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Exiles in the Balkans

Exiles in the Balkans

Tag Archives: solidarity

Greece: support the self-organised center City Plaza

13 Tuesday Jun 2017

Posted by passeursdhospitalites in Non classé

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Balkans, exilés, Greece, solidarity

Amongst the self-organised centers which are involved in exiles support the City Plaza in Athens (see here and here) is one of the best known. It is now under eviction threat, and call for support.

 

You can sign the petition :

https://www.change.org/p/hands-off-city-plaza-and-all-squats

 

« Hands Off City Plaza and all Squats

Opened in Athens on the 22nd of April 2016, City Plaza was transformed from a hotel that had been abandoned for eight years into a project which has provided accommodation, food, medical support and education for over 1500 refugees from different countries, including many children, elderly, infirm and vulnerable people.

City Plaza is an alternative to the inhumane conditions of the refugee camps. It houses refugees in the heart of Athens and provides a home in which 400 refugees can live with dignity, safety and privacy; the kind of life not possible in the formal camps and detention centres.

But City Plaza is not only a housing project. It is a political project that proves it is possible to run one of the best housing spaces in Greece without employees, institutional funding or experts and exposes the fact that the state not doing so is a conscious decision. This decision physically and socially isolates refugees, placing them in camps, detention centres and hotspots, as well as reinforcing borders. City Plaza has played a central role in the refugee solidarity movement, leading the international campaign against the EU-Turkey deal, fighting for, and winning refugees’ rights to access education and healthcare.

City Plaza does not receive any funding from governments or NGOs. It is supported entirely by solidarity from Greece and around the world. People from all over the globe come to City Plaza to work and live together with the residents as an expression of their solidarity.

On June 7th, 2017, it was reported by multiple news outlets that City Plaza, as well as Papouchadiko and Zoodochou Pigis 119, two other squats in Athens, are being threatened with eviction. An eviction would result in the 400 plus residents of City Plaza, including over 150 children, being forced to return to the camps or to living on the streets of Athens. It is not only their home that’s under threat but also their safety and wellbeing.

With your solidarity and support we will be able to keep City Plaza open. Please sign and share this petition!

Connect:
Official Site (GR/EN)
Facebook (EN)
Facebook (GR)
Twitter

More about City Plaza:
Best Hotel In Europe (video)
Keep City Plaza Open (video)
A day in the life at City Plaza
We Are City Plaza »

 

Greece: support Steki social center

10 Saturday Jun 2017

Posted by passeursdhospitalites in Non classé

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Balkans, exilés, Greece, solidarity

Often squats or former squats, self-managed social centers open for years to host the exiled-e-s, which are fully involved in their organisation and decision making process. Yet their existence is precarious, and the Greek government has increased in recent months evictions.

In Thessaloniki, the Steki social center exists since 2004 and is since 2009 in the current building. An old electricity debt threatens its sustainability, and a call for support circulates.

http://keepstekipluggedin.com/

http://keepstekipluggedin.com/how-you-can-help/

 

Greece: the City Plaza continues

19 Monday Dec 2016

Posted by passeursdhospitalites in Non classé

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Balkans, Greece, migrants, solidarity

While Greece has covered itself with camps and has become a trap in which exiles are caught and blocked on their way to the countries of Europe where they hope to build their lives, an abandoned hotel was transformed into a self-organised welcome center. It was April 22, 2016.

The City Plaza celebrated the anniversary of its six months of existence from 10 to 13 November, through debates and activities for children. It also called for mobilization for the 18th of December, International Migrant’s Day. It is a place of hospitality in connection with the particularly lively social movement in Greece.

You can follow the activity of City Plaza hotel here :

http://solidarity2refugees.gr/city-plaza/

 

City Plaza Hotel in Athens changed into self-organised refugees accomodation center

24 Sunday Apr 2016

Posted by passeursdhospitalites in Non classé

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Balkans, exilés, Greece, solidarity

Since April 22, the abandoned hotel City Plaza in Athens was occupied and turned into a self-organised accomodation cener for refugees by the Solidarity Initiative for economic and political refugees. One of the many initiatives of solidarity that emerge in Greek society.

http://solidarity2refugees.gr/refugee-accomodation-center-city-plaza/

Here is the statement they published :

 

« REFUGEE ACCOMODATION CENTER CITY PLAZA

From the summer 2015 and on, Europe and Greece have been found unable to respond to the issues emerging from the largest refugees’ wave in their territory, since the World War II, in the source of which there can be found the declaration and act of war, on a military as well as an economic level, from the countries of the North to the countries of the South, which has lead their populations to poverty, fear and oppression.

This fact has created two very distinctive and opposed tendencies: the first is expressed by the activation of racist reflexes, which can be found in the core of the European continent: fences and walls have been built; FRONTEX and NATO have been invited in order to “protect” the borders; deportations and brutal oppression of refugees. It is clearly expressed through the racist agreement between the E.U. and Turkey, which violates the Geneva Convention and every humanist value, as it copes with the refugee issue as if refugees were a merchandise that can be part of a transaction; it also leads to an unthinkable number of deportations towards countries in which their life and freedom is compromised.

The second tendency is the one expressed by the huge wave of solidarity in Greece, as well as in Europe. Millions of people were found side by side with the refugees in their battle to cross the borders and overcome all kinds of difficulties through their journey. People in solidarity in Athens, in August 2015, took immediate action in Pedion Areos, thousands of people from all over the world have come to Lesvos and other Aegean islands, in order to contribute to the efforts of the people there. Europe has known the largest wave of solidarity and mutual aid in the last decades. This mobilization is bearing the hope for a resurgence of the society, in order to erase the danger to see Europe becoming a “Dark Continent” again.

The Solidarity Initiative for Economic and Political Refugees has taken action, for quite some time now, within this movement of solidarity, in the centre of Athens. It has brought out the fight of the refugees; stopped the efforts to create “apartheid” areas, without the presence of refugees; pointed out the responsibilities of the Greek government, which not only did they fail to secure the accommodation, protection and free passing of the refugees, but also signed the racist agreement and took the responsibility to implement it.

From now on, our needs go to a different level. Europe’s political agenda of closed borders basically determines the conditions under which a number of political and economic refugees, who initially had the intention to move on towards northern countries, are now stuck in Greece. Without foregoing for a moment our basic demand for open borders and our fight against closed ones, we feel the need to gather our forces toward the creation of decent living conditions of refugees in Greece, in our neighborhoods, with full rights in all social services.

In this framework, all along with our constant demand for immediate accommodation of the refugees, not in camps, military or not, but in appropriate buildings with full infrastructure, where they will be able to move freely in and out, we decided to occupy this building: on the one hand, we wanted to contribute, within our grasp, with a solution to the problem; on the other hand, we felt the need to have a place where information and coordination for refugees’ issues would take place.

Our decision does not release the Greek or any other government from their responsibilities to immediately provide all refugees with accommodation and protection. However, it points out that solidarity can be the driving force which will stand up against any racist plans of the European countries and it will see to the protection of all refugees, in the direction of full integration, next to the local workers and oppressed people. There have been several attempts, right after the racist agreement between E.U.-Turkey, from the media and the government, to demonize and attack solidarity, which was considered to be responsible for the fact that the refugees stand up for their rights.

It is rather clear that if the status of exception, which has been planned for the refugees, proves to be successful, it will be used as a model to other parts of the society, which, during the last years, have experienced the brutal agenda of poverty, oppression and exclusion.

We declare that we will stand to the side of the refugees, people in solidarity and workers who, during all these years, have fought for the rights to education and health, accommodation and food for refugees, against the criminal politics of closed borders, which, up to now, has killed thousands of people, against ghettos far from the city centre, where refugees will be “invisible”.

The Solidarity Initiative for Economic and Political Refugees invites the workers in solidarity to participate in this effort, in the Refugee Accommodation Center City Plaza and every other independent solidarity structure.

Let’s create a world of mutual aid and co-existence.

Against racism, solidarity. We will all live together.

– Down with the shameful agreement between E.U.-Turkey. Open borders, safe passages for refugees.

– Full legalization of all refugees. No deportation to Turkey or elsewhere.

– Accommodation for all refugees in appropriate buildings, within the city core. Requisition of hotels and empty houses for refugees’ accommodation.

– Free access to health and education services for all refugees. Participation of the refugees’ children to programs of school insertion.

– Closing of all detention centers, no exclusion of refugees from the cities.

– No criminalization of the solidarity movement.

Solidarity Initiative

for Economic and Political Refugees »

Solidarity offence : in Greece also

04 Thursday Feb 2016

Posted by passeursdhospitalites in Non classé

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Balkans, exilés, Greece, solidarity

It is not only in France that the Solidarity offense course. In January (see here, here and there), Greece also saw police checks, arrests and prosecution of people who active in solidarity with exiles.

A report on fact recorded in the Greek islands of Chios and Lesvos, near the Turkish coast:

 

« Report (14.1.16) from Chios, which characteristically shows how the situation has exacerbated during the last week:

 

  • The deployment of FRONTEX has begun without any information by the Greek govmt. towards the local politicians or the local population.
  • FRONTEX is now present everywhere. Patrols are executed in a permanent way at the spots where the refugee boats land. The FRONTEX policemen sit together with their Greek colleagues in the Greek police cars.
  • The coast guard – most likely by order of FRONTEX – doesn’t allow anymore fisher boats rented by helping organisations, to leave the harbour and help refugees in the rubber boats to reach the coast.
  • The Greek police together with the FRONTEX cops ask for the ID cards of all helpers at the beaches on the pretext to prevent robbing of the refugees, plundering the boats or the stealing of the outboard engines.
  • Today (14.01.) some custom officers went to a small harbour to control the boxes with clothes etc. which are sent by citizens to the organizations and groups that provide the first aid to the arriving refugees.
  • The Spanish volunteer who took pictures of the Dutch FRONTEX boat in the harbour and was arrested, will probably be charged for “spying”.
  • The two Swiss volunteers who where caught with some hashish were sentenced to 8 month prison on bail each.
  • It seems that the situation has worsened also on the Turkish coast. Patrol boats are all day long present on the straight between Turkey and Chios so that no refugee boat can pass. Even though the weather today (14.01.) was very good and the sea quiet no refugee boat come until late in the evening.

 

Postscript (17.1.) LESVOS

  • In progress are the pre-trial proceedings against three Spanish fire-fighters who decided to take leave from work to help refugees on the Aegean and two Danish. The Danes’ NGO put a speedboat available for rescuing purposes where the 5 were aboard. They towed a refugee rubber boat to the Greek coast. Now they are accused of supporting the entry of “illegal migrants” which is a severe crime (felony) in Greece. (See the Diktyo’s announcement below.) The prosecutor charges them because a Coast Guard boat was not far away and thus there was allegedly no need for immediate rescue.)

Yesterday (16.1.) they were brought before the investigating judge who – after almost 12 hours of their examination and the hearing of witnesses, between others also Syriza MPs – released them on bail of 5.000 € each and 10.000 € for the Dane who owns the boat.

  • Another boat with 17 refugees sank the night before yesterday in the Straight of Samos. Until now 6 people are found dead.
  • The Dodecanese prefecture decided to check every NGO acting on the Southern Aegean islands as well as all the doctors; they would have to provide proof that they are doctors and get a relevant certificate.
  • The Syriza govmt. decided on Dec 31,2015, that the operation of the closed detention centers will be prolonged until the end of 2018.

 

End the criminalization of solidarity to refugees NOW!

With the time passing we learn to expect everything from the “first time left” government of SYRIZA, but we stand shocked in front of the criminalization of solidarity to refugees, a policy which resembles increasingly the policy of its predecessors and the one of its European partners.

Last week started the implementation of the announced upgrading of the Frontex policemen, who now have the authority to control Greek and foreign citizens or members of social and political organizations that offer support to refugees, either by rescuing either on the proceedings of reception and solidarity (social kitchens, clothing distribution) with the arrival of the people on the islands. In Chios a solidarity Spaniard is on trial for espionage because of photographing a Frontex vessel. In Mytilini, solidarity NGO members from Denmark and Spain who towed a boat to the coast of Lesvos to rescue the people onboard are prosecuted on felony charges for help with entry of illegal foreigners.

 

The accusations are ostensible and without substance, and let’s not fool ourselves: if there was organized, adequate, determined and effective state reception for the refugees and immigrants, there would not exist phenomena of abuse and exploitation from which, aside from the “safety” of frontiers, the new forms of policing and repression that so suddenly and immediately launched the Ministry of Immigration, are supposed to preserve us. The fact that the purgatory Petrou Ralli[i] operates in unacceptable conditions, the fact that under the government that calls itself left, work Detention Centers, Amygdalezas[ii] and Hot Spots[iii] and that solidarity people are prosecuted on the islands consists repressive and racist policy.

It is required[iv] from the Syriza government to manage the hot European issue of the closure and expansion of the borders to prevent in every possible way the flight of the populations from “there” from the terror and the misery of imperialist wars, of local dictatorships, fascist terrorism type ISIS and of the geostrategic game of the powerful. The fact that Greece was converted into a country under ironhard control and has lost its free will, forces the government to withdraw fundamental preelectoral positions also as regards the refugee issue and assigns to the country again the dirty work of dividing between refugees and migrants and the deportation of a large number of the shelter seekers. In its turn Greece is trying to push the pressure of interception to Turkey.

The government under pressure is trying to put pressure on the solidarity: It tangles with the solidarity people and thinks up ridiculous validity credentials for those who may help refugees. Let us remember that it is thanks to the unprecedented and remarkable solidarity that show both the crisis-stricken local population and the Greek and European solidarity people, that there is still maintained a certain social cohesion in the islands. The government owes, they don’t owe to the government!

 

We demand:

End immediately the persecution of the solidarity people

Frontex out of Greece

Down with the Evros fence[v]

Build up open and adequate hosting structures

Political asylum for those with grounds for asylum

Legalization of the immigrants

HANDS OFF THE SOLIDARITY PEOPLE

 

 

Network for the Social Support to Refugees and Migrants

Network for the Political and Social Rights

15.1.2016

 

[i] The migrant detention center of the Athens police

[ii] Amygdaleza is the biggest Greek detention center, about 20 km north of the Athens city center

[iii] the new Screening Centers (until now in Lampedusa/Italy and on 3 Greek islands (planned are totally 5), where in accelerated proceedings is decided whether the refugee will be granted asylum or a right to remain temporarily in Europe whether he will be deported

[iv] i.e. by the EU

[v] The fence at the land border between Turkey and Greece, which prevents refugees to cross the border on land »

 

 

GREECE: LETTER TO THE FRIENDS OF PIKPA

29 Friday Aug 2014

Posted by passeursdhospitalites in Non classé

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Tags

Balkans, border, exilés, Greece, solidarity

For the second time, exiles passed by Greece and who  now have a residence somewhere in Europe returned to the island of Lesbos. After ten days there, they address to Greek volunteers of PIKPA, the Village of All Together, a letter full of emotion and depth (see also http://lesvos.w2eu.net/).

 

”  Letter to the friends from The village of All Together
Dear friends from the village of All Together,

first of all we would like to thank you many times for having started this wonderful idea of a solidarity welcome center! You run Pikpa now since 2012 already – which is an incredible long time, especially if we see what your challenges are every day! We came already in October last year and now once again in August with even more people to this island, one of the gates for refugees to Europe. Many of us came via Greece to Europe years ago and know by their own experience what the newcomers had to overcome and survive until they arrive here. We cannot express with words what it means to us that you try to create a welcoming space for them. When we came some of us had the good luck to be welcomed by the nobordercamp in 2009 but most of us have been only “welcomed” in Europe with police and prisons. Also later on, after our release nobody has been there to assist us to find our way to Athens, the next “station” of this journey and further on. It touches our hearts that you created a space of welcoming and hospitality – it is needed and the only possible option to overcome these inhuman borders.

We came back here to Mitilini to encourage and welcome the newcomers and to assist them on their further way. The last days have been a great experience for us. It was possible for us to meet and talk with hundreds of newly arriving refugees and to provide them with information, contacts in various European countries and to give them hope. This was possible ecause there was the space for them and us to meet in Pikpa before they have been brought to be registered by the police even. We had the chance to spread as many information as possible even before. We gathered useful information in a guide (see: http://w2eu.info/pritings.en.html). We distributed them in English, Farsi and Arabic. And we would like to offer you to leave copies here and could promise to update it every year. We have been especially impressed by the incredible work the translators did every day in Pikpa. As many of us have experience in translating we have to say that this is very exhausting in a situation like I We also said farewell to many of the newcomers in the harbour of Mitilini – and they have been more than happy to be surrounded by you and us.

Nevertheless there have been also sad moments for us. We would like to share some thoughts about it with you as long as some of us are still on the island. We know very well that for most of us it is only a short period of time to be here, but some of us are anyway part of your structures and we would like to contribute to your great effort to support refugees on this gate to Europe. The sad moments are related to the situation that people will not only face a situation like in Pikpa, but they will be also confronted with coast guards, police and Frontex.

The coast guard entered daily Pikpa with the buses to take the people to the prison in Moria to register them, and in the same moment also to do a so called screening to sort out all those people they want to keep longer time in prison. Many of us know the Greek prisons. Some of us have been only recently freed from prisons on the Greek mainland after having spent many months there – without any other reason than being a refugee. We came here with one main aim: to overcome this system of prisons. We are more than sad to see that nothing has been learnt from the past and that after the closure of Pagani we see on this island a new prison for refugees.

Like many of you we are especially worried about the situation of having Pikpa used by the Coast Guard as a space to “store” newly arriving refugees there before they are brought into prison for registration – without medical treatment and for an unknown timeperiod, some already stayed for nearly one week here until the coast guard came to pick them. Like you we still say: Pikpa is an open and self organised welcome center and not a space for the police. Our impression was that the people understand very well what makes the difference.

We demand to do the registration without detention. The example of Pikpa shows that this is possible. We have seen the so called “Reception Centre” in Moria with our own eyes and we all know that it had nothing to do with reception but with imprisoning, degrading and selecting human beings. It would be only logical to just let the people freely go to any office for a simple registration to let them continue their journey to Athens as soon as possible. The few people who wish to apply for asylum already here on this island could be hosted much more easily and with fewer expenses. The new Pagani of the Troika has cost more than 3 Million of Euros and it obviously cannot be used because it was just forgotten that hundreds of people should be able to go to the toilet or take a shower while they are kept there. The place for registration cannot be in Moria. And it cannot be in Pikpa, because this is not the space of the Coast Guard the police or Frontex. The people would go out of their own interest to do the registration to board finally the ferries to Athens after a few hours of rest.

We hope that you will have the energy to enforce that Pikpa remains and will be established as a space of welcome – and to stop the police from taking over the space.

Pikpa is an important symbol of solidarity – and in the last ten days we have seen hundreds of newly arriving refugees who made an experience of being welcomed. We wish you and us together all strength and a long breath! You can always count on our support.

Welcome to Europe and Youth without Borders

August 2014 ”

NT: Pagani is the name of the former detention center on the island of Lesbos, one of the most unworthy of Greece, closed in 2009 after multiple protests. The Troika is the association of the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund, which imposes drastic austerity policies in Greece, and at the same time finance the confinement of exiles. Thus, the new detention center on the island of Lesbos, in Moria, is called “Pagani Troika“.

 

WELCOME TO EUROPE

17 Monday Mar 2014

Posted by passeursdhospitalites in Non classé

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Balkans, Europe, exilés, Greece, information, solidarity, struggle

During summer 2009, a long struggle united together exiles, inside and outside the Pagani detention center on the Greek island of Lesbos, and Greek and international activists. It resulted in the closure of the most critisised Greek detention center at that time.

This common dynamic has also led to longer-term projects. For example a website for the exiles on their way to or in Europe in four languages ​​(Arabic, English, Farsi and French), and providing information on the situation in different European countries, access to rights, difficulties, as well as contacts:

http://w2eu.info/

Various information brochures are also available: http://w2eu.info/pritings.en.html 

Born of the same struggle , information tours to different places where exiles in Greece , and an information site with , about and for exiles in Greece:

http://infomobile.w2eu.net/

Participants in the struggle of 2009 are also returned to Lesbos last October, to meet people, local activists and exiles who arrive again. They have been particularly involved in the welcome center PIKPA managed by local volunteers :

http://lesvos.w2eu.net/

 

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