Tag Archive for 'patra'

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Letter of the migrants and refugees in Patras

Published on January 3, 2012 in Uncategorized. Closed Tags: , , , , , , .


This letter was written and distributed on January 2, 2012 after another beating of refugees had occurred in Patras by the coast guard. The same day a young Afghan refugee died of suffocation in Patras while he was trying to resist the cold weather with his friends inside a truck were they lit a small fire. His two friends survived and are currently hospitalised.

In the name of god,

Since we were small kids in our home countries there was trouble, but we didn’t understand what this trouble was. Later we grew up and we understood that this trouble is war. The seasons were changing and every day became more difficult. On this way we reached today.

Since then and until today we are thinking about our future and what our destiny will be. When we were in our countries they were telling us lies. They told us in Europe we would find democracy and we would get human rights. But it is different here. To build up our lives we have to cross the borders. In Greece this is very difficult.

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Afghan refugee died today in Patras

Published on January 3, 2012 in Uncategorized. Closed Tags: , , , , , , , .

Τhree Afghani youngsters (between 15-20 years old), who had recently arrived in the port city of Patras, were temporarily sleeping in the cabin of an abandoned truck in the old redundant textile factory of Peiraiki Patraiki. In order to keep warm yesterday during the cold night (Monday, January 2), they lit a fire in a small vessel. There was no window or opening in the room, doors were shut, and the lack of oxygen caused the suffocation to death of one of the boys. The other two were taken to hospital and are in a critical condition.

see clandestina
read the news in greek
indymedia athens (in greek)

fotos of the truck where the three boys were trying to warm up due to the very cold weather:

all fotos from indymedia athens

December 23, 2011: Migrants and Greeks demonstrate together in Patras against police repression

Published on December 23, 2011 in Uncategorized. Closed Tags: , , , , , , , , .

People from Afghanistan, Sudan, Eritrea, Morocco, Algeria, Greece and many other countries demonstrate today against the police repression in Patras. Reason for the protest is the recent accident of a 16-year-old Afghan who while trying to escape the police fell of a building. He is still severely injured in the hospital.

Stop police assaulting us, we have to live in security, we need human rights!


Such kind of “accidents” are no exception in Patras the main transit port city for sans-papiers who try to leave Greece. Sans-papiers have to confront daily police and coast guard brutality, police raids and traffic accidents while trying to escape the police forces who chase them down, arrest, beat and arrest them.

read a recent article about the situation in Patras (in french)
Dans l’enfer des immigrants clandestins, by Jean-Simon Gagné

Afghan Minor severely injured in Patras

Published on December 21, 2011 in Uncategorized. Closed Tags: , , , , , , , , .

In the early morning of December 20, 2011 the police stormed the building of a former fabric where a couple of Afghans have set up their provisory shelter. Most of them are underage. In this atmosphere of panic one of the minors while trying to escape the police raid fell of the second floor of the building. He was severely injured.
The other Afghan sans-papiers later told to the Solidarity Movement for Migrants and Refugees of Patras, that the police saw the young boy falling but did not call an ambulance or react in any other supportive manner.
One of the Afghans called the ambulance. The hospital denied to send an ambulance in the beginning. In a second call he told the hospital that the boy was severely injured and might have even died. Then an ambulance came and brought him to St. Andreas Hospital of Patras.
Later in the evening the Solidarity group visited the boy in the hospital and talked to the doctors. The boy had been operated in order to remove blood from the inner of his head. The boy was in intensive care and in coma being held alive with machines.
Nobody knows if things would have been better if he would have been transferred sooner to the hospital. Anyway, both police who did not help while witnessing the accident, and the hospital who only reacted in a second stance are unacceptable. Lets hope that the young Afghan will pay with his life.

Press Release of the Solidarity Group of Patras
Salata TV (news in greek)

Patras: Migrants suffer from Repression and merely survive in the cold of the winter

Published on November 25, 2011 in Uncategorized. Closed Tags: , , , , , , .

The new port in Patras has attracted sans-papier who were trying to move on to Italy and were living already in Patras to move their provisory housing closer to it. The “migration map” in town has changed together with the port of Patras. Now, the new housing areas for sans-papiers near to the new port become the battlefield where the police and other anti-immigrant groups repress and attack them. They beat them, they burn their belongings – clothes and blankets, they take away their temporary residence permits without any reason and they expulse them from the ruins where they found provisory shelter under humiliating living conditions.

A local TV-Channel that had been taking an anti-immigrant position since the early years of Patras as transit hub for migrants reported about one of the new shelters of sans-papiers in Patras. The propaganda made is overestimating the numbers of sans-papiers in town and creating a new target by showing one specific place of shelter.

The sans-papiers in Patras fall victim to racism and police violence on a daily basis. They suffer from cold and rain being homeless. There is a need in creating sustainable and human solutions instead of targeting and punishing the sans-papiers in town.

Violence and repression in Patra

Published on October 14, 2011 in Uncategorized. Closed Tags: , , , , , , .

Press Release by the Solidarity Group in Patras concerning the increased violence against migrants and refugees in the area around the new port in Patras, 13th of October 2011:
Press Release (in English)
Press Release (in Greek)

Statement by the Afghan Association “Bahar”:

Since March 2011 the Afghan refugees in Patra have created the association „bahar“ (English: „spring“) with the aim to help each other to integrate into the Greek society in an atmosphere of friendship and harmony with the locals.
Unfortunately, within the last five months we have seen an increase in incidents of violence by the authorities against us Afghan refugees. Everyday Afghans report to us of violent attacks with severe injuries. The victims have attestations of the hospitals to prove these. This brutal strategy of the authorities constitutes a harsh human rights violation and in any case is no solution for the migration issue in Patras whatsoever.
The association of Afghans in Patra “Bahar” has started to raise this issue of violence in public. We will stand at the side of all victims and we will take also legal measures to report these human rights violations.

Press Release: Solidarity group Patras, 27th of September 2011

Published on September 28, 2011 in Uncategorized. Closed Tags: , , , , , , , .

Against the repressive measures of the authorities who in the most violent way show their “law and order” approach towards the issue of migration in Patras:

Press Release by the solidarity group in Patras (in English)

The police reacted to the denouncing press release by stating that if there were incidents of police violence against migrants then the solidarity group should file charges against them at the public prosecutor. Meanwhile the authorities are well aware of how difficult this is. However, only documented migrants can file charges while most of the refugees and migrants in Patras are in transit and without legal residence permits. The few among them with valid papers are often too afraid of taking legal measures against the authorities. Another difficulty arises from the long duration of judicial proceedings. Most of the migrant victims and witnesses leave Greece before the date of the court case is reached.

see also news (in Greek)

Fire in refugees’ home in patras

Published on September 12, 2011 in Uncategorized. Closed Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

Around the 8th of September unknown people set fire on a barack where asylum seekers were temporarily living in the transit-port of Patras.

As A., an Eritrean refugee reported:

I have been homeless in Athens. I have been homeless in Patras. I have been homeless in Igoumenitsa. I applied for asylum. Now I am again homeless in Patras. I live on the beach and in ruins. Police is hunting us every day.
A few days ago somebody lit fire on the ruin we were living in. I think it was the racists. Everything burned. All our belongings. My AFM (tax number), my work permit, my clothes. Everything. I am left now only with my Pink Card (asylum seekers temporary residence permit) but what is it worth? What can it do for me? I am still homeless and unprotected.

Transit in Patras


Following a number of police raids in the last months, currently, there are very few sans-papiers and asylum seekers left in Patras. The ones who have remained suffer, as K. from Somalia tells us:

“I only stay here because I don’t have any other place to go! There is no chance to leave from here for Italy. Very very few manage. The new port is very dangerous. Police is hunting and beating us, they even have dogs. My Pink Card got tear up by my former employer who didn’t want to pay me for the work I did. Now it is almost one month that I am only with a copy of my Pink Card. They say, I cannot get a new one if I don’t have an address in Patras, but where should I get it from? Two days ago a police control arrested me. I asked them to go and catch the copy of my Pink Card, but they didn’t let me go. I was in prison for two days. I am understanding more and more about this country. Nothing good to tell!”

64 sans-papiers deported by Italy back to Patras, 9th of September

Published on September 8, 2011 in Uncategorized. Closed Tags: , , , , , , .

As reported by local newspapers for the second time within the last year Italy is deporting sans-papiers by ship back to Greece. 64 sans-papiers are at this moment detained inside the ferryboat Ioanian Queen and guarded by 50 Carabinieris. They will arrive tomorrow morning in Patras. The deportation is reported to be based on the Dublin II regulation, but it remains unclear if there was any other legal ground on which this deportation was decided. While most European countries have stopped deporting sans-papiers back to Greece due to the European wide recognition of the ongoing human rights violations and degrading living conditions, Italy obviously continues. Italy itself is together with Hungary has been after Greece criticised more and more and became the next candidates for a struggle to stop Dublin II deportations back there.

local news in Greek

I came here to Greece in order to save my life, now, they took even my body away from me

Published on September 4, 2011 in Uncategorized. Closed Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

Patras, August 2011

Two refugees from Sudan talk about their lives in an emptied city. Patra has been the second exit-port after Igoumenitsa that the greek police raided in 2011. In the center of the city one cannot see any immigrants anymore. In repeated sweep operations the authorities destroyed a number of provisory housing sites and arrested hundreds of sans-papiers. In the summer of 2011 only very few refugees remained at the rims of the city marginalised and displaced.

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