On February 24 37 persons were forcibly returned from Athens airport to their home countries. Among the deported were 16 Chinese, 10 Albanians, 7 Pakistani, 3 Rumanians and one Bulgarian.
information with, about and for refugees in Greece
Monthly Archive for February, 2012
link: noticia desde grecia
TEXT: ANDRÉS MOURENZA // PHOTO: ALESSANDRO PENSO
Finally, on Monday morning (2 days after the incident) the suspect of the racist attack to migrants in Corinth was arrested by the police. Also one of the two hospitalized migrants was able to leave the medical premises and return to the train station, with the other migrants. Nabi is still in hospital, well treated, and although with difficulties, he is recovering as photographers Alessandro Penso and Giorgos Moutafis were able to confirm this Monday after visiting him. Also journalist Antonio Cuesta visited the migrants at the train station this Monday.
Continue reading ‘UPDATE on racist attack in Corinth: Suspect detained’
According to the authorities she was 20-25 years old and probably African. It is the sixth corpse found in the last period. An old man with a small girl are still missing. they had got lost in the river Evros.
They come every day in the early morning hours when we are sleeping. They hunt us through the buildings of the fabric. It is dark and there are wholes in the floor, cables and other things lying around. It is very dangerous to run. Some of us have fallen down from upper floors, others fall into the wholes. There are many people hurt. Broken legs and arms and worse. We don’t know where to go for sleeping without fear. There is no place without fear here.
M.A. broke his leg while being chased through the fabric by the police
M.A. from Sudan broke his leg on one of the daily chases by the police. He continues to live in the fabric under highly deplorable conditions and without any medicine. As for all the others there is no other place to go for him. It has become almost impossible to leave Patras towards Italy. In his condition he will not be able to try anymore from Patras. His friends help him to come out of the darkness of his room. Slowly he is moving forward. His leg has become infected. He has pain. But most of all he seems to be hopeless.
Every day I tried. I go to the “stop” (where the trucks stop) for many hours and I come back. Every day. It is very difficult here. Not human. We have no water, no electricity, no food… no nothing. We have to find food in the garbage to survive. I am very tired.
Once the police caught me in port and they threw me into the sea. Just like this! Without any reason. You know how cold it is? It was just to get me sick.
Life here is just about trying to leave and trying to live – not to die. Go to the trucks. Find food. Escape from police. Being beaten by police. Hospital. Prison. Walking back to Patras from the prisons – one day, two days… Deportation from Italy. It is a great misery but we have to try. This Greece is not a place to stay.
The homeless sans-papiers of Patras need support. Food, medication, sleeping-bags, clothes and most of all our solidarity – in practice and not only in words!
Posted on febrero 19, 2012 in noticias de grecia
TEXT: ANDRÉS MOURENZA // PHOTO: ALESSANDRO PENSO
Nabi, a 20-years old Moroccan, is lying on the ground. He looks dead.
Twenty minutes earlier we were sitting in the recovered-from-garbage chairs and furniture, smoking cigarettes and chatting in one of the abandoned wagons of the old train station of Corinth (Greece). Nabi lives there with about other 50 migrants from Afghanistan, Iraq, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Yemen. Nasir—a polyglot, art lover Afghan interpreter—asks Nabi, another art lover, to draw something. The young Moroccan sketches the boat of the Hellenic Seaways moored just 200 meters down in the bay. They all are waiting the lucky day in which they will be able to catch the ferry; climbing to it, or hidden in the load of the trucks that the boat carries to Italy. And then… go further North in search for a job, a future, a safe and normal life. Crisis-hit Greece has become a nightmare for them. There is not the slightest possibility for work in a country with rocketing unemployment figures. Greeks don’t want them, neither they want to stay in Greece, but they are stuck here because European Union treaties allow third countries to return them to the state where they first entered the EU. And Greece has been the gate to Europe in the last years for 90 % of migrants.
Now, Nabi is lying on the ground.
Everything happened so quickly: a group of 4 or 5 locals drive their two cars to the old train station claiming that a migrant has stolen some money at the open air market this Saturday morning. They hit the first migrant they find, an old man cooking in an improvised fireplace. The locals try to do the same with other migrants, but the cries raise the alarm and more migrants appear from the old wagons with sticks and stones to expel the assailants. The locals go back to their cars, although one stops and punches another migrant in the face, just before getting in his black Renault Megane. The migrants try to stop the black Renault but the driver makes a U-turn knocking down a migrant, a 35-years old Algerian. He stops the car, its back aiming at us, and hits the gas at full speed in reverse gear. I jump on a small wall, as does the photographer Alessandro Penso and some migrants, to avoid being knocked down by the black car. Others run, but Nabi cannot beat the speed of the vehicle and gets hit. His body flies some meters away in front of our astonished eyes. The insane driver hits the gas and escapes leaving Nabi lying on the ground.
We all run to check his health. He has been badly hit, bleeding his face, but he is alive (later we will know that he got some bones broken). The police arrive and later the ambulance, considerably late since there is no ambulance driver working that day in Corinth (because of the austerity measures cuts) and has to come from a neighboring town
The migrants are in anger and despair. Some cry and claim that two of their Algerian friends –one about 50-years old named Ibrahim and the other a 20 years-old named Hassan- have been kidnapped and put into the first car. They call them on their cell phones, but nobody answers.
“This people come every now and then, with truncheons and sticks. If they find someone alone they beat him till he is almost dying,” denounces a 30-years old Tunisian, too afraid to give his name. “We don’t do anything wrong, we even eat from what we find in between the rubbish not to mess with the local people,” says Abduljalil: “We are only waiting here for the good weather to be able to escape from this country.” “Ten days ago –explains Ahmed, an Algerian- they came and fired me with a plastic-bullet gun. They were driving a white four-wheel drive Toyota”. However, these migrants cannot go to the police station.
“If they come to report something, I have to arrest them as they are living here illegally. I am sorry, but that is the law”, excuses himself a police inspectors of Corinth. Even now when a group of journalists –Italian photographer Alessandro Penso, Greek photographer Giorgos Moutafis, Spanish journalist Antonio Cuesta and myself- have witnessed the attack, the police officers try to downplay the incident.
-“You know… the car owner has some psychiatric problems. We have got him before. He has been at the hospital”, says the police inspector.
-“Maybe… but do his friends also have mental problems?”–we ask him.
-“This morning, the migrants robbed some money in the market…”- justifies the inspector.
-“But even if that happened, this does not give them the right to go and try to kill the migrants” –I complain.
-“Yes, that is your opinion”- says the inspector.
-“No, officer, that is not my opinion. That is the law.”
This happened today, February 18th 2012 in Corinth, Greece at about 3.45 p.m.
UPDATE: At 10.00 pm of Saturday, we had news about any suspect arrest had been made
Every night hundreds of sans-papiers go to Petrou Ralli police station to reserve a place in the long row. They are trying to enter the aliens police in order to apply for asylum. Despite the fact that the Greek government is announcing improvements in the Greek asylum system what we see is that access to asylum is not possible until today.
Press Release of the Group of Lawyers: Lacking access to Petrou Ralli Aliens Police
Under the blanket its a bit warmer, but some are without!
You never know at what time the officers will come to take a few of us inside. sometimes at 24, sometimes at 4am or at 6am. We wait here and try to be of the first. No chance! They only accept 20 persons per day. I don’t even understand on what criteria they chose. We stay out in the cold for nights and days. Without food. Many also without a blanket. You cannot move, if you do that your place will be lost. There is so much fighting about who will get inside to ask for asylum. The police watch us, but they don’t care. I am now since 4 days here. I have only one bottle of water. Thats all! Can you find the same situation in other European countries?
Today I am the first. It is my chance maybe.
No sleep, no food, cold...
Hundreds of people here every day leave behind their traces
Today I have some hope to enter
Is it the same in other countries?
No one care for us
Message by the union of African nationals (refugees in Ermioni) in Greece…
We, African refugees resident in Ermioni, have the honour to bring to your knowledge the perpetual threat of our security.
We send out this alarming and disgraced message to all national and international organisations defending the cause of refugees and all persons of good will who can defend us from this insecurity and racial segregation, and restore and recognise our international human rights as no one wishes to be a refugee.
Following the economic crisis that has hit Greece, a large number of young refugees live an intolerable life in this village. Depite hard work, we are badly paid, badly housed, have no access to health care, and have no consideration from the Greeks and the authorities in the village because of the colour of our skin. This situation gone even further than we had believed, shooting us at point-blank like wild animals and making us disappear into nature one after the other. We are evoking here two cases among thousands:
1) It was 29 October 2011 at 8am exactly when two youngsters were waiting for their boss on the road in order to get to work. A Greek man found them and asked them to be quiet, brandishing a knife against these youngsters. The latter picked up stones to defend themselves, and the Greek man went home, took a hunting rifle and returned and shot the black youngsters who were seriously wounded and transported to hospital. The police was notified but there was no follow-up, no legal proceedings made against the criminal and no cover or compensation for the victims.
2) In the same zone where the youngsters were shot, this time it is the disappearance of one of our brothers Mamadou Samba Diallo on Saturday 28 January 2012 at his workplace Porto Hidra programme, where he was employed by the boss Inco.
Here is the information gathered by one of the collaborators: the missing person was in his sixth day of work, his friend came to get him for lunch but the victim replied his was not ready. His friend left and returned later to his workplace situated next to the sea. He did not see his friend again. Later, he asked his boss who confirmed having seen him in the sea playing on the floaters and in the water. Maybe he drowned. Three days later, the boss told us that seamen saw some clothes somewhere in the sea. The police, once again informed about this disappearance, has not carried out any investigation to find the missing person.
Excuse us to ask to all organisations and people of good will to help us find our brother as our security is more at threat than ever.
Three young Afghans 20-23 years old died due to suffocation when they were trying to reach a port of exit hidden on a truck. The truck was transporting cottonseed and headed most probably towards Igoumenitsa. The three corpses were found nearby Parga. The Coroner Theodoros Bougiouklakis who made the autopsy. The bodies were then transferred to Ianena University Hospital.
One of the Afghans who had been together with the three inside the truck had informed via telephone on the day of the incident the family of one of them about their tragic death. Relatives then informed the Greek police who was searching for the three but could only find them yesterday since they lacked exact information on the place the corpses were left.