Tag Archive for 'Moria'

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Moria / Lesbos: Chaotic registration queues leave refugees in future Hot Spot under inhumane conditions for hours

Published on October 15, 2015 in Uncategorized. Closed Tags: , , , , , , , .

++No welcome for refugees in Moria++ Hot Spot feared to become deportation machinery++

Hot Spot to be inaugurated on Friday, October 15, 2015 in Moria camp while registration procedures are malfunctioning, there is no identification system for vulnerable groups in place and living conditions are inhumane and degrading. The lack of basic needs provision leaves refugees unprotected waiting in the registration queues for hours and days.

A father is standing in the police field near registration gates observing the queue / copyright: Salinia Stroux

A father is standing in the police field near registration gates observing the queue / copyright: Salinia Stroux

Meanwhile within the last days Lesbos welcomed many high ranking officials including Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, Austrian Chancellor Faymann, UN High Commissioner Guterrez and a US delegation of senators accompanied by the US ambassador in Athens David Pierce. On Friday Martin Schultz, President of the European Parliament is expected to visit the island with Dimitris Avramopoulos the EU Commissioner for Migration, Home Affairs and Citizenship and Luxemburgs Minister of Foreign affairs Asselborn. The island currently attracts once again the worlds attention as the first “Hot Spot” in Greece is planned to open in presence of the official visitors and Greek Migration Minister Mouzalas in Moria on Friday, October 15, only shortly after the first days of functioning of the Hot Spot in Lampedusa, Italy. Within the next week a first small group of Syrian refugees are already planned to be relocated to Luxemburg.

Dozens of children are sleeping on the arms of the parents in the queue / copyright: Salinia Stroux

Dozens of children are sleeping on the arms of the parents in the queue / copyright: Salinia Stroux

The identification detention centre Moria will be turned to the Hot Spot on Lesbos island after concluding a pilot phase which lasted for the last days supported by 53 specialists from Frontex. Tomorrow another 600 Frontex officers will arrive to start working in the Hot Spot. Already today 12 registration machines donated by Germany have been brought to the island to be used in Moria.
It is highly critical that until today it is unclear, how the Hot Spots will function in detail and that it is unknown what will happen after registration and screening to both population groups: The once assessed eligible as protection seekers and the rest whose deportation will be in plan. The only thing clear is that a few protection seekers will be send to Europe for asylum while many others will be deported to their home countries.

Daily registration numbers (careful: not numbers of arrivals!) have risen to 3,500, while neither the problem of food provision for the camps of Moria and Kara Tepe has been solved yet, nor are there sufficient tents, blankets or dry clothes for the wet newcomers. At the same time the limited support structures inside Moria are available only to a part of the refugee population (the Syrians and some Non-Syrians who have been already registered) and only at specific working hours while the refugee boats arrive at the shores of the island at any point of time during day and night.
Continue reading ‘Moria / Lesbos: Chaotic registration queues leave refugees in future Hot Spot under inhumane conditions for hours’

Moria / Lesbos: Kara Tepe re-opens as mere accommodation camp and registration in Moria breaks down

Published on October 12, 2015 in Uncategorized. Closed Tags: , , , , , .

Hundreds of Syrian wait for their registration in Moria / copyright: Salinia Stroux

Hundreds of Syrian wait for their registration in Moria / copyright: Salinia Stroux

Hundreds of Syrians were waiting for hours in Moria to get registered as the computers used encountered technical problems. Syrians do now receive also in Mytilene again the 6-months suspension of deportation paper with a photo.

UNHCR Ikea refugee houses are full once more / copyright: Salinia Stroux

UNHCR Ikea refugee houses are full once more / copyright: Salinia Stroux

Meanwhile only very few No-Syrians arrived to the camp yesterday. They were again allowed to enter the areal of the camp and use the tents and the bathrooms amongst others. Meanwhile busses brought hundreds of registered Syrians to Kara Tepe which was re-opened and is aimed to host the registered until they leave to Athens. Continue reading ‘Moria / Lesbos: Kara Tepe re-opens as mere accommodation camp and registration in Moria breaks down’

Moria / Lesbos: Disastrous conditions in the future “Hot Spot” while UN High Commissioner for Refugees visits the island

Published on October 11, 2015 in Uncategorized. Closed Tags: , , , , , , .

Queue of Non-Syrians October 10 / copyright: Salinia Stroux

Queue of Non-Syrians October 10 / copyright: Salinia Stroux

Pilot “Hot Spot” to open located on Lesbos island. Only one day before the visit of UN High Commissioner for Refugees authorities close Kara Tepe camp and move Syrians to Moria camp. Meanwhile Non-Syrian nationalities being registered there already before have been kicked out of the few UNHCR tents.

An Afghan mother falling asleep holing her five-months-old in the arms / copyright: Salinia Stroux

An Afghan mother falling asleep holing her five-months-old in the arms / copyright: Salinia Stroux

During talks with Europe’s migration commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos and Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn, whose country holds the EU presidency, the latter stressed that the EU was ready to provide financial and logistical aid to Athens to help get the Hot Spot centres up and running. The first, he said, would open “within 10 days” on Lesbos, in the eastern Aegean Sea. It is very likely it will be located in Moria at least in the first period as there is no other place found yet. Continue reading ‘Moria / Lesbos: Disastrous conditions in the future “Hot Spot” while UN High Commissioner for Refugees visits the island’

Moria / Lesbos: Tear gas and beatings continue while families wait in the mud all the night

Published on October 7, 2015 in Uncategorized. Closed Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras visited Lesbos island on October 6, accompanied by Austrian chancellor Werner Feymann, to ostensibly appraise the refugee crisis on the islands firsthand, but what they saw there did not correspond to the everyday reality as thousands of refugees had left in four unscheduled extra ferries beforehand, the port had been cleaned, bus transportation of refugees from the north of the island to the camps had been halted, suddenly no boats were crossing the sea border just for the time during the short visit and his visit in Moria camp was focused on an inspection of the almost empty First Reception Centre, while in the meanwhile a few meters further inside the fenced territory at the pre-removal detention centre where registration takes place the desperate crowds were repressed by riot police with tear gas and severe beatings.

Queue of single men after tear gas attacks and beatings when registration halted / copyright: Salinia Stroux

Queue of single men after tear gas attacks and beatings when registration halted / copyright: Salinia Stroux

Hundreds of refugees coming mainly from Afghanistan and Iraq were trying yesterday again to get registered in Moria – often for the third and fourth day. Especially many of the highly vulnerable, such as families with babies and toddlers, handicapped and sick persons or elderly couldn’t manage to pass through the crowds around the gates, the clouds of tear gas and the beatings of the riot police. Continue reading ‘Moria / Lesbos: Tear gas and beatings continue while families wait in the mud all the night’

Moria / Lesbos: “This looks like the end of the world here!”

Published on October 6, 2015 in Uncategorized. Closed Tags: , , , , , , , , , .
A father tries to help his son after another tear gas attack by lightening a small fire and holding the smoke near his eyes / copyright: Salinia Stroux

A father tries to help his son after another tear gas attack by lightening a small fire and holding the smoke near his eyes / copyright: Salinia Stroux

“Why don’t the authorities apply a registration system that works? Who is the responsible here? I really would like to speak to him. There are easy solutions to the problem. I am in the queue for three days and three nights now. Look around. This looks like the end of the world here!”

Continue reading ‘Moria / Lesbos: “This looks like the end of the world here!”’

Moria / Lesbos: Registration chaos, police violence, hunger, thirst and sleeping rough

Published on October 5, 2015 in Uncategorized. Closed Tags: , , , , , , .

October 3: Registration queue in Moria / copyright: Salinia Stroux

October 3: Registration queue in Moria / copyright: Salinia Stroux

In the first days of October 2015 Moria has become for one more time a nightmare to refugees and activists alike even though registration procedures have been speeded up since September. Anyhow, the system changes every day with no one knowing how to actually get documents. The despair of the people arriving wet from the coasts, staying outside in the cold without shelter, food or water, medication and without any information on what to do – specifically in the nights – is creating anxiousness and stress. Hundreds of refugees stand for hours and through all of the night in queues: One day on the upper gate, the next day on the another gate, once with extra queues for families, once without…. While many refugees are pushing to enter and get registered, riot police is controlling the gates with clubs and tear gas by force.
Continue reading ‘Moria / Lesbos: Registration chaos, police violence, hunger, thirst and sleeping rough’

LESVOS: VOICES FROM INSIDE MORIA – THE NEW PAGANI OF TROIKA

Published on June 30, 2014 in Uncategorized. Closed Tags: , , , , , , , , .

‘First reception’ practices of refugees in Greece: The example of Moria on Lesvos island

“We didn’t come to Europe to get beaten, insulted and imprisoned.”

In September 26th, 2013 the new so called “first reception center (KEPY)” opened in Moria on the island of Lesvos. It is the second of its kind in Greece following the example of the KEPY in Fylakio, Evros that opened earlier in the same year.
The Pagani of the Troika – as it is called to remind of former prisons and to disconnect it from nearby Moria village, is a prison where only a few selected NGOs have access under the precondition not to share any information with the outside world. Civil society gets presented the term ‘first reception’ that gives a false impression of an open, accessible place while it is nothing else than another new prison in the tradition of Amigdaleza’s fenced containers the only difference being the detention duration – at first sight. As prescribed by law, detention does not exceed 25 days maximum in this place BUT detainees might just be transferred to (pre-removal) detention centers such as Fylakio, Komotini, Xanthi or Chios for example, where they might stay up to 18 months or more if they are not readmitted to Turkey, deported or sign voluntary return in the meanwhile.

Currently the detention center in Moria is being constructed directly next to the “first reception” center, and build within the same fences and with the same containers. It is about to be opened in beginning of July 2014 with a capacity of 750 people while the capacity of the “first reception” screening center is supposed to reach 250 places. Nonetheless, only detention is what has marked the character of Moria since the beginning.

Moria in April 2014 while the construction of the fences was not yet finished

Moria in April 2014 while the construction of the fences was not yet finished

It is our aim to show from the very beginning of its functioning the real face of the ‘first reception’ detention center and to insist that this has to be closed. We do not argue for better detention conditions but for freedom!

We asked refugees having passed through Moria prison one single question:

‘What was your worst experience inside Moria detention?’
Continue reading ‘LESVOS: VOICES FROM INSIDE MORIA – THE NEW PAGANI OF TROIKA’