The demonstration took place in the late afternoon. The route was from the center to the harbor, where the demonstration stopped to express loud and clear, and also written the disagreement with Frontex and the greek coast guard.
Normally Frontex and the greek coast guard have their landing here:
After the first successful prevention of the deportation of 23 refugees
in Evros on the 4th august 2009 in Samos, their was a second even
stronger action made by refugees themselves and not by organisations and
citizens.
On the 10th August there was the probably second time that
refugees were supposed to be transported to Athens and from there,
“only God knows”, where they would be brought. But the refugees in
Samos got organized and made a hunger strike on the 5ht of august. They
refused loud to enter the police prison cars screaming out loud, that they
need help and screaming: no deportation – freedom. Some solidary
people went in front of the center but the transport was cancelled.
A lot of police and military, was all around the harbour. In the closed part of the harbour a normal ferry had been landed. Then the travellers were let into the ship after getting controlled very well.
Suddenly the police seemed to be nervous. Then a public bus came around the corner. It was obviously that they were transporting refugees. The refugees were screaming “FREEDOM” out loud and waved to the people making the peace sign. The fence was opened and the bus drove throw,they parked him in front of the belly and putted their medical masks and gloves on. They brought the refugees into the belly, which is actually the parking area.
On Friday 17/07 8 packages with printed material for the no border camp were sent with a ship to Mytilene. The packages had specific recipient, the name and telephone number of whom appeared in the packages, and for transporting them was cut bill. When Saturday 18/07 we went to receive the packages the staff of the ship told us that the stores were closed and the receipt should be made on Sunday. Finally we went to collect the packages on Tuesday when officials of the ship told us that they considered the material as humanitarian assistance and called the coast police to receive them. The coast police admit that they took the material from the boat but no one knew about the fate of the material. The harbor master was seemed to ignore the issue completely. Two days later part of the material found in a store room of the coast police in the port.Of the 8 packages, 3 were missing, all packages were opened and some of the material found in a nearby trash bin. To the questions why the material received by coast police as there was specipic receiver and why they didn’t inform the receiver, no one was available to respond. In a publication in a local newspaper reported the following:
According to secure information, law enforcement authorities have identified and blocked quantity of printed material of anarchists for the event no border camp, which arrived by ship in the harbor. Impression is caused by the fact that the material, which identified by the authorities, was hidden in packages that were sent from Athens (by people who work until recently as a body of government on refugees) and intended as a “humanitarian assistance for refugees”! The material unloaded from the ship with the assistance of Coast Guard men, but upon unloading one package was opened, so to determine its content.
It is obvious that there is a trial to create atmosphere against the no border camp and the authorities are ready to use all methods. The fact that newspapers like “empros” are carrying false reports disseminated on porpose by the authorities,is expected. The material for the no border camp that will take place from 25 to 31 August in Mitilini was sharing already in various towns and villages of the island. No one is illegal. Come to discuss in the squares of the island.
Somewhere on the way out of Mytilini, fascists wrote “Turks. refugees, anarchists. Greece belongs to the Greek.” And then some hours later, it said “Greece belongs to Siemens”.
There was a 30min radio interruption in the name of no-border, topic of this were the deportations from Samos and Mytilini. Stories about refugees and turkish fisherman, who where caught by the border police were told. After that there was a live interview with people from Samos, who stopped the deportation on Tuesday.
In Vathy of Samos, the mobilization of local initiatives was successful. After 3 hours of seizure of the catapult, the ship departed for Theofilos to Kavala without the deportation of 60 refugees (Afghans and Somalis). The mobilization was very exiting with the refugees being synchronized through the crates with the collateral shouting “freedom”.
(Indy.gr, 04-08-09)
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.
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