arresting hundreds of immigrants every day and then with the help of FRONTEX, they put them in jails and refugee camps or they just deport them.actforfreedomnow.blogspot.com/search/label/news from the Greek prisons

There was a try to create a solidarity fund for financial support of imprisoned fighters. More news to come.