The greek government has this “six point plan” about how to deal with what they refer to as illegal migration. You can read more about it at the website of our friends from Thessaloniki.
The first point reads as follows:
A ship of sufficient tonnage to be used as a first reception and transport centre. This ship will sail near the islands of the Aegean where illegal migrants have been arrested, it will take them on board and carry them to the reception centres already in, or due to be put into, operation. The ship must be equipped with the necessary logistics infrastructure so as to ensure a complete health check of illegal migrants and to cross-check their identification data in order to ascertain their country of origin reliably and in a timely manner.
Apparently, this ship has already been chartered, but is still in the process of being refitted: they need to build cells and such. The plan however is clear, the greek government wants to centralise the internment of refugees. A couple of days ago, there was the attempted deportation of 62 refugees from Lesvos to a detention centre in mainland Greece. As you can read at occupiedlondon blog, this failed miserably due to intervention of antiracist activists.
As soon as embarkation started, the guards created a cordon around the migrants and started to lead them on foot toward the catapult of the boat. The sixty of us who were there jumped in front of them, blocking with banners and with our bodies their entrance to the boat. At the same time, we shouted slogans and handed out texts to the people that continued entering and exiting the boat. Following an initial surprise, the return of the migrants back to the bus that transferred them was decided. We held our positions exchanging slogans with the migrants who slowly started to realise what was going on and in turn started to shout and to wave.
You can find more pictures at Athens Indymedia.
Yet another longer article on the situation in Greece.
It has been around a year and a half now since the first attempt of the state to demolish the self-made Afghani refugee camp in Patras, which was prevented due to a vast and eminent solidarity movement. Nevertheless, the public authorities struck back and eventually succeeded to fulfil their initial plan on the dawn of Sunday 12th of July. This action can be only described as part of a major concrete plan of “zero tolerance” designed and declared by Markoyannakis, the Minister of Public Order of Greece.
The operation was initially planned to take place the night before, yet it was decided to postpone for a day in order for riot police reinforcements to arrive from Athens. At around 3.30 a.m. on Sunday numerous riot police forces swamped the whole area surrounding the refugee camp. By 5 a.m. they had already blocked every street leading to the camp inducing a climate of terror in the area. Only 150 immigrants were still there, by that point knowingly unable to defend themselves and their vestige shelter after weeks of continuous repression, arrests and terror deriving from the state. Some managed to flee the camp only moments before getting arrested and the rest were indulged to the hands of the authorities. The camp was unreachable for the protestors outside and the few who were already inside in solidarity got arrested and were released only after the operation was complete. The obvious reason for these arrests was to have no witnesses of the imminent villainous scenes of state-induced horror.
read the whole article.
Some people have started a Wiki where hints about how to get to Lesvos can be gathered. So far, it is only in German, but of course, contributions in any language are most welcome.
antiracamp.gegenstromberlin.net
As always: Check the page How to Lesvos for complete information. And you can always check the How To Lesvos Category for updates, also alvailable as RSS.
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