Report: Infomobile Greece 2015

Nobody could have foreseen how quickly the situation in the Aegean changed in 2015, due to unpredictable migration movements. More than 7.000 people arrived on the Greek island of Lesvos on a single day in late October 2015 and more than 56.000 people arrived on the island in the last week of October. When we stood on the beaches of northern Lesvos and experienced how one boat after another arrived there, while volunteers from all over Europe welcomed the newly arrived, one could have thought that this border had long been overrun and become a fact of the past. But, at the same time, we became witnesses of the loss of hundreds of people who drowned in the Aegean Sea. Even the mayor of Mytilene demanded ferries that would transport people from Turkey to Greece so long as no safe paths to Europe existed. 2015 was an incredible year. Since we have followed the refugee situation in the Aegean for a long time, we detected major developments here: in 2015 and still today, more and more women and children, as well as old people, those injured through war, and the sick were now travelling. And while the first groups of travellers had to assert themselves at every border anew, as of September, people were able to move more quickly than ever before. Many of those we had encountered along this route in previous years needed months, if not years, to arrive because they were repeatedly arrested for months or had run out of money and thus could not move on. But now, at the end of 2015, the average time of travel amounted to merely 2 weeks, from Turkey to Germany.

 

In early 2016, circulating threats concerning the closure of the Balkan corridor and the massive militarisation of the border between Turkey and Greece, for example through a novel mandate of the Greek military in coordinating reception and registration, the Frontex Rabit-mission as well as the recently deployed NATO vessels to the area, raise various questions and make it difficult for us, maybe more than before, to make a prognosis. What is clear, however, is that the eastern maritime border of the European Union will remain a contested space and our presence there will continue, to support those on the move who enact their freedom of movement. In the following we will provide an overview of the Infomobil activities in 2015:

 

Infomobile-Report in English: Infomobile+Report+2015_english.compressed

Infomobile-Report in German: Infomobile Bericht 2015 kl