Monthly Archive for March, 2013
Syrians are currently the second-largest refugee group to cross illegally into the European Union. Most of them arrive in Greece.
DW’s Marine Olivesi accompanied one Syrian-Palestinian family on their arduous adventure.
Sixteen Syrians minus a baby girl are putting their shoe laces back on. The extended family has just been released from the police station of Mitilini, on the Greek island of Lesbos.
“Did you eat in the prison?,” asks local activist Efi Latsoudi. “Did they give you food regularly?”
“Bad food,” answers one of the teenagers.
“And how many days did you stay inside?”
“Four days.”
“With the kids?”
“Yes, with the kids.”
Continue reading ‘DW: Syrian Families Greek Odyssee’
Another refugee boat with 15 passengers got lost only three months after the tragedy that cost the lives of 21 refugees in December of last year on Lesvos island. Eight Syrian refugees a lost in the sea between Turkey and Lesvos. Six corpses were already found on the coast of the island. Relatives have arrived to look out for their beloved. One 17-year-old pregnant woman from Syria has been already recognised.
Last Friday the Greek coast guard had found already three of the corpses – of one woman and two children near Eressos beach. It seems the small boat got in distress only a few days earlier while the corpses were brought to the coast by the strong winds of the days. Saturday afternoon relatives of lost refugees reported to the police of Lesvos the disappearance of eight Syrians (two men, a woman, two minors and three children). They had started their dangerous journey in Dikili in Turkey but they never arrived. On Sunday another three corpses were found. Unfortunately the corpses are not to be recognised anymore since they were many days in the sea.
Meanwhile refugees continue to arrive on the island. On Monday 63 refugees were arrested my LEsvos police. Another 16 Afghans had spent some nights in the park of Mytilini city since the police was denying to register / arrest them. The local solidarity network “The village of all-together” supplied the homeless refugees with blankets, clothes and food.
efimerida ton sindakton (in greek)
lesvos news (in greek)
embros (in greek)
tvxs (in greek)
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL – PRESS RELEASE
20 March 2013
Refugees dying on dangerous routes to asylum in Europe
In a case highlighting the risks people take when fleeing conflict in their countries to seek refuge in Europe, the authorities of Lesvos continue their search for the bodies of asylum-seekers who had attempted to reach the Greek island.
Since last Friday, they have found the bodies of six Syrian nationals including a 17-year-old pregnant woman and a mother with her young children. They are now searching for the bodies of three more Syrian nationals whose families had reported missing to the island authorities after the nine attempted to cross from Turkey on 6 March 2013.
Lesvos is one of the main crossings for migrants and refugees trying to enter the European Union via the Greek mainland. Last December, 21 people (mostly Afghans) drowned close to the shores of the island, after the boat they were in capsized.
Since last summer, people fleeing the conflict in Syria have featured among those attempting the crossing, including many families with young children.
“As Greece is tightening the border controls in Evros, including the completion of a 10.5km fence last December, people take more and more dangerous routes. This was a tragedy waiting to happen,’’ said John Dalhuisen, Amnesty International’s Director of the Europe and Central Asia Programme.
“It is vital that the Greek authorities ensure protection to all asylum-seekers reaching the country. Instead, the Greek asylum system is grossly failing them. People who flee conflict, including many Syrians and Afghans who make it to the shores of Lesvos, are detained in police stations in overcrowded and poor conditions or in many cases left destitute to sleep in the streets.’’
“The Greek authorities should also take urgent measures to improve the reception conditions of those arriving at its shores and end the detention of asylum-seekers. In addition, Syrian nationals with no papers fleeing the conflict, must not be detained or issued with deportation orders and the authorities should proceed with a fair and effective examination of their asylum claims.”
“It is very painful to watch the same tragedy repeating in the shores of our own island,” said Efi Latsoudi, a local activist and member of the ‘Village of altogether’ – an initiative run by of volunteers who step in when state support for refugees and migrants is not available.
By MATINA STEVIS
LESVOS, Greece—On this Aegean island’s shores, Syria’s refugee crisis is crashing up against Greece’s migrant-policy mess.
Mohamed Simo, a 28-year-old Web designer from Aleppo, Syria, wanted to avoid the limbo of refugee camps of Turkey and Jordan, so he paid smugglers to bring him to Europe. After what he said was a harrowing journey from Turkey in a sinking plastic boat on a cold February night, he washed up in this tourist haven and was detained by local police.
Continue reading ‘Wall Street Journal: Syrians Find No Refuge in Greece.’
Doctors Without Borders and Amnesty International lashed out on Thursday at Greece’s treatment of Syrian refugees fleeing their war-ravaged homeland, with many locked up as illegal immigrants or reportedly facing police brutality.
“There is a total lack of a humanitarian response and solidarity” in Greece towards Syrian asylum-seekers, Willem de Jonge, general director of Doctors Without Borders in Greece, told AFP on the sidelines of a press conference.
Continue reading ‘AI & MSF: Syria refugees in Greece face lack of ‘humanitarian’ help’
When it comes to seeking asylum, Greece is the gateway to Europe. But the Greek asylum system is a mess. Paul Mason spoke to one man who has spent more than a year on the road – in squats, living rough and for a time in detention – about the experience of trying to claim asylum on Europe’s frontier.
It was hard to forget Mohamed Lamhoud. I met him in a shattered factory in Patras, Greece, squatting there alongside hundreds of other young, male migrants. Their clothes were filthy; many had wounds consistent with being beaten up, or fleeing being beaten up. They were drinking and washing from a standpipe.
Mohamed was different in one way only: in his pocket he had a book by Jean Paul Sartre. And while I tried to engage him about the conditions in the squatted factory, he tried to engage me in a discussion about Nietzsche.
That was in February 2012. The 26-year-old Moroccan had been living there for months. As I left that factory, I never thought I would see any of the men living there again.
But three weeks ago, on Facebook, somebody friended me and immediately sent me a pop-up message: “C’est moi, Mohamed, sociologique.” Through Facebook and Franglais he was speaking to me from inside a migrant detention centre in Corinth. And he had big news. He would soon be released.
Continue reading ‘BBC: Greece asylum: Journey through a broken system’
18 refugees – among them three children and three women (two of the pregnant) were transferred to the hospital of Samos in order to be hosted there after being released into bad weather conditions. They had spent seven days in a room of the Coast Guard (the police has currently to detention space).
On March 14th, 70 refugees started to protest in Drapetsona detention centre of the police station with a hunger strike against the extended detention periods. Two of the detainees had received another extension of their detention period for two months more. They were already nine months in prison at that point. the reason: lack of papers.
Only a few days later detainees who had been on hunger strike in the police station of Nikaia but had been split up and some of them transferred to Drapetsona police station were beaten by inmates on order of the guards. The hunger strike of 12 detainees in Nikaia had started following the beating of a inmate by the police. The detainee got beaten up when he requested to be transferred to a cell that could fit the 12 persons in a way that they would not need to sleep in shifts due to overcrowding.
(Reuters) – Syrian shopkeeper Osama fled the fighting in Aleppo convinced he would be welcomed in Europe. Five months later, he is stuck in near-bankrupt Greece, where money and sympathy are scarce.
Beaten up and robbed by traffickers when they arrived in Athens, Osama, his wife and two children were arrested as illegal immigrants and thrown into detention when they recounted their ordeal to Greek police. Ordered out of Greece but without any place to go, he rues the day he set foot in the country.
“All our hope is now in God. There is a war in Syria and the country has been destroyed,” said the 35-year-old as he sat in a dingy Athens basement apartment with a Syrian flag on the wall.
“In Greece, we have had the most bitter experiences and we cannot go to another country. We have no money, no IDs or passports to travel. We are trapped here.”
Greek authorities say police are obliged to arrest people who enter the country illegally.
Continue reading ‘REUTERS: Fleeing war, Syrians face new misery in Greece’
K.M. (21, Syria) reported to the “Movement United against Racism Athens” being ill-treated by the police guards in Corinth Detention centre on March 10th. In the afternoon around 18 / 19 o’clock during a struggle between guards and refugees when the first did not bring the cigarettes and telephone guards to purchase. The Riot Police started beating the detained refugees until they returned into their cells. there again they were beaten. K.M. was documenting the ill-treatment with his mobile phone. When the Riot Police noticed that they took him to his cell and beat him all over his body. K.M. has a chronicle respiratory problem and found himself lying on the floor with difficulties to breath. His phone was broken. 
efimerida ton sindakton (in greek)
roz karta (in greek)