• Bodies of 18 people found in #Dadia forest that is on fire

    August 22, 2023

    The charred bodies of at least 18 people have been found in Dadia forest that has been on fire since Monday afternoon, the Fire Service announced on Tuesday.

    The bodies were found in two spots of the dense forest near the village of #Avantas in #Evros, north-eastern Greece.

    Fire Service inspectors and a coroner are heading to the area, news247.gr reported.

    “The bodies were found near some huts and as there are no alerts of missing people in the area, it is possible that they were irregular migrants, who entered the country illegally,” fire Service spokesman Giannis Artopoios announced.

    He added that the Civil Protection sent evacuation messages in time on time, when the fire broke out on Monday.

    Avantas is one of the dozens of villages and settlements that were evacuated in the area.

    Monday night, the charred body of a man was found also in Dadia forest with authorities suspecting that it belonged to a migrant.

    Some news websites claimed that the number of bodies found in Dadias were 26.

    Police and military forces in Evros are on the highest level of alert to intercept even the slightest attempt by irregular immigrants to cross into Greece, website newsit.gr noted.

    https://www.keeptalkinggreece.com/2023/08/22/bodies-18-people-fire-dadias-forest
    #forêt #incendie #feu #migrations #asile #réfugiés #Grèce #morts #décès

    –-

    see as well:
    2 groups of ~250 people in total stranded on different islets of the #Evros river ! (22.08.2023)
    https://seenthis.net/messages/1014292

    • 18 migrants killed in wildfires raging across Greece, officials say

      Eighteen people, believed by fire officials to be migrants or refugees, were found dead in Greece’s Dadia Forest after a raging wildfire swept for the fourth day through the northeastern Greek region near the Turkish border that serves as a major crossing point for refugees and migrants.

      The charred remains of the 18 people were recovered Tuesday near a shack close to a national park in Alexandroupolis, a city in Greece’s Evros region. Evros, which shares a land border with Turkey, is seen as a “no man’s land,” where bodies of migrants trying to cross into the European Union are found every year.

      “With great sadness, we learned of the death of at least 18 immigrants from the fire in the forest of Dadia,” Dimitris Kairidis, Greece’s migration minister, said in a statement Tuesday. “This tragedy confirms, once again, the dangers of irregular immigration.”

      Kairidis added that he denounced the “murderous activity of criminal traffickers” which is “what endangers the lives of many migrants both on land and at sea every day.”

      Two other people were killed in this week’s fires — an 80-year-old shepherd and an apparent migrant — bringing the death toll in Greece to at least 20.

      While migration numbers into Greece from Turkey have dropped in recent years as a result of strict border controls and deals with Ankara, Greece remains a front-line country for migration to Europe. The Eastern Mediterranean route — which includes arrivals by land and sea — has seen more than 17,000 people trying to cross this year, mostly from Syria, the Palestinian territories, Afghanistan, Somalia and Iraq.

      Earlier Tuesday, the Hellenic Fire Service said that because there were no reports of missing people from surrounding areas, “the possibility that these are people who entered the country illegally is being investigated.”

      In early August, Greek officials met to coordinate migration policy after more than 100 migrants — mostly from Syria and Iraq, including 53 children — were found crossing the border in Evros, the Associated Press reported. Last week, Greece’s coast guard stopped nearly 100 migrants in inflatable boats crossing through the Aegean Sea from Turkey — with such crossings increasing in recent weeks, officials said.

      Sixty-three wildfires broke out in Greece within 24 hours, the fire service said Monday. The agency added that it sent out more than 100 evacuation messages for the broad area since Monday, amid windy, dry conditions as Southern European temperatures hit 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit).

      On Tuesday, the Ministry for Climate Crisis and Civil Protection issued a “very high fire risk” alert for several areas.

      Authorities have been evacuating affected villages as the wildfires spread. Flames threatened to engulf a hospital in Alexandroupolis, prompting officials to evacuate all of its patients — including newborns and those in intensive care units — onto a ferry that became a makeshift hospital on Tuesday, Reuters reported. Nuns from a monastery were also evacuated, local media reported.

      Satellite images recorded massive plumes of smoke streaming from the affected areas.

      Theodore Giannaros, a fire meteorologist and associate researcher at the National Observatory of Athens, called the 18 deaths a “true tragedy.” Nearly 99,000 acres have been burned in the past three days.

      “These facts clearly stress … that we need to change our whole approach for managing wildfires in Greece,” he said, calling for an integrated and interdisciplinary fire management approach and better collaboration between authorities and the scientific community.

      Fire officials and researchers have raised alarm bells at the region’s lack of preparedness for wildfires — which are increasing in intensity, length and geographic breadth alongside summer heat waves.

      Neighboring Turkey and Spain’s island of Tenerife have also dealt with wildfires this week.

      The E.U. mobilized more resources Tuesday to help Greece’s firefighting battle. In the last two days, the E.U. has deployed seven airplanes, one helicopter, 114 firefighters and 19 vehicles, the E.U. commission said in a statement.

      Greece is seeing “an unprecedented scale of wildfire devastation this summer,” European Commissioner for Crisis Management Janez Lenarcic, said in a statement Tuesday.

      https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/08/22/greece-wildfires-bodies-heat-europe

    • Elliniki Lysi MP for Evros P. Papadakis also made similar statements live to local outlet e-evros, where he clearly blames people on the move for the #Evros #wildfires:
      [from 1.06] ’I said it and will say it again, we’re at war, the mountains are full and everywhere, at all sites [of fire], there’ve been interfered with. Arrests have been made by ordinary citizens but also by the police at all (fire) fronts … we have war, they have come here in coordination, and they have put, the illegal immigrants specifically, fires at more than ten locations. At all mountains and where there are fires, there are illegal immigrants. They know this very well the police, the fire brigade and the volunteers who are very many.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbwC1D1Nq2c


      https://twitter.com/lk2015r/status/1694421902985515295

      –—

      The MP with the extreme-right party Greek Solution, P. Papadakis, invites people on Facebook to “take measures” & “be alert to do what we do best” against “illegal migrants” who, he alleges, “hinder the work of pilots”.
      In another post he states that “illegals” were “starting fires”. “It’s a war” he says, and urges: “declare an emergency”!
      The comments are a cesspool of pure, unadulterated racist hatred.

      These are the depths to which parts of Greek society have sank -and the @kmitsotakis govt has everything to do with it.

      https://twitter.com/ninarei/status/1694096863094288864

    • 19 refugees dead in the devastating fires and escalation of racist violence in Evros, Greece

      While the situation seems to be out of control with fires burning across a large part of Greece, from Evros region to Parnitha in Attica, the tragic human toll currently includes 19 confirmed dead refugees on Evros.

      One refugee was found charred on Monday 21/8 in Lefkimi, Evros, where he was reportedly trapped and died from the fumes. Another 18 refugees, including two children, died yesterday, Tuesday 22/8 in the Dadia forest, where they were also found charred by firefighters.

      At the same time, the fires have destroyed and threaten vast forest and residential areas, many of which have been evacuated. The evacuation of the Alexandroupolis hospital at dawn on Tuesday is characteristic: 65 impatiens, including babies and intubated patients, were transferred to a passenger ferry boat that served as a floating hospital and to the port of Alexandroupolis, in tents. Νursing homes in the city were also evacuated.

      The lack of effective fire protection, prevention and response to the fires is blatant, also due to the severe understaffing – also blatant is the overall inadequacy of the state mechanism. The fires, which burn huge green areas and now also residential areas every year, are a predestined tragedy, to the extent that no effective protection and response policies are implemented.

      At a time when at least 19 refugees are dead, instead of the State assuming its responsibilities, we unfortunately see its representatives obfuscating reality, and in some cases, accepting, if not fomenting, racist discourse and practices. Characteristic is the statement of the Minister of Migration and Asylum Dimitris Kairidis on the deaths that “this tragedy confirms, once again, the dangers of irregular migration”, as well as the respective statement by the Minister of Climate Crisis and Civil Protection, Vassilis Kikilias. At the same time, an attempt is unfolding to collectively incriminate refugees in part of the media, referring to alleged arson and fires emerging on the paths they follow.

      To top it off, we see an escalation of racist violence in Evros, targeting refugees and migrants as allegedly responsible for the fires: yesterday, on Tuesday, a video was released in which a civilian has 13 refugees imprisoned in his truck – he referred to 25 people – and calls for a pogrom against them. After the extent of the incident, he was arrested along with two alleged accomplices without, however, any official information on the fate of the kidnapped refugees. At the same time, many other reports and videos speak of vigilante “militias” and “bounty hunters”, citizens that are called to swoop in against refugees and migrants. Further, members of the parliament appear to foment such practices through their public statements, which include racist language and a “call to action” to citizens in the area.

      This escalation of racist discourse and practices is extremely worrying and cannot be tolerated! The murderous persecution of refugees at the borders and racist “pogroms” must stop now, their victims must be protected, existing incidents must be thoroughly investigated and the perpetrators must be punished, taking into account a potential racist motive. The State must assume its responsibilities and act immediately to identify and rescue people who may be in danger in the region, both from these practices and from the devastating fires. Furthermore, as regards the dead, all the relevant protocols must be followed to identify them, inform their relatives and bury their remains, with respect for the dead and their rights.

      https://rsaegean.org/en/19-refugees-dead-fires-and-escalation-of-racist-violence
      #racisme #violence #violence_raciste

    • Greece: Suspected asylum seekers killed in Evros fires

      Eighteen bodies were found in two different locations in Dadia national park amid forest fires, the Evros fire department reported today.

      Fire fighters have found the charred remains of 18 suspected asylum seekers in the Dadia forest in Evros amid wildfires in Greece that have been raging for the past four days.

      Fire department spokesman Yiannis Artopoios confirmed in a televised address on Tuesday that the bodies were found in two different locations near the Turkish border, one of the most common migration entry points for Syrian and Asian migrants crossing the Evros River from Turkey.

      No local people have been reported missing, so the remains are thought to belong to asylum seekers.

      “We know very quickly if it’s a local or not, because [they] will be reported missing very fast,” forensics anthropologist Jan Bikker, who is working to identify the bodies, told MEE. “If they’re not reported, then most likely it’s an asylum seeker.”

      According to Bikker, Dadia is a common migration route, as it is densely forested, allowing migrants to hide from the Greek authorities who would likely push them back out to sea.

      “The safest way [for them] is through the forest. This is what people do after they cross over the river,” he told MEE.

      “A lot of migrant groups [that] travel [do] not even [travel] on the roads, but in the middle of the forest.”

      Amid soaring temperatures, these routes are also the sites of devastating forest fires.

      “There is always a possibility that someone could have died in one of those fires…and the bodies are never recovered," he said.

      “It’s very, very dangerous terrain…if they go missing, it’s very difficult to trace them."

      While Artopois said that emergency alerts were sent to all mobile phones in the area, according to Bikker, it is unlikely the group would have carried phones or had any signal if they did.

      “Often, they are not able to communicate with the outside world until they reach like a village where there is some internet signal,” he said.
      Struggling to breathe

      The NGO Alarm Phone had reportedly been in contact with two groups of 250 people stranded on different islets of the Evros River for days. Some of them sent videos of the approaching fires with pleas for help: “The fires are getting very close to us now. We need help as soon as possible!"

      “They fear for their lives as the wildfires approach & the air is unbreathable. Their cries for help have remained unanswered by authorities for days,” the NGO tweeted.

      Later, the NGO reported receiving another alert from a group near the town of Soufli. “They tell us one person struggles to breathe. They unable to move due to the nearby fires and worry they will die,” they tweeted.

      Greece has seen a devastating wave of wildfires since July, fuelled by high winds and soaring temperatures. The recent deaths have brought the overall toll to 20. Fifty-three new blazes broke out across the country on Monday.

      For Bikker, who works to trace long-term missing people in the region, the impact of wildfires on migrants is often overlooked.

      “People think of the locals, but it also [impacts] the migrants.” He added: “For many of the people who go missing, we will not find anything…because they get lost in the fires and the remains will never be recovered.”

      Since 2020, civil actors have reported a surge in disappearances and deaths of asylum seekers on the Greek islands.

      When they arrive on the islands, migrants are driven to hiding in forested or mountainous areas in order to evade pushback by the Greek authorities.

      https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/greece-suspected-asylum-seekers-killed-evros-fires

    • Deaths in Greece wildfires highlight the plight of asylum seekers

      Firefighters find 18 burned bodies in Dadia Forest, suspected to be asylum seekers, as wildfires ravage northern Greece.

      The discovery of 18 bodies in the Greek wildfires – thought to be asylum seekers – has prompted new discussion around the plight of those on the move in the country.

      Greek authorities found the remains of 18 people in the national forest of Dadia on Tuesday, in the northeastern Greek region of Evros where the blaze is still raging.

      The group, reportedly made up of two children and 16 adults, was likely trying to flee from the flames, according to the local coroner Pavlos Pavlidis, who said the children were between 10 and 15 years old.

      It was separately reported that the body of a man was found on Monday also presumed to be an asylum seeker.

      Locals have had to abandon homes and livelihoods to escape the fires as villages and even the main hospital in Alexandroupoli, the region’s capital, were evacuated.

      The Evros region shares a land border with Turkey and lies along a well-trodden route for asylum seekers crossing into Europe from Turkey.

      The area is highly monitored by Greek authorities and there have been ongoing reports of illegal and brutal pushbacks of asylum seekers, which authorities adamantly deny.

      Some people who used this route, which consists of swathes of forests, have previously described to Al Jazeera how they have hidden to avoid detection.

      Alarm Phone, an emergency hotline frequently contacted by people on the move in distress, told Al Jazeera they had been in contact with a number of groups of people in the region in recent days who described being threatened by the flames, but said were equally afraid of being pushed back over the border.

      Alarm Phone said the area was essentially a “no-man’s land” for asylum seekers.

      The Greek Ministry of Migration and Asylum expressed “great sadness” on the news of the deaths, but added that “despite the constant and persistent efforts of the Greek authorities to protect the borders and human life, this tragedy confirms, once again, the dangers of irregular immigration”, and denounced “the murderous activity of criminal traffickers”.

      The Civil Protection Ministry also expressed condolences, but added “the unfortunate foreigners, while they were forbidden to be in the forest … and despite multiple 112 messages to Greeks and foreigners in the area, did not leave”.

      It is not known if the group had working mobile phones, understood the language of the messages or knew it was forbidden to be in the forest.

      Two Greeks and one Albanian were arrested on Tuesday after posting a video online of a group of people presumed to be asylum seekers locked in a trailer.

      In the video, the man accused migrants of having started the fires but offered no evidence and none has emerged that this is the case.
      Conspiracy theories

      The Border Violence Monitoring Network (BVMN), a coalition of more than 14 organisations, in a statement with Lena Karamanidou, a noted researcher on Evros, pointed to far-right galvanisation around conspiracy theories that migrants were responsible for the fires.

      They said that figures such as Kyriakos Velopoulos, a member of parliament and leader of the far-right party Hellenic Solution had shared the video of the people locked in the trailer.

      “Yet again, a tragic situation has been manipulated to blame people on the move themselves for their own deaths, and to strengthen links between migration and criminality that has led to the proliferation of mobilised right-wing groups in the region,” the BVMN said, criticising the response of some Greek authorities.

      “Greece’s intense focus on migration has come at the cost of its land and its citizens, with tens of millions of euros poured into high-tech Closed Controlled Access Centres and the Automated Border Surveillance Systems used to ‘prevent entry’ of 2,170 undocumented persons between the 14th and 17th of August, and arrest 29 alleged human traffickers,” they said.

      “Yet, there were few fire-preparedness measures taken for the wildfires that everyone knew were coming, and that have destroyed Greece’s natural landscape and razed homes and livelihoods to the ground,” BVMN added.

      Eftychia Georgiadi, International Rescue Committee’s head of programmes in Greece, told Al Jazeera it was “devastating that at least 18 people have needlessly lost their lives”.

      “Nobody should be forced to seek shelter in the forest and left without adequate protection,” Georgiadi said.

      She said – once confirmed – the deaths “demonstrate the deadly consequences of the EU’s failure to agree on a humane, sustainable asylum system”.

      “This lack of coordinated action leaves people exposed to grave dangers at every step of their journeys in search of protection in Europe,” Georgiadi said, adding it was vital “the EU and its member states uphold the fundamental right to apply for asylum, and create more safe routes so that fewer people are left with no option but to risk their lives on such dangerous journeys”.
      ‘Invisible’

      Alarm Phone told Al Jazeera that asylum seekers moving through the region had become “invisible”, and sent a list of the groups they had lost contact with in recent days as well as a catalogue of reports of pushbacks and violence in the area.

      “Nobody implied that foreigners set the fires on Rhodes one month ago,” they said, “state mechanisms – not just Greek – did everything to evacuate tourists”, and highlighted the difference between how international media focussed heavily on tourists impacted by the fires on Rhodes earlier this summer compared to the muted response now.

      The group told Al Jazeera that climate change added an extra layer of violence to the lives and treatment of those on the move.

      “The comparison between how foreigners are treated during disasters in Greece shows that the right to life is arbitrarily determined based on racist and colonial socioeconomic standards.”

      https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/8/24/deaths-in-greece-wildfires-highlight-the-plight-of-asylum-seekers
      #invisibilité #droit_à_la_vie #touristes #tourisme

    • Update : originally it was reported that 18 died, but now 8 more dead have been added.

      “The first 18 #migrants were found dead near a landslide in the Avanda area , as the Fire Service spokesman said, while the second group was found in the Lefkimmi area”

      https://twitter.com/EleniKonstanto/status/1693983836298776988

      –---
      Φρίκη : 18 οι απανθρακωμένοι μετανάστες μέσα στο δάσος της Δαδιάς - Εγκλωβίστηκαν από τη φωτιά

      18 πτώματα εντοπίστηκαν μέσα στο δάσος της Δαδιάς - Οι μετανάστες βρήκαν φριχτό θάνατο

      Τραγωδία στο Δάσος της Δαδιά. Οπως αναφέρουν οι πληροφορίες, η μεγάλη φωτιά στον Εβρο έχει προκαλέσει τον θάνατο 18 μεταναστών, που εγκλωβίστηκαν μέσα στο δάσος της Διαδιάς. Και υπάρχουν φόβοι ότι ενδεχομένως ο αριθμός θα αυξηθεί. Πάντως η πληροφορορία που μετέδωσε ο Σκάι ότι βρέθηκαν και άλλοι 8 μετανάστες νεκροί στη Λευκίμμη δεν επιβεβαιώθηκε.

      Μέχρι στιγμής έχουν εντοπιστεί 18 πτώματα.

      Σύμφωνα με τα όσα έχουν διαρρεύσει από πηγές της Πυροσβεστικής, μονάδες πυροσβεστών που επιχειρούν στην περιοχή, βρέθηκαν ξαφνικά μπροστά σε ένα αποτρόπαιο θέαμα. Δεκάδες απανθρακωμένα πτώματα μεταναστών, που εγκλωβίστηκαν στην φωτιά μέσα στο δάσος. Τις πληροφορίες επιβεβαιώσε σε έκτακτη ανακοίνωση που έκανε ο εκπρόσωπος της Πυροσβεστικής κ. Αρτοποιός, σημειώνοντας ότι γίνονται ενέργειες μέσω Διεθνών οργανισμών βοήθειας, για την αναγνώριση των θυμάτων.

      Οι 18 μετανάστες βρέθηκαν νεκροί κοντά σε παράπηγμα στην περιοχή του Αβαντα, όπως είπε ο εκπρόσωπος τύπου της Πυροσβεστικής Υπηρεσίας.

      « Στην πυρκαγιά της Αλεξανδρούπολης, σε επιτόπιο έλεγχο από στελέχη της Πυροσβεστικής στην ευρύτερη περιοχή του Άβαντα εντοπίστηκαν οι σωροί 18 ατόμων πλησίον παραπήγματος. Με δεδομένο ότι από τις γύρω περιοχές δεν έχει υπάρξει καμία δήλωση εξαφάνισης ή αγνοουμένων κατοίκων διερευνάται το ενδεχόμενο να πρόκειται για ανθρώπους που εισήλθαν παράτυπα στη χώρα.

      Υπενθυμίζεται ότι από χθες είχαν σταλεί μηνύματα 112 εκκένωσης της ευρύτερης περιοχής. Σημειώνεται ότι, τα μηνύματα μεταδίδονται και σε κινητά από ξένα δίκτυα που βρίσκονται στην περιοχή. Ήδη από το αρχηγείο της ελληνικής αστυνομίας έχει ενεργοποιηθεί η ομάδας αναγνώρισης θυμάτων καταστροφών. Οι έρευνες σε όλο το μήκος της περιοχής που εκδηλώθηκε και βρίσκεται σε εξέλιξη η πυρκαγιά, συνεχίζονται ».

      https://www.thetoc.gr/koinwnia/best-of-internet/plirofories-gia-dekades-apanthrakomenous-metanastes-mesa-sto-dasos-tis-dadias

    • Greece: Evros wildfire dead are victims of ‘two great injustices of our times’

      Reacting to the deaths of 19 people, likely migrants and refugees, on 21 and 22 August in fires affecting the Evros region, Northern Greece, Adriana Tidona, migration researcher at Amnesty International said:

      “The 19 people killed by wildfires in northern Greece appear to be victims of two great injustices of our times. On the one hand, catastrophic climate change, which governments are failing to address and is worsening the scale of wildfires worldwide as rising temperatures lead to longer and more destructive fire seasons. On the other hand, the lack of access to safe and legal routes for some people on the move, and the persistence of migration management policies predicated on racialized exclusion and deadly deterrence, including racist border violence.

      “Though the identities of the people killed by the fires are not known, it seems likely that they were migrants and refugees who had recently crossed the border into Greece. Because of the lack of access to safe and legal routes for people trying to reach Europe, migrants and refugees increasingly use the land borders in the Evros region to cross irregularly from Turkey into Greece. Authorities there have systematically responded with unlawful forced returns at the border, denial of the right to seek asylum and violence.

      “The fires have fuelled racist rhetoric and abuses against migrants and refugees. On his Facebook account, Paraschos Christou Papadakis, an ultra-nationalist Greek MP, racist language to claim that fires had been started by migrants and refugees. A private individual was arrested, after he abducted a group of migrants and refugees in his vehicle and incited others to do the same, uploading a video of his actions online.

      “Alarm Phone, an NGO, has reported that hundreds of refugees and migrants are stranded in different areas of Evros while fires blaze in the region. Amnesty International calls on the Greek authorities to urgently evacuate all those stranded in the Evros region and who are unable to move safely due to fires and to ensure that refugees and migrants who have entered into Greece irregularly can seek asylum and are not illegally forcibly returned at the border. The Greek authorities must publicly condemn and investigate any act of racist violence or speech or incitement to such behaviours, including on the part of politicians.”

      https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/08/greece-evros-wildfire-dead-are-victims-of-two-great-injustices-of-our-times
      #injustice #climat #changement_climatique #exclusion #exclusion_raciale

    • Reçu via la mailing-letter Migreurop, de Eirini Markidi, 23.08.2023

      https://hellas.postsen.com/local/475765/Fire-in-Evros--Locked-immigrants-in-a-truck-trailer-and-calls-for-a-

      He kidnapped and forcibly locked migrants and refugees in a truck, spewing his racist venom on live broadcast

      Unthinkable situations unfold in streets of Alexandroupolis. While he rages for the fourth day the fiery fronta man broadcast and even to live broadcast video on social media, in which it has been locked immigrants and refugees in truck trailers and in his racist delusion, he mentions that he has “25 tracks inside the trailer”.

      This is a resident of the area, who essentially forcibly kidnaps refugees and immigrants in a truck, spreading the his racist poison. In fact, he calls others to organize and follow these inhumane practices, because as he says about the refugees “they will burn us.”

      Characteristically, in his racist delirium he states “We are sleeping! A ride from Chili to Scopo Volis I have loaded 25 pieces I have here in the trailer. Open up a little. 25 pieces. Open the wire a little. They will burn us…, they will burn us. Oops, see? 215 pieces. It’s filled the whole mountain, guys. The whole mountain is full. They are sworn, they are sworn to burn us. Full of holly. Full of holly, everywhere, that’s what I’m telling you guys. Get organized, let’s all go out and collect them. They will burn us, that’s all I’m telling you.”

      In fact, some of the comments under the video, which are full of racism and hatred, make a sad impression. Indicatively, some users wrote to him “Turn off the camera and give pain”“Kapstous”, “At sea with the trailer”, cleaning Apostoli etc.

      video (without subs): https://youtu.be/LxMugRHvXP0

      https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/greece-detains-man-calling-migrants-be-rounded-up-police-2023-08-23

      August 23, 2023

      THENS, Aug 23 (Reuters) - Greek police said they had detained a man who held migrants in a trailer and called on citizens to “go out and round up” migrants he accuses of setting wildfires in Greece.

      The man was detained after a video posted on social media showed a jeep pulling a trailer along a dirt road in northern Greece, and he can be heard asking another person to open its doors. Two migrant men can be seen crammed inside the trailer.

      “Get organised, let’s all go out and round them up. They will burn us...,” the man, who police said is a foreign national, can be heard saying in Greek in the video.

      In a statement late on Tuesday, police said the man, who owns the vehicle, had illegally detained 13 Syrian and Pakistani migrants. Two Greek nationals who allegedly helped him were also arrested.

      The three were expected to appear before a prosecutor on Wednesday, after which it will be decided if they are formally arrested and charged.

      A police official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the 13 migrants had also been detained for entering the country illegally.

      The semi-official state news agency ANA said a Supreme Court prosecutor has ordered an investigation into the video. In a document published by ANA, the prosecutor is quoted as saying: “Phenomena of racist violence against immigrants are worrying.”

      She described the video as “a racist delirium of violence, accusing immigrants of ’burning us’ and inciting others to racist pogroms, calling on them to organise and imitate him”.

      Major wildfires have broken out in Greece in recent days, with the biggest front in the northern region of Evros bordering Turkey, from where migrants typically cross into Greece via the river separating the two countries.

      The burned bodies of 18 people, believed to be migrants, were found in a rural area in the region on Tuesday.

      Reporting by Karolina Tagaris and Lefteris Papadimas, editing by Mark Heinrich

    • Reçu via la mailing-list Migreurop, de Vicky Skoumbi, 25.08.2023

      Le comble de l’horreur : les 13 migrants kidnappés par trois hommes faisant partie d’un réseau constitué de chasseurs de migrants non seulement ont subi l’expérience atroce et traumatisante étant traité comme des animaux, retenus à 13 dans un cagot pour chiens, mais ils n’ont pas été vraiment libérés par la police mais arrêtés. Ils sont accusés d’avoir fabriqué des mécanismes incendiaires et doivent maintenant faire face à des charges très lourdes, le tout sur la foi des témoignages de leurs …kidnappeurs ! Les charges contre ces 13 personnes migrantes sont très lourdes : tentative d’incendie criminel mettant en danger la vie d’autrui, fabrication et possession d’explosifs et entrée illégale au territoire L’avocat de l’homme qui a monté la vidéo où il se vantait d’avoir attrapé « 25 pièces » lors de sa patrouille, soutient que son client les avait surpris à essayer de mettre le feu par des mécanismes incendiaires artisanaux aux abords du tissu urbain et que lui-même et ses deux complices étaient désarmés, tandis que les 13 migrants –les 25 proies de la chasse au "clandestin" étaient finalement 13 syriens et pakistanais- avaient des armes blanches.

      Comment trois individus désarmés arrivent à capturer et à enfermer dans une remorque 13 personnes armées de couteaux, c’est sans doute une question qui n’a pas trop préoccupé le juge d’instruction. Car, c’est bien sur la foi de ce témoignage incroyable et qui plus est, en flagrante contradiction avec la vidéo que l’homme qui les avait capturés avait tournée et de ses complices, que les 13 migrants voient leur cauchemar continuer et même s’aggraver. Enfin, quel intérêt auraient ces personnes migrantes qui se tiennent au loin d’endroits habités, en tentant de passer inaperçues au risque d’être piégées par le feu, de s’exposer à la proximité d’une ville pour y mettre le feu avec un mécanisme incendiaire ?

      Tout cela arrive à un moment où des députés locaux, dont un de la Nouvelle Démocratie au pouvoir actuellement, appellent la population à se défendre contre les étrangers incendiaires, tandis que des chefs locaux de milices paramilitaires constituées des honnêtes gens rassemblent des foules qu’ils haranguent afin qu’elles prennent la situation en main, et ceci au vu et au su de tous.

      Il est évident que les 13 victimes de ce pogrom ont besoin en toute urgence de notre soutien et surtout d’une assistance juridique à la hauteur des risques qu’ils encourent, avec des charges si lourdes, Y-aurait-il des avocats ou des ONG –HIAS, GCR etc- en mesure de fournir une aide immédiate et efficace à ces 13 victimes de violences et de traitements inhumains qui doivent maintenant se défendre devant un tribunal grec ?

      Ci-dessous les sources d’information en anglais

      https://www.efsyn.gr/ellada/koinonia/401767_katigoroyn-toys-13-gia-emprismo-me-martyres-toys-apagogeis-toys

      They accuse the "13" [migrants, victims of kidnapping] of arson, with their captors as witnesses

      24.08.23 16:02

      efsyn. gr

      The public prosecutor of Alexandroupolis decided to impeach the uninvited sheriffs who locked 13 refugees and immigrants in a cart. According to today’s proposal from the Prosecutor, the indictment attributed to them concerns incitement to commit crimes, violence or discord with racial motives in combination with robbery with racial motives together and complicity and exposure to danger, while the foreign owner of the vehicle that appears in a video pulling the trailer is also charged with violating the law on personal data.

      As far as the 13 immigrants and refugees are concerned, they are charged with attempted arson endangering human life, manufacturing and possession of explosives and illegal entry. But it is a referral that raises reasonable questions, as according to information the charge against them arose from the testimonies of their alleged captors. Therefore, the question arises as to how reliable the accusation of attempted arson is when the arrest of the alleged arsonists was not made by the police authorities themselves, but by those who launched the pogrom against the refugees who have an interest in establishing the case of arson to make their trial a more favorable position. Even according to the statement of the lawyer of the 45-year-old Albanian who speaks in the shameful video, the immigrants were holding knives in their hands, while he was not armed, yet he managed to trap them inside the closed cart. How is it possible for three unarmed men to capture 13 armed and dangerous arsonists ?

      Even more surprising is the fact that the three men claimed that they called the police to hand over the alleged arsonists around 5.30 pm and that they finally handed over the 13 men a few minutes later when the police arrived at the scene, to whom they also handed over the alleged incendiary device. Consequently, there is also a significant time gap between the statements that talk about the police being called at the time of the "arrest" of the immigrants at 17.30 and the arrest of the three men which took place late at night after the reactions that caused the release of the video. According to the police, the 13 immigrants were found in the 45-year-old’s cart at the moment they arrested him, so how did they surrender to them at 5:30 p.m.?

      https://english.elpais.com/international/2023-08-24/no-guns-no-knives-civilian-militias-hunting-migrants-on-greek-border

      ‘No guns, no knives :’ Civilian militias ‘hunting’ migrants on Greek border amid devastating wildfires

      The Supreme Court has ordered an investigation into what it terms an ‘alarming phenomena of violence’ against immigrants and incitement to ‘racist pogroms’

      ANDRÉS MOURENZALOLA HIERRO

      Istanbul / Madrid - AUG 24, 2023 - 12:47 CEST

      The Greek province of Evros, where at least 18 migrants were found burned to death Tuesday in a wave of wildfires ravaging the country, was already a hell on earth for those fleeing their countries in search of a better life in Europe. For more than a decade, countless cases of abuses and violations of the most basic rights against people attempting to cross the territory — where the homonymous river serves as a natural border between Greece and Turkey — have been reported. Beatings, forced deportations, rapes, and illegal detentions have been recorded by human rights organizations. But if the situation for people attempting to reach EU territory was already dangerous, now it has become considerably worse : since the most recent fire broke out last Saturday, groups of local residents have organized themselves into militias to hunt down migrants. It is not the first time such practices have been witnessed, but tensions have been stoked further by the popular belief that they are to blame for the fires.

      The chief prosecutor of the Greek Supreme Court, Georgia Adilini, on Wednesday ordered a double investigation to look for possible evidence of “an organized plan” to provoke the fire — although the police later stated that it had been caused by lightning — and to discover more details about the “alarming phenomena of violence” against migrants and incitements to “racist pogroms.”

      These investigations have arisen following a video shared on social networks on Tuesday in which a man triumphantly displays the result of what he considers his hunting booty. The man, who is also the alleged author of the recording, opens the hatch of a trailer attached to a van to display an undetermined number of captured men looking confusedly at the camera. Their captor refers to these people as “pieces,” claims there are 25 of them and that he has “hunted them down” because they are responsible for the fires. “The mountains are full of these,” he adds.

      “Part of the population thinks that the fires are the fault of the migrants and that’s why they chase them,” explains Lefteris Papayannakis, director of the Greek Institute for Refugees, in an interview with EL PAÍS. “They function as a militia ; they arrest them on their own account and use violence against them.”

      The owner of the vehicle and suspected author of the video, a resident of the province of Albanian origin, and two other people of Greek nationality were arrested Wednesday. But Vassilis Kerasiotis, director of the NGO HIAS Greece and a lawyer specializing in migration, says that these militias are far from a one-off phenomenon and are organized with absolute impunity because the authorities prefer to look the other way. “There is tolerance on the part of the authorities, that’s why they feel they can freely publicize these criminal acts,” he adds. “Obviously, when a criminal act occurs, the authorities must react. That’s why they have arrested them,” he insists.

      “It’s frightening how openly accepted hostility against migrants is in a certain part of society,” says a spokesman for Alarm Phone, an organization dedicated to receiving messages from migrants in distress throughout the Mediterranean area and passing them on to the relevant authorities.

      Appeals to chase and capture migrants are spread through messages on social networks such as Facebook, X or TikTok. The video of the Albanian citizen showing the result of his “hunt” was uploaded to a channel on the Viber messaging network, with 240 members. Another recording released Wednesday shows a man dressed in military attire instructing several dozen residents of Evros to organize another pogrom. “Whoever can, start patrolling [...] But I’m going to ask you, no guns, no knives, or you’re going to get in trouble. It’s illegal. You will be arrested,” he says.

      Before the video of the illegally detained migrants appeared, Paris Papadakis, deputy of the far-right Greek Solution party for the province of Evros, published another inflammatory tirade in which he accused the migrants of “obstructing the work of firefighters” and of starting the blaze.

      Several left-wing MPs have called for Papadakis to be investigated by the Greek Parliament’s Ethics Committee. In his publication, the far-right MP described the situation as a “war” and called on his fellow citizens to organize raids to “arrest” illegal migrants “in the same way as in March 2020,” during the Greek-Turkish border crisis, when the government of Ankara facilitated the arrival of tens of thousands of migrants on the frontier with Evros. At that time, some locals organized themselves into militias to assist the police and the Greek Army in their defense of the border.

      Hiding for fear of deportations

      Evros was the main entry route to Greece and Europe until 2015 and 2016, when migrants started using boats to reach Aegean islands such as Chios or Lesbos. However, the transit of refugees has never stopped. So far in 2023, around 3,700 migrants have entered Greece via the land route, compared to some 6,000 in total in 2022, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). It is possible that the numbers of those who have made it into Greek territory via Evros is in fact much higher. “More than 250,000 illegal entries were prevented at the Evros border during 2022,” the Ministry of Citizen Protection said in a statement. Some of that number probably crossed the border but were illegally deported by the Greek authorities, a very common practice in the area despite the fact that it violates both Hellenic and European laws. Various NGOs and human rights organizations have collected testimonies and evidence of about 400 such incidents during the last six years, in which some 20,000 migrants were illegally deported, in most cases with violent methods and having been stripped of their money and belongings.

      Between Tuesday and Wednesday, Alarm Phone passed on alerts about four groups comprising hundreds people trapped in the area affected by the wildfires : three of them on islets in the river and another in a wooded area near the town of Sufi. “The fact that in the face of a fire people are hiding in the forest instead of trying to get to safety gives an idea of the need they feel to hide for fear of deportations,” Vassilis points out.

      The Alarm Phone spokesman explains that the authorities contacted them and assured them that they had not found anyone at the indicated points. The organization also adds that on Wednesday, contact was lost with two of the four groups and that only the two larger ones, stranded on islets, remained in contact : one, of about 250 people, had been surrounded by the police. Another, of about 100 people trapped on an islet near the town of Lagina, was rounded up by officers and taken to a detention center. “We cannot say much more about the situation [of the groups], but previously, when the authorities claim they cannot find them, what they do is to attack the migrants and return them illegally to Turkey. It’s an excuse they often use,” says Vassilis.

      Groups of civilians hunting for migrants is yet another threat that adds to the already treacherous conditions they face when crossing the border. The route involves a militarized zone where no one is permitted to enter, not even humanitarian aid organizations. They use the dense forests to hide for indeterminate periods of time during which they have no access to food, sanitation, or any other basic necessity. “There is no assistance there. It is almost impossible to help them when they are in hiding. Sometimes they take food with them, sometimes they go somewhere nearby to look for it,” says Lefteris Papayannakis of the Greek Refugee Institute. “We know that sometimes the Turks give them food while forcing them to cross, or give them access to power to charge their phones.”

      Papayannakis adds that road accidents involving vehicles carrying migrants are frequent. “They are trafficked in cabs or vans to the cities. It is illegal, so sometimes the traffickers go very fast, in the wrong direction... We know of people who have died or been seriously injured because they were involved in an accident.”

      For his part, the Minister of Climate Crisis and Civil Protection, Vassilis Kikilias, has attributed the death of migrants to not having followed the evacuation orders that are sent automatically, in Greek and English, to all cellphones in the affected area : “In Evros there have been 15 fire outbreaks at the same time, which have joined together to form a huge fire,” read one. Satellite images show an immense area in flames, with a front reaching 20 kilometers (12.5 miles) and advancing “uncontrollably” in several directions. The dense smoke from this large fire, together with that of other fronts in Greece, has reached the islands of Sicily and Malta, more than a 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) away, and now covers 80% of Greek territory. Kerasiotis, of HIAS, takes a different view of the tragedy : “The cause of these 18 deaths is a combination of the absence of legal and safe entry procedures on Greek and European territory, together with the fact that potential asylum seekers are afraid of being illegally returned to Turkey.”

    • NGO umbrella group condemns self-proclaimed ‘militia’ groups

      An umbrella group comprising 55 non-governmental organizations and civil society bodies across Greece has condemned recent incidents involving civilian self-proclaimed “militia” groups engaging in unlawful acts of violence against refugees and migrants.

      In an “alarming incident” in the Evros region, “citizens appeared to threaten and illegally detain a group of migrants and refugees inside a trailer, while using racist and derogatory language and inciting similar acts of violence,” the Racist Violence Recording Network said, in statement issued through the UNHCR in Greece.

      “The incident came to light through a relevant video and subsequent articles, which triggered numerous racist comments. These events coincide with the tragic news of discovering dead people, reportedly refugees and migrants, in the Evros region due to the fires.”

      The network said it was pleased to note “that the authorities have included the investigation of racist motive” under the relevant article of the Penal Code.

      The network also expresses “serious concern regarding the deteriorating climate against refugees and migrants in the political and public discourse, which is even expressed by representatives of parties in the Greek Parliament, in light of the aforementioned incidents.”

      “Such phenomena normalize, encourage, and ultimately escalate racist reactions, firstly in the media and social media, that sometimes result in attacks on the street, with the clear risk of irreparably disrupting social cohesion,” it said.

      Coordinated by the Greek National Commission for Human Rights and UNHCR in Greece, the network comprises 55 non-governmental organizations and civil society bodies, as well as the Greek Ombudsman and the Migrant Integration Council of the Municipality of Athens as observers.

      https://www.ekathimerini.com/news/1218541/ngo-umbrella-group-condemns-self-proclaimed-militia-groups

      #milice #milices

    • En Grèce, les feux attisent des propos et des actes racistes

      A la frontière gréco-turque, les migrants sont tenus pour responsables des incendies qui brûlent la forêt depuis six jours par des groupes d’habitants, qui s’organisent pour les chasser.

      Avec plus de 73 000 hectares brûlés en six jours, les incendies autour d’#Alexandroupoli, ville frontalière avec la Turquie, dans le nord-est de la Grèce, sont les feux les plus dévastateurs jamais enregistrés dans l’Union européenne. Devant des paysages de désolation, la tristesse laisse place depuis deux jours à la rage, voire à la haine envers des boucs émissaires tout trouvés, des migrants, désignés comme responsables des départs de feux par des groupes d’extrême droite agissant dans la région.

      Mercredi 23 août, 19 personnes (dont deux enfants, selon le médecin légiste), très probablement des migrants, selon les autorités, qui avaient traversé le fleuve Evros séparant la Grèce et la Turquie, ont été retrouvées mortes. Quelques heures après cette annonce, des rumeurs alimentées par des groupuscules d’extrême droite circulaient sur les réseaux sociaux : des migrants auraient été à l’origine des feux, il ne s’agirait pas d’un hasard si les incendies ont lieu sur la route empruntée par les exilés. S’ensuit une vidéo diffusée sur Facebook par un homme qui montre un groupe de migrants enfermés dans la remorque de son véhicule. « J’ai chargé 25 morceaux », dit-il fièrement. « Ils vont nous brûler !(…) Organisez-vous tous pour les ramasser ! » , ajoute-t-il.

      Sous la publication, un internaute commente : « Jette-les dans le feu ! » Les propos, repris par les médias grecs, ont choqué le pays et le ministre de la protection du citoyen, Yannis Oikonomou, a réagi : « La Grèce est un Etat de droit, doté de solides acquis démocratiques et d’une tradition humanitaire. Faire justice par soi-même ne peut être toléré. » Le propriétaire de la voiture et deux de ses complices ont été interpellés et ont été inculpés pour « enlèvement à caractère raciste et mise en danger de la vie d’autrui ». Treize demandeurs d’asile, syriens et pakistanais, sont eux aussi détenus, accusés d’être entrés illégalement sur le territoire grec et d’avoir été non intentionnellement à l’origine de départs de feux. Tous doivent être présentés devant la justice vendredi.

      Depuis mardi, plusieurs groupes d’hommes de la région frontalière de l’Evros, s’organisent pour patrouiller et débusquer ceux qu’ils appellent les « clandestins ». Dans une vidéo, diffusée par le média en ligne The Press Project, un homme en treillis militaire s’adresse à la foule : « Commencez à patrouiller, prenez toutes les informations nécessaires… Mais s’il vous plaît, pas d’armes, pas de couteaux sur vous, vous allez avoir des problèmes ! Les autorités ne nous laissent pas faire, même si nous faisons face à une guerre hybride ! »

      « Le climat est effrayant ! »

      Thanassis Mananas, un journaliste local, le confirme : « Autour d’Alexandroupoli, des patrouilles de civils s’organisent pour attraper des migrants (…).Ils échangent sur des groupes Viber ou WhatsApp et appellent clairement à des actes violents. Plusieurs centaines de personnes se regroupent et le climat est effrayant ! », confie le jeune homme.

      Les appels à la haine sont relayés par des députés d’extrême droite, notamment ceux du petit parti Solution grecque, qui a recueilli 8,8 % dans le nome de l’Evros aux élections législatives, en juin. Paraschou Papadakis, un avocat originaire d’Alexandroupoli et député de ce parti, est bien connu dans la région. « J’ai des informations sérieuses sur des clandestins qui dérangent le travail des pilotes [des Canadair]. Il faut passer à l’action ! (…) Nous avons une guerre, Messieurs ! », écrit-il sur son compte Facebook. Le député s’adresse aux membres de l’Ainisio Delta, l’association des propriétaires de cabanes de la région du delta de l’Evros, qui, fin février-début mars 2020, avaient coopéré avec la police et l’armée pour empêcher le passage de milliers de migrants, incités par le président turc, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, à prendre le chemin de l’Europe.

      En février 2020, dans le village de Poros, le maire, Athanassios Pemoussis, confiait au Monde que « la démonstration de force » des agriculteurs qui avaient quadrillé le fleuve de l’Evros avec des tracteurs avait été efficace. Aujourd’hui, il assure que « les patrouilles n’ont plus lieu, mais que les arrivées de migrants ont repris de plus belle » .

      Lena Karamanidou, une chercheuse spécialisée sur la question migratoire, estime que « les feux ont été instrumentalisés par ces groupes d’extrême droite, mais les phénomènes de violence et de chasse aux migrants ne sont pas nouveaux » . En 2020, « ces hommes ont été valorisés, dépeints par les médias grecs comme des héros qui défendent les frontières de la Grèce et de l’Europe. Les hommes politiques, dont le premier ministre, leur ont rendu visite en les remerciant pour leur action et ils jouissent d’une grande impunité, puisqu’ils côtoient la police et les gardes-frontières quotidiennement ! » , explique-t-elle.

      Plusieurs ONG qui ont déjà dénoncé les refoulements illégaux de migrants à la frontière, accompagnés de vols, de violences et d’humiliations, s’inquiètent du sort des centaines d’exilés qui seraient actuellement bloqués à la frontière avec les feux. Adriana Tidona, chercheuse à Amnesty International, appelle « les autorités grecques à évacuer de toute urgence toutes les personnes bloquées dans la région d’Evros (…) , et à enquêter sur tout acte de violence raciste ou tout discours incitant à de tels comportements, y compris de la part d’hommes politiques ».

      https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2023/08/25/en-grece-les-feux-attisent-des-propos-et-des-actes-racistes_6186488_3210.htm

    • Greek wildfires spur anti-migrant sentiment

      As Greece was hit by wave after wave of wildfires this week, asylum-seekers found themselves at the receiving end of several allegations they started fires, leading to an anti-migrant frenzy online.

      At least two news reports implicating migrants were soon denied.

      The verbal assault intensified after a group of 13 Pakistani and Syrian men were accused by locals of being caught red-handed trying to light a fire outside the city of Alexandroupoli, in the Evros region bordering Turkey.

      One of the locals on Tuesday posted a live Facebook video showing the migrants stacked in a trailer, boasting that he had caught them for trying to “burn us.”

      “Don’t show them... burn them,” another user commented on the feed.

      The 45-year-old man was arrested alongside two alleged accomplices, with authorities insisting that “vigilantism” will not be tolerated.

      The three detainees have been charged with inciting racist violence. The migrants were charged by a prosecutor in Alexandroupoli with illegal entry and attempted arson.

      But a government source told Kathimerini daily that the evidence so far suggested migrants could more likely be linked to accidental arson by making campfires, rather than premeditated.

      A picture of the alleged arson device posted on social media showed two car tyres crammed with styrofoam and wood.

      The 45-year-old caught for detaining the migrants — dubbed the “Evros sheriff” by Greek media — was placed under house arrest Friday.

      The man, who lives in the area after emigrating from Albania, claimed that he intervened after seeing the migrants attempting to light the device in bushes near a supermarket.

      Heightened fears in the area have also given rise to media misinformation.

      An Evros news portal on Tuesday said that 20 migrants had been arrested outside Alexandroupoli after exchanging gunfire with police.

      Authorities later denied this.

      Similarly, national TV station Open on Wednesday issued a correction after erroneously reporting that two migrants had been caught lighting a fire in the neighbouring region of Rodopi.

      Northern Greece has been engulfed in a mega fire that originally broke out Saturday and required over 14,000 evacuations, including at a local hospital.

      Lightning sparked the fire, according to Alexandroupoli’s mayor Giannis Zamboukis.

      By Thursday, the various fronts had merged into a line stretching over 15 kilometres (nine miles), burning over 60,000 hectares (148,000 acres) of agricultural land and forest.

      The area is just a few kilometres from the Turkish border. Migrant crossings aided by smugglers occur on a regular basis.

      In 2020, tens of thousands of migrants tried to break through this remote northeastern area, clashing for days with Greek security forces.

      Work on extending a 37.5-kilometre (23-mile) steel barrier to block the path is to be completed by the end of the year.

      After the first fires broke out Saturday near Alexandroupoli, pictures and videos have been posted on social media claiming to show makeshift arson devices created by migrants crossing the border with Turkey.
      ’They want to destroy us’

      Anti-migrant sentiment is strong in Greek border areas, where locals accuse asylum seekers of stealing and say reckless driving by smugglers poses a serious traffic risk.

      “I am absolutely convinced that the fires were caused by migrants,” Evros resident Christos Paschalakis told AFP.

      “They burn us, they steal from us, they kill us in road accidents,” he said.

      “I have no doubt that the forest fire was started by migrants,” said Vangelis Rallis, a 70-year-old retired logger from Dadia, a village near a key national park that also burned last year.

      “They burned it last year, and this year they returned to finish the job. They may have even been paid to do it. They want to destroy us,” he said.

      The issue also sparked political controversy this week after Kyriakos Velopoulos, the leader of nationalist party Greek Solution, joined the attacks on migrants and praised the man arrested for illegally detaining them.

      An MP for Velopoulos, Paris Papadakis, also called on locals to “take measures” as migrants were allegedly “obstructing” fire-fighting plane pilots.

      “We are at war,” Papadakis said in a Facebook post.

      In national elections in June, Velopoulos’ party and two other far-right groups posted their highest ratings in northern Greece.

      In the Evros region, Greek Solution scored nearly nine percent of the vote.
      Wildfire victims

      Of the 20 people killed in this week’s fires, it is believed 19 were migrants.

      One group of 18, including two children, was found Tuesday near a village 38 kilometres (24 miles) from the Turkish border.

      Another migrant was found dead in the area of Lefkimmi near the Turkish border a day earlier.
      Of the 20 people killed in this week’s fires, it is believed 19 were migrants

      The head of Evros’ border guards, Valandis Gialamas, told AFP he expects more bodies of migrants to be found, as crossings from Turkey have increased in recent days.

      Amnesty International on Wednesday called on Greece to “urgently evacuate all those stranded in the Evros region and who are unable to move safely due to fires, and to ensure that refugees and migrants who have entered into Greece irregularly can seek asylum and are not illegally forcibly returned at the border.”

      https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20230825-greek-wildfires-spur-anti-migrant-sentiment

    • Reçu via la mailing-list Migreurop, de Vicky Skoumbi, 25.08.2023:

      Tandis que les trois auteurs de séquestration de 13 personnes migrantes sont libres de rentrer chez eux assignés à domicile par le procureur et le juge d’instruction, leurs victimes sont toujours en détention et doivent se présenter au juge d’instruction ce lundi
      Bref le signal à la société locale est claire: impunité de chasseurs de tête de migrants et pénalisation des victimes
      En même temps; Le parc National de Dadia, détruit en très grande partie par le feu, ne cesse de révéler de personnes migrantes et réfugiées qui ont trouvé une mort atroce dans leur effort de rester cachées pour éviter un refoulement vers la Turquie. Jusqu’aujourd’hui il y a au moins 20 personnes dont deux enfants qui ont connu ce sort; mais il devrait y avoir plus voire beaucoup plus qui ont été piégés par le feu dans la forêt

      –---

      Charred body found in Dadia forest; number of migrants burned in Evros rises to 20: https://www.keeptalkinggreece.com/2023/08/25/migrants-burned-dadia-evros

      August 25, 2023

      Τhe body of one more person has been found charred in the forest of Dadia in Evros, north-eastern Greece. The fire victim was most possible a migrant, raising the number of migrants who lost their lives in the wildfires to 20.

      The body was found with burn injured in the area of Lefkimmi on late Thursday afternoon, at the point where the destructive and deadly fire in Evros passed through and where another migrant was found charred on on Monday, August 21, 2023.

      On Tuesday, August 22, the bodies of 18 migrants were found charred in the forest of Dadia. Among the dead were also two children.

      Speaking to Reuters news agency, coroner Pavlos Pavlidis said that one group of seven to eight bodies were found huddled together in what appeared to be a final embrace. Others were buried in the wreckage of a shelter destroyed by the flames.

      “They realized, at the last moment, that the end was coming, it was a desperate attempt to protect themselves,” Pavlidis said.

      DNA samples have been taken form the bodies in an effort to identify them and have an answer to relatives who may seek them.

      The fire in Dadia has been raging since beginning of the week.

      Spokesperson of the Fire Service, Giannis Artopoios, said on Friday that two suspects of arson are being sought, while investigation being carried out in depth.

    • “Free without restrictive conditions for the charges of attempted arson & possession of incendiary materials & incendiary device, 4 Pakistani nationals were released.” Racist motivated vigilante accusations against 13 #Evros #migrants are falling apart!

      https://twitter.com/EleniKonstanto/status/1695545622147858504

      –---

      Ελεύθεροι οι 4 Πακιστανοί – Μόνο οι « σερίφηδες » είδαν εμπρηστικό μηχανισμό

      Αρκετές αντιφάσεις ως προς τον χειρισμό της υπόθεσης απ’ τις διωκτικές αρχές εντοπίζει ο έγκριτος νομικός Θανάσης Καμπαγιάννης. O ισχυρισμός περί « αυτοσχέδιου εμπρηστικού μηχανισμού » βασίζεται αποκλειστικά στον λόγο των τριών κατηγορουμένων για αρπαγή.

      Ελεύθεροι χωρίς περιοριστικούς όρους για τις κατηγορίες της απόπειρας εμπρησμού και κατοχής εμπρηστικών υλών και εμπρηστικού μηχανισμού, αφέθηκαν οι τέσσερις υπήκοοι Πακιστάν, έπειτα από πολύωρη διαδικασία, η οποία έλαβε τέλος με τη σύμφωνη γνώμη εισαγγελέα και ανακρίτριας.

      Όσον αφορά τους υπόλοιπους εννέα που βρέθηκαν στο « κλουβί » των αυτόκλητων σερίφηδων της περιοχής θα απολογηθούν τη Δευτέρα (28/08).

      Στο μεταξύ, σύμφωνα με πληροφορίες, η ανακρίτρια διέταξε ιατροδικαστική εξέταση για τους « 13 » καθώς φαίνεται πως έχουν τραύματα που τα προκάλεσε -όπως λένε- ο 45χρονος κατηγορούμενος για διέγερση και διάπραξη εγκλημάτων, βιαιοπραγίες και αρπαγή με ρατσιστικά κίνητρα από κοινού και κατά συναυτουργία, έκθεση σε κίνδυνο και για παράβαση της νομοθεσίας περί προσωπικών δεδομένων.

      Αντιφάσεις

      Για την υπόθεση που έχει ξυπνήσει τα δημοκρατικά αντανακλαστικά αρκετού κόσμου τοποθέτηθηκε ο γνωστός δικηγόρος Θανάσης Καμπαγιάννης, που επισημαίνει αρκετές αντιφάσεις ως προς τον χειρισμό της υπόθεσης απ’ τις διωκτικές αρχές.

      - Ένα απ’ τα σημεία που τονίζει είναι ότι τα θύματα αρπαγής δεν κλήθηκαν να καταθέσουν ως μάρτυρες στο πλαίσιο της προανάκρισης, ενώ δύο φαίνεται να κατέθεσαν στην ανακρίτρια.

      – Η μόνη περίπτωση που μέχρις στιγμής ακούστηκε η φωνή των προσφύγων είναι η έγγραφη δήλωση παράστασης υποστήριξης της κατηγορίας από πλευράς ενός 24χρονου Σύριου πρόσφυγα, με επιμέλεια των εξουσιοδοτημένων δικηγόρων του, Κατερίνας Γεωργιάδου και Γιάννη Πατζανακίδη, που μετέβησαν χτες στο κρατητήριο του Αστυνομικού Τμήματος Φερών και σήμερα στο Δικαστικό Μέγαρο Αλεξανδρούπολης, σημειώνει.

      - Ένα δεύτερο στοιχείο που υπογραμμίζει ο κ. Καμπαγιάννης είναι ότι ενώ ζητήθηκε η κατάσχεση των κινητών τηλεφώνων των τριών κατηγορούμενων δραστών για να διαπιστωθούν οι συνεννοήσεις και οι κινήσεις τους, ακόμα δεν έχει διαταχθεί η κατάσχεση.

      – Το τρίτο στοιχείο που υπογραμμίζει είναι ότι η η δίωξη στους μετανάστες για απόπειρα εμπρησμού βασίζεται αποκλειστικά και μόνο στις καταθέσεις των τριών δραστών της κακουργηματικής αρπαγή, με την επισήμανση ότι στην περίπτωση αυτή οι προανακριτικοί υπάλληλοι αστυνομικοί μερίμνησαν να λάβουν μαρτυρικές καταθέσεις.

      - Το τέταρτο στοιχείο είναι πως ο αστυνομικός που κατέθεσε στην προανάκριση, προσήλθε όταν οι 13 πρόσφυγες ήταν ήδη κλειδωμένοι στο κλουβί, οπότε ο ισχυρισμός περί “αυτοσχέδιου εμπρηστικού μηχανισμού” γύρω από τον οποίο βρέθηκαν οι 13 πρόσφυγες βασίζεται αποκλειστικά στον λόγο των τριών κατηγορουμένων για αρπαγή και σε καμία άλλη κατάθεση, στοιχείο ή έκθεση αυτοψίας.

      Στο σπίτι τους οι « σερίφηδες » κατόπιν διαφωνίας εισαγγελέα και ανακριτή

      Νωρίτερα, χθες, οι τρεις που είχαν συγκροτήσει τάγμα εφόδου σε παράνομο πογκρόμ μίσους και συμμετείχαν στην απαγωγή τουλάχιστον 25 μεταναστών, τους οποίους κλειδαμπάρωσαν σε τρέιλερ φορτηγού, εμφανίστηκαν στο δικαστικό μέγαρο Αλεξανδρούπολης για να απολογηθούν αλλά κατόπιν διαφωνίας μεταξύ εισαγγελέα και ανακριτή για το αν πρέπει να προφυλακιστούν αποφασίστηκε να τεθούν σε κατ’ οίκον περιορισμό.

      Για την τύχη τους θα αποφασίσει τώρα το δικαστικό συμβούλιο.

      Σύμφωνα με τα όσα δήλωσε μετά το πέρας της διαδικασίας ο Βασίλης Δεμίρης, συνήγορος του ιδιοκτήτη του οχήματος που εμφανίζεται σε βίντεο να έλκει το τρέιλερ, « τη διαφωνία αυτή καλείται να λύσει το Συμβούλιο Πλημμελειοδικών εντός πέντε ημερών όπως προβλέπει ο Κώδικας Ποινικής Δικονομίας. Μέχρι τότε έχει επιβληθεί ο όρος του κατ’ οίκον περιορισμού, της απαγόρευσης εξόδου από τη χώρα και της αφαίρεσης διαβατηρίου ».

      Αναφορικά με το επίμαχο βίντεο ο κ. Δεμίρης δήλωσε : « Υπήρχε ένα ατυχές βίντεο για τους χαρακτηρισμούς τους οποίους χρησιμοποίησε (σ.σ. ο εντολέας μου) δηλώνει δια στόματός μου πλήρως μετανοημένος. Όλη του η οργή όμως και η αγανάκτηση έχει εξαντληθεί σ’ αυτό το βίντεο. Δεν άσκησε ποτέ βία, δεν χρησιμοποίησε ποτέ οπλισμό, κάλεσε τις Αρχές ως όφειλε να κάνει και οι Αρχές έφτασαν στο σημείο. Θα αναμείνουμε με αγωνία την απόφασή του Συμβουλίου Πλημμελειοδικών. Εντός τριών ημερών θα πρέπει να γίνει η πρόταση και να εισαχθεί από τον εισαγγελέα πρωτοδικών προς το Συμβούλιο και εντός πέντε ημερών θα πρέπει να υπάρχει και το σχετικό βούλευμα του Συμβουλίου », ανέφερε.

      https://www.efsyn.gr/ellada/dikaiosyni/401935_eleytheroi-oi-4-pakistanoi-mono-oi-serifides-eidan-empristiko-mihanismo

    • Lena K. sur twitter :

      Just finished talking with family back home in #Evros. I’ll write down some of what I’ve heard, at least as an antidote to media coverage focusing on locals blaming border crossers for the fire etc. Note: family & their friends are mostly but not exclusively leftwing.

      They don’t seem to have fallen for the narrative of border crossers being responsible for the fire, & were angry with media & govt not counting them among the dead. Lots of disagreements with locals blaming borders crossers & discounting their deaths.

      The dominant view was that the worst was averted because of local people. Some participated in firefighting, but (especially in relation to the village we come from) what they did before & after the night the village partly burned - such as hosing water around houses to prevent fires restarting & clearing out unburned grass and weeds. There seems to be a belief that failure (mostly by the local authorities) to clear such vegetation (& also e.g. wheat stalks after fire) contributed to the fire spreading more quickly.

      Lots of anger towards the government & local authorities for this - not doing enough for fire prevention. Reports of firefighting equipment breaking down too, a perception of lack of coordination between Greek & EU firefighting forces who came to help.

      Lots of anger towards the government for not showing up when the fires were at their worst, too.
      The contrast with frequent visits by government officials before the fires (for whatever reason, not only the wall) is not unnoticed.

      I’d note on this that there’s a very deep-rooted (and justified) belief in Evros being largely neglected by Athens, the fires seem to reinforce it. Nationalism & anti-migration discourses have been used ’manage’ this (& IMO the far right has been useful) but did not eradicate it.

      https://twitter.com/lk2015r/status/1695780783288615323

    • Locked immigrants in a truck trailer and calls for a pogrom

      Les 13 migrants détenus à Evros ont été libérés et l’accusation d’incendie criminel a été complètement abandonnée.

      Les 9 immigrants, à savoir 8 Syriens et un Pakistanais, accusés de tentative d’incendie criminel à Evros, ont été libérés sans conditions restrictives. Selon dikastiko.gr, la décision a été prise avec l’accord de l’enquêteur et procureur d’Alexandroupolis, qui avaient déjà libéré vendredi 25 août les quatre Pakistanais accusés des mêmes charges. Comme l’a souligné dans son message l’avocat Thanasis Kabayannis, l’accusation de « tentative d’incendie criminel » a été totalement abandonnée. Il est rappelé que des poursuites pénales avaient été engagées contre les 13 migrants pour tentative d’incendie criminel à Alexandroupoli sur la base exclusive des témoignages des trois auteurs présumés de leur enlèvement, à savoir les shérifs « autoproclamés », qui ont « arrêté » et entassé les 13 réfugiés syriens et pakistanais dans une remorque fermée, les ont accusés de tentative d’incendie criminel. Les personnes migrantes ont déclaré qu’elles ont été violemment frappées avec une barre métallique par les chasseurs de tête de migrants.

      https://www.efsyn.gr/ellada/dikaiosyni/402168_eleytheroi-kai-oi-alloi-9-metanastes-ston-ebro-katepese-pliros-i-katigo

      Mais l’ ‘exploit’ des trois chasseurs de tête a fait des émules :

      Nouvel incident avec un shérif autoproclamé à Evros.

      Déchaînement de l’extrême droite à Evros avec des shérifs autoproclamés appelant toujours à des pogroms contre les migrants et mettant en ligne des vidéos fières de " leurs exploits’’. La réaction du représentant du gouvernement est assez molle. Réaction forte de SYRIZA-P.S.

      La nouvelle vidéo publiée sur les réseaux sociaux qui montre ouvertement l’action d’un autre "chasseur de têtes" ne peut susciter que la honte. À Aisimi Evros, le shérif autoproclamé et ses deux assistants auraient immobilisé quatre migrants terrifiés sur un chemin de terre, en rivalisant avec l’homme qui avait capturé 13 immigrés dans une remorque de camion, provoquant l’intervention de la Cour suprême. Dans la vidéo qui circule sur Internet, on entend le « gardien » d’extrême droite de la patrie dire : « Quatre de plus, quatre de plus, des investisseurs... Vous voyez ? A midi, où sont les autorités...où sont les autorités, où sont les autorités...Quatre autres investisseurs, on appelle la police, il n’y a pas de réseau … ». La vidéo a été « sauvée » par d’internautes, l’auteur lui-même parlant de diffamation, il a supprimé les messages de haine qu’il avait publiés. Il n’y a jusqu’à présent aucune réaction de la part de la police ou du parquet d’Evros.

      La réaction du représentant du gouvernement est molle. Lors du briefing habituel, le représentant du gouvernement a été interrogé sur le rôle de l’Etat et sur ce qu’il compte faire. Pavlos Marinakis a répondu simplement en disant : "dans tout acte illégal, comme cela s’est produit dans un cas précédent, il est de la responsabilité des autorités de faire leur travail et cela sera fait". Que disent-ils à SYRIZ-PS ? A Koumoundourou, le siège de Syriza, on se demande "que font les autorités compétentes et la justice face à ces réseaux qui veulent imposer la loi du Far West, qui capturent les gens et incitent à la haine ? Ils appellent les autorités et la justice à « intervenir de manière décisive ».

      Rappel : il y a quelques jours, les trois qui avaient formé une escouade d’assaut dans un pogrom haineux illégal et participé à l’enlèvement d’au moins 25 immigrés (des « morceaux » selon leurs dires), qu’ils ont enfermés dans une remorque de camion, se sont présentés au palais de justice d’Alexandroupoli, mais suite à un différend entre le procureur et le juge d’instruction sur leur éventuelle détention provisoire, il a été décidé de les assigner à résidence. Le conseil judiciaire qui va siéger cette semaine va désormais décider de leur sort.

      https://www.efsyn.gr/ellada/koinonia/402105_ta-kommatia-tora-eginan-ependyte

      –—

      Déclaration des avocats de la défense des 8 réfugiés syriens

      (traduction par Vicky Skoumbi)

      Après une procédure très longue qui s’est terminé tard dans la nuit au palais de justice d’Alexandroupoli, le juge d’instruction et le procureur ont accepté la libération inconditionnelle des 8 réfugiés de nationalité syrienne et de l’un de nationalité pakistanaise, accusés de tentative d’incendie criminel, le seul élément étant le témoignage de l’auteur accusé de leur enlèvement et de leur séquestration dans une caravane le 22 août. Après la libération inconditionnelle des 4 accusés d’origine pakistanaise le vendredi 25 août, et étant donné que les 13 citoyens syriens et pakistanais n’ont pas de résidence connue dans le pays, on peut conclure que l’accusation portée contre eux a été jugée dépourvue de tout fondement. Les auteurs de l’enlèvement sont assignés à résidence, suite au désaccord entre le juge d’instruction et le procureur, et la décision finale sur leur détention provisoire sera prise par le Conseil Juridique.

      L’affaire n’est pas terminée.

      Les 13 réfugiés sont toujours détenus administrativement en raison de leur entrée illégale dans le pays. Étant donné qu’ils sont déjà victimes et témoins essentiels d’actes criminels poursuivis en vertu de l’article 82A du Code pénal pour le délit à caractère raciste, pour lequel une déclaration de soutien à l’accusation a été présentée, l’octroi d’un permis de séjour à tous les 13 pour raisons humanitaires doit être décidé immédiatement

      En plus de nos propres actions, les autorités policières et le Département des Violences Racistes de l’ELAS (police hellénique) doivent assurer leur séjour légal dans le pays.

      Nous tenons à remercier les milliers de citoyens qui ont exprimé leur solidarité avec les victimes et les centaines qui ont aidé à couvrir les frais de leur défense juridique. La possibilité de représenter les migrants signifiait l’exercice pratique de leur droit à la défense et la mise en évidence, de notre part, du caractère raciste organisé des « milices » autoproclamées opérant dans la région d’Evros. De nouvelles séquences vidéo diffusées aujourd’hui montrent que l’incident en question était tout sauf isolé.

      Alexandroupoli, 28/8/2023,

      Aikaterini Georgiadou, Ioannis Patzanakidis,

      avocats de la défense des 8 réfugiés syriens dans l’affaire de l’#enlèvement d’Evros.

      https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=pfbid02XULbKN47o1nCQEZE3VB8TiqDsJaa8NLwPFXo5jQ2Tk

    • To date, the tragic death toll from the #fires in #Evros #Greece has risen to 20 dead, all refugees. The fire is still burning in the area, for the 10th day, while the overall scale of the destruction is terrifying.

      https://twitter.com/rspaegean/status/1696076952874951005

      –----

      Στους 20 οι νεκροί του Εβρου

      Πρωτοφανές και σε ευρωπαϊκό επίπεδο το μέγεθος της καμένης γης που έχει ήδη ξεπεράσει τα 700.000 στρέμματα.

      Στους 20 νεκρούς ανέρχεται ο τραγικός απολογισμός της φονικής πυρκαγιάς που κατακαίει τον Εβρο για περισσότερο από μία εβδομάδα και παραμένει το ενεργότερο μέτωπο στη χώρα. Είχε προηγηθεί ο εντοπισμός 18 μεταναστών που βρέθηκαν νεκροί κοντά σε παράπηγμα στην περιοχή του Αβαντα, ενώ στις 21 Αυγούστου είχε εντοπιστεί ο πρώτος νεκρός από τη φωτιά που μαίνεται στον Εβρο στην περιοχή της Λευκίμμης.

      Υπενθυμίζεται ότι ολική απανθράκωση είναι η αιτία θανάτου των μεταναστών που βρέθηκαν νεκροί στο δάσος λόγω της πυρκαγιάς, σύμφωνα με τον ιατροδικαστή Αλεξανδρούπολης Παύλο Παυλίδη. Συνεχίζουν να σοκάρουν τα στατιστικά στοιχεία που δείχνουν το μέγεθος της καταστροφής. Σύμφωνα με την ευρωπαϊκή υπηρεσία Copernicus για τις πυρκαγιές στον Εβρο μέχρι την 6η ημέρα από την έναρξή τους, έχει καεί το 17% της συνολικής έκτασης του νομού και το 45% του δασικού συμπλέγματος που εκτείνεται από τον κεντρικό έως τον νότιο Εβρο, στους δήμους Σουφλίου και Αλεξανδρούπολης.

      Η καμένη έκταση υπολογίζεται σε 723.440 στρέμματα και χαρακτηρίζεται « η μεγαλύτερη που έχει καταγραφεί σε ευρωπαϊκό έδαφος εδώ και χρόνια ». Η καταστροφή είναι τεράστια εάν αναλογιστεί κανείς ότι η έκταση του Εβρου είναι 4.242 τετραγωνικά χιλιόμετρα (ή 4.242.000 στρέμματα) και το δασικό σύμπλεγμα των δήμων Σουφλίου και Αλεξανδρούπολης είναι περίπου 1,6 εκατ. στρέμματα. Σε όλα αυτά πρέπει να προστεθεί και το κύριο πλήγμα που δέχτηκε το παραγωγικό μοντέλο της περιοχής με τις τεράστιες υποδομές σε αγροτικό και ζωικό κεφάλαιο.

      https://www.efsyn.gr/ellada/koinonia/401920_stoys-20-oi-nekroi-toy-ebroy

    • « Recherche de coupables », #milices organisées… En Grèce, les incendies réveillent la xénophobie

      Si les feux ravageant le pays depuis des jours sont un révélateur de l’inefficacité de l’Etat, ils exacerbent aussi le racisme qui se propage dans une partie de la société : la vidéo d’un passage un tabac de migrants par des sympathisants d’#extrême_droite fait polémique depuis ce lundi.

      D’un côté, il y a la Grèce qui affronte le « plus grand incendie jamais enregistré dans l’Union européenne », comme l’a déclaré ce mardi 29 août un représentant de la Commission européenne. De l’autre, il y a celle qui recherche des #boucs_émissaires.

      Depuis près de deux semaines, sous une #canicule asséchant encore un peu plus le pays après un des étés les plus chauds de ces dernières décennies, les flammes dévorent le nord du pays. Dans la région d’Alexandroúpoli, à la frontière avec la Turquie, elles ont provoqué l’évacuation de villages, d’une partie de l’hôpital… Elles ont carbonisé la forêt de Dadia, un parc du réseau européen Natura 2000 connu pour abriter de nombreux rapaces et déjà brûlé l’an dernier. A ce jour, plus de 81 000 hectares ont été réduits en cendres, soit une superficie plus grande que la ville de New York, selon l’agence Copernicus.

      Certes, les Vingt-Sept mobilisent actuellement près de la moitié des moyens aériens européens communs pour lutter contre les feux. Mais les onze avions et l’hélicoptère de la flotte européenne, ainsi que les 407 pompiers envoyés pour aider la Grèce, ne suffisent pas à éteindre un brasier qui s’étend sur un front de près de 10 kilomètres. D’après un porte-parole des pompiers, ces flammes sont « toujours hors de contrôle ».

      En parallèle du combat quasi désespéré des soldats du feu, la colère ne cesse de monter chez les Grecs. « Il y avait un manque de préparation des autorités », déplore Antonis Telopoulos, journaliste à Alexandroúpoli pour Efsyn (« le journal des rédacteurs »). Prévention insuffisante, entretien des forêts défaillant, moyens des pompiers manquants… Le constat revient depuis des années. Mais bien que le pays ait retrouvé des marges de manœuvre budgétaires depuis 2018, le gouvernement du Premier ministre, Kyriákos Mitsotákis, de droite conservatrice, n’a ni investi dans du matériel récent ni recruté des pompiers. Selon leurs syndicats, il y aurait au moins 4 000 postes vacants.

      « Un #discours_dominant inattendu et très dangereux de l’extrême droite »

      Il semble que l’incendie ait été déclenché par la foudre. La météo est la première raison invoquée par les autorités. Ce qui ne les empêche pas non plus de se lancer dans « la recherche des coupables », poursuit le journaliste d’Efsyn, ciblant « le récit mis en place par le Premier ministre » Mitsotákis.

      C’est le cas concernant le foyer ravageant la banlieue d’Athènes, notamment la ville d’#Asprópyrgos, où vit une communauté Rom dans un bidonville, stigmatisée par une grande partie de la population. « Ces derniers jours, nous avons été témoins, en Grèce, d’un discours dominant inattendu et très dangereux de l’extrême droite. Les médias, le gouvernement et l’administration locale accusent les migrants d’avoir allumé le feu en Evros et les #Roms d’être les responsables des incendies à Apsrópyrgos », analyse le chercheur Giorgos Katsambekis, sur Twitter (renommé X).

      Cette inquiétude trouve sa source dans de nombreux discours politiques. Le ministre de la Protection civile, Vassilis Kikilias, a visé des « pyromanes de bas étage » à la télévision, sans que personne ne lui demande de preuve de ce qu’il avançait. Puis il a ajouté : « Vous commettez un crime contre le pays, vous ne vous en tirerez pas comme ça, nous vous trouverons et vous devrez rendre des comptes. » Le président du parti d’extrême droite Solution grecque, Kyriákos Velópoulos, accuse les « immigrants illégaux » d’être à l’origine des incendies. La chasse aux coupables est officiellement lancée.

      Elle atteint son point culminant au fleuve Evros. Différents médias tel que Efsyn ou The Press Project ont révélé des vidéos où des habitants de la région s’organisent en milices, comme ils l’avaient déjà fait en mars 2020. Leur objectif ? Chasser les migrants. Paris Papadakis, député du parti d’extrême droite pour la région d’Evros, est allé jusqu’à déclarer « être en guerre ». Il a lui-même participé aux patrouilles, tout en débitant des horreurs : « Les migrants illégaux sont venus ici de manière coordonnée et les migrants illégaux ont spécifiquement mis le feu à plus de dix endroits. »

      18 migrants morts dans les flammes

      Des vidéos font le tour des réseaux sociaux. Elles montrent des migrants à terre, sans doute battus. Le gouvernement est-il, alors, dépassé par la situation ? Il n’a en tout cas pas condamné ces actes racistes et xénophobes pour l’instant. Toutefois, le procureur général de la Cour de cassation et son adjoint ont appelé à conduire une enquête sur ces phénomènes de milices organisées sur les réseaux sociaux et leur composante raciste.

      Plus de 20 personnes sont mortes dans les incendies depuis le début de l’été, dont 18 migrants pris dans les flammes à Evros. Dans la même région, trois migrants ont depuis été arrêtés, ainsi que trois miliciens qui les avaient capturés. Les trois premiers ont été relâchés lundi, sans preuve aucune de leur implication dans l’incendie.

      https://www.liberation.fr/international/europe/recherche-de-coupables-milices-organisees-en-grece-les-incendies-reveille
      #bouc_émissaire #responsabilité

    • Le Premier ministre grec à propos des migrants morts dans l’Evros avec les feux : « ils n’auraient jamais dû se trouver là dans la forêt et le msg du 112 (pour les évacuations) avait été envoyé » …

      https://twitter.com/News247gr/status/1697237541588447435

      –->

      Ο πρωθυπουργός, @PrimeministerGR για τους νεκρούς μετανάστες στη Δαδιά από το βήμα της Βουλής « Δεν έπρεπε ποτέ να βρίσκονται στο δάσος και με το μήνυμα από το 112 που εστάλη και στις δύο γλώσσες ».

      https://twitter.com/MarinaRafen/status/1697246231523905797

    • Grèce : des militants d’extrême droite arrêtent des migrants au nom de la lutte contre l’incendie

      Des hommes apeurés dans une remorque, ou humiliés à terre au pied d’un 4X4 : deux vidéos ont montré depuis le 23 août des arrestations de migrants par des militants d’extrême-droite dans la région grecque de l’Evros, frontalière de la Turquie. Ce genre d’arrestations n’est pas nouveau, mais n’a que rarement été documenté en images. Les agresseurs accusent les migrants d’être responsables de l’immense incendie dans la région, dans un contexte politique anti-migrants disent nos Observateurs.

      "Quatre autres... Vous voyez ? Il est midi et où sont les autorités ? [...] Nous contactons la police, mais il n’y a pas de réponse" s’énerve un homme qui filme cette vidéo publiée le 27 août et tournée dans la région de l’Evros, à une date inconnue. On y voit quatre migrants à terre, au pied d’un véhicule devant lequel se trouvent au moins deux autres hommes debout, manifestement complices de celui qui filme. Ce dernier se montre à la fin de la vidéo, vêtu d’un t-shirt noir et d’un pantalon à motif militaire. L’homme s’appelle Walandi Abrassis sur ses comptes sur les réseaux sociaux où il a directement diffusé sa vidéo.

      https://twitter.com/parameteoros/status/1695824660884070411

      Quelques jours plus tôt, une autre vidéo montrait une scène similaire : un homme filme son 4x4 puis ouvre la porte de la remorque qu’il y avait attachée, dans laquelle on voit au moins quatre hommes apeurés. "J’ai chargé 25 pièces dans la remorque. Organisez-vous, sortons tous et récupérons-les" dit-il, ajoutant : "Toute la montagne est pleine, les gars (…) Ils ont juré de nous brûler (…) Ils vont nous brûler, c’est tout ce que je vous dis", une référence claire à l’incendie, qui ravage le nord-est de la Grèce, considéré comme le plus important jamais enregistré dans l’Union européenne. Selon la presse locale, cette vidéo a été prise à Alexandroúpolis, à quelques kilomètres de la frontière turque, démarquée par le fleuve Evros.

      Les victimes, au total 13 hommes et non 25, ont affirmé au site The Press Project avoir été frappées avec des barres en métal : “Ils ont enlevé tous nos vêtements et nous ont filmés. Nous sommes restés là un long moment, en sueur et incapables de respirer" a déclaré l’un des 13 hommes arrêtés.

      https://twitter.com/EFSYNTAKTON/status/1694020764012359710

      L’auteur de cette deuxième vidéo a été placé en résidence surveillée dans l’attente d’une éventuelle inculpation.

      “Ces miliciens arrêtent des migrants mais comme ils ne peuvent pas les refouler, ils les remettent ensuite aux policiers”

      Panayote Dimitras est le porte-parole de l’Observatoire grec des accords d’Helsinki, une ONG de défense des droits de l’homme qui alerte notamment sur les refoulements de migrants par la Grèce, qu’ils soient fait par la police ou par des civils :

      Ce phénomène existe depuis des années, mais cette fois ils ont vraiment décidé d’eux-mêmes de présenter les vidéos de leurs actions. Cela illustre des choses dont des organisations comme la nôtre parlent de longue date, et cela a incité un procureur adjoint de la Cour suprême à charger un procureur local de s’en saisir. Ceci dit, rien n’a été fait face à tous les cas de refoulements illégaux vers la Turquie orchestrés par la Grèce, bien qu’ils aient été largement documentés, donc on peut douter que qui que ce soit, soit condamné ici. Mais toutes ces données enrichissent les dossiers qu’on peut présenter aux institutions internationales comme la Cour européenne des Droits de l’Homme, pour montrer comment ça se passe pour les migrants dans cette région.

      On sait que ces milices coopèrent avec la police locale. Dans l’Evros, ces miliciens arrêtent des migrants mais comme ils ne peuvent pas les refouler, ils les remettent ensuite aux policiers, qui ne vont pas enregistrer l’incident parce que sinon, la présence de ces hommes est notifiée et ils ont le droit de faire une demande d’asile et ne peuvent plus être refoulés illégalement.

      Les partis d’extrême droite comme Aube dorée ou Solution grecque cherchent à trouver des soutiens dans cette région. Il est clair que ces hommes sont liés à des organisations locales d’extrême droite.

      L’auteur de la vidéo publiée le 27 aout, qui n’a pas été interpellé, a réagi dans une interview dans un journal d’extrême droite ainsi que sur la page Facebook d’un leader local d’extrême droite. Il assure qu’il souhaitait seulement apporter de l’eau et venir en aide aux migrants.

      Les migrants désignés responsables

      Sur les réseaux sociaux grecs, des groupes citoyens s’organisent dans la région avec des appels à chasser les migrants venus de Turquie, comme le montre The Press Project avec une capture d’une conversation sur Viber. Des leaders d’extrême droite ont ouvertement imputé la responsabilité de l’incendie aux migrants qui passent par l’Evros. Le député du parti Solution grecque, ParisPapadakis, originaire d’Alexandroupolis, a notamment écrit sur Facebook : “J’ai des informations sur des clandestins qui dérangent le travail des pilotes [des Canadair]. Il faut passer à l’action ! (…) Nous avons une guerre, messieurs !”.

      Le 30 août, le Premier ministre de droite, Konstantinos Mitsotakis, a laissé entendre que les migrants étaient responsables des feux - ce que rien n’étaye - déclarant : "Il est presque certain que les causes sont d’origine humaine. Il est également presque certain que cet incendie s’est déclaré sur des routes souvent empruntées par des migrants illégaux qui sont entrés dans notre pays", ajoutant cependant que "les actes d’autodéfense et les shérifs autoproclamés ne seront pas tolérés par ce gouvernement”.

      “L’action de ces hommes est adoubée par la police tout simplement parce qu’ils ont la même idéologie que l’État”

      Eva (pseudonyme), une habitante de la région de l’Evros qui suit de près la situation et a requis l’anonymat, ajoute :

      En mars 2020, quand la Turquie avait ouvert sa frontière pour faire pression sur l’Union européenne, la police avait officiellement demandé l’aide des civils, et une association locale de pêcheurs de l’Evros, Aenisio Delta Evros avait été très active pour arrêter des migrants. Officiellement, ce n’est plus le cas, la police ne veut pas donner l’impression qu’elle tolère cela. Mais quand on leur demande s’ils le font encore… ils ne répondent pas à la question, ce qui en dit long.

      L’action de ces hommes est adoubée par la police tout simplement parce qu’ils ont la même idéologie que l’État : protéger les frontières, utiliser la violence pour le faire, pour eux tout ce qu’ils font est dans l’intérêt de l’État grec. Au sein de l’association Aenisio Delta Evros, on trouve d’ailleurs énormément de réservistes de l’armée.

      https://observers.france24.com/fr/europe/20230901-migrants-turquie-grece-extreme-droite-milice-incendie-e

    • « Brûlez-les ! » : les incendies en Grèce attisent la haine contre les migrants
      https://reporterre.net/Brulez-les-les-incendies-en-Grece-attisent-la-haine-contre-les-migrants

      4 septembre 2023 à 09h53 Mis à jour le 5 septembre 2023 à 10h26

      Les incendies qui ravagent toujours le nord-est de la Grèce se conjuguent avec une déferlante de racisme. Sous les encouragements de l’extrême droite, des citoyens capturent des migrants qu’ils tiennent pour responsables des feux.
      Parc de Dadia (Grèce), reportage

      « Vous voyez, là-bas c’est l’incendie de l’an dernier et maintenant ça brûle de l’autre côté. C’est sûr que ce sont eux qui sont revenus pour terminer leur travail. Nous sommes en danger », affirme cette habitante de Dadia, dans le nord-est de la Grèce.

      Sans détenir la moindre preuve, elle est certaine que des demandeurs d’asile ont délibérément provoqué cet incendie historique qui fait rage depuis plus de deux semaines. Certaines autorités penchent toutefois pour un départ de feu d’origine naturelle, causé par la foudre.


      Les exilés utilisaient la forêt pour se cacher de la police. © Romain Chauvet / Reporterre

      Cette forêt protégée de Dadia est située dans la région de l’Evros, près de la frontière avec la Turquie. Une route empruntée par les demandeurs d’asile qui veulent rejoindre l’Europe et qui s’y cachent pour échapper aux autorités. Près d’une vingtaine d’exilés y ont été retrouvés morts, calcinés.


      © Louise Allain / Reporterre

      Mais le Premier ministre grec, Kyriakos Mitsotakis (conservateur), a déclaré au parlement qu’il était « presque certain que ce feu soit d’origine humaine », allumé sur des « itinéraires empruntés par les migrants illégaux ». Des propos qui font écho à ce que l’on entend sur place.

      « Tout ça c’est la faute des réfugiés, ils sont partout dans la forêt et ils mettent le feu, ils veulent nous tuer ! » lance en colère un habitant qui doit évacuer, les flammes se rapprochant dangereusement de son hameau.

      Kidnappings racistes

      Ce méga incendie n’en finit plus de susciter des propos et actes racistes, dans cette région reculée, pauvre et très encline à voter pour l’extrême droite. « Ce sont les Pakistanais, ils nous envahissent, c’est un problème, un immense problème ici », dit cet autre habitant de la région.

      Durant les derniers jours, plusieurs citoyens, encouragés par l’extrême droite, se sont filmés en train d’arrêter des migrants, qu’ils tiennent pour responsables de ce feu. « J’ai chargé 25 morceaux », s’est vanté en vidéo sur les réseaux sociaux un homme après avoir mis une dizaine de demandeurs d’asile dans une remorque.

      « Brûlez-les ! » a répondu une internaute à la vidéo. Ces demandeurs d’asile ont depuis été mis hors de cause et plusieurs auteurs d’arrestations poursuivis par les autorités.


      Alors que le gouvernement est vivement critiqué pour sa gestion des feux, la communication du Premier ministre est loin de décourager l’extrême droite. © Romain Chauvet / Reporterre

      « En temps de crise, il y a toujours une forte tendance à blâmer les autres, ceux qui ne sont pas comme nous. Ça permet aussi d’éviter d’être confronté à des critiques pour une mauvaise gestion », analyse la politologue spécialisée dans les migrations, Eda Gemi.

      Depuis le début de l’été, le gouvernement grec est sous le feu des critiques pour sa gestion des incendies et son manque de préparation. Plusieurs médias locaux ont aussi alimenté ce climat raciste, dans un pays qui se classe dernier de l’Union européenne en matière de liberté de la presse, selon Reporters sans frontières.

      Une chaîne de télévision a par exemple rapporté que deux migrants avaient été surpris en train d’allumer un incendie avant de démentir, alors que sur une autre chaîne de télévision, une présentatrice s’est réjouie en direct qu’il n’y ait pas eu de décès, si ce n’est ces « pauvres migrants ».

      Un mur à la frontière

      « Le soutien aux partis de droite et d’extrême droite semble avoir augmenté depuis 2015, ce qui coïncide avec le pic des arrivées de demandeurs d’asile dans le pays », explique Georgios Samara, professeur en politique publique, qui analyse les mouvements d’extrême droite.

      Plus de 850 000 arrivées de demandeurs d’asile avaient été enregistrées sur le sol grec cette année-là, marquant le début de ce que l’on a appelé en Europe la crise des réfugiés.

      Mais depuis, la situation a considérablement changé, avec un durcissement de la politique migratoire. Un mur de plusieurs kilomètres a été construit à la frontière terrestre avec la Turquie.


      Des personnes ont été arrêtées pour enlèvement, mise en danger d’autrui et incitation à commettre des crimes racistes après s’être filmées en train d’arrêter et d’enfermer des exilés. © Romain Chauvet / Reporterre

      Pendant ce temps, les autorités sont régulièrement accusées de criminaliser l’aide humanitaire et de refouler violemment les migrants, refoulements communément appelés « pushbacks ». La Grèce est donc devenue un point de transit, plutôt qu’une destination finale.

      Ce climat de tension fait suite à la poussée de l’extrême droite en Grèce, près de 15 % aux dernières élections. « Les partis d’extrême droite pourraient être les grands gagnants de cet incendie, dans la mesure où les électeurs pourraient vouloir encore plus de mesures extrêmes (contre les migrants) », s’inquiète Georgios Samara. Depuis le début de l’année, plus de 17 000 arrivées de demandeurs d’asile ont été enregistrées en Grèce.

  • Group of 45 people stranded on an islet in the wider #Soufli - #Tychero area (22.07.2023)

    🆘 near #Lagyna, #Evros river, #Greece


    We are in contact with a group of 45 people stranded on an islet in the wider #Soufli - #Tychero area. They report being there 9 days already. @hellenicpolice
    are informed & claim to have searched for them but that they could not find them.

    #limbe #zone_frontalière #île #Evros #asile #migrations #réfugiés #frontières #fleuve_Evros #Turquie #Grèce #Thrace #îlots

    –-

    ajouté à la métaliste sur #métaliste sur des #réfugiés abandonnés sur des #îlots dans la région de l’#Evros, #frontière_terrestre entre la #Grèce et la #Turquie :
    https://seenthis.net/messages/953343

    • Même groupe ?
      (16.07.2023)

      🆘 in the #Evros region! 25 people are stranded on an islet near the town of #Soufli. They reported to be there since 10 days & seem currently under attack by #Greek authorities. Stop the violence & evacuate them from the islet!

      https://twitter.com/alarm_phone/status/1680530020425424900

    • Evros: the brutal face of the European border regime

      A group has been stuck for over three weeks on a small islet of the Evros river. Their story includes countless distress-calls, physical attacks, sexual violence, non-assistance when immediate medical aid was needed, and the complete disregard for a European Court of Human Rights ruling, which granted the group interim measures and ordering the Greek state to provide them with assistance. It is another clear example of the brutal reality that people endure at the land border between Türkiye and Greece.

      On the 21st of July 2023, a group of people reached out to Alarm Phone. The 52 people – among them several children and elderly people with severe health conditions – told us how they were stuck on a small islet near the village of Lagyna on Greek territory in the middle of the Evros river, which borders Greece and Türkiye. When reaching out to Alarm Phone and calling for help, the people informed us they had already been stuck on the islet for eight days. At 14:19 CEST of the same day, Alarm Phone alerted Greek authorities, as well as Frontex, UNHCR and various NGOs via email about the people in distress, sharing their location and their request for immediate and urgent assistance.

      At this point, we did not know that this would be the start of an odyssey lasting over two weeks, with no end in sight, which would include countless emails and calls to authorities, public outcries via social media to mobilise for evacuation, an ignored decision of the European Court of Human rights and ongoing barbaric violence by Greek forces against the group.

      On the day after the alert, Greek authorities informed Alarm Phone about joint efforts, together with Frontex, to search for the group, “[…]we would like to inform you that after extensive searches by the Greek Authorities and Frontex join patrols in the location indicated by the coordinates area and also more widely, no human presence was found”. This would not be the last time that Greek authorities claimed to have been unable to find the group despite conducting “extensive searches” for them.

      Several days later, on July 26th, the people told us how they had heard car noises the previous day on the Greek side of the river, but that they were still waiting for urgently needed assistance. At the same time, their condition worsened with every day: they reported injuries and various health issues, as well, they told us how everyone’s mental health was rapidly deteriorating in light of the ongoing difficulties they were facing. The violent act of leaving people for days being stuck on an islet not only risks physical injuries, but is a mental torment in and of itself that traumatises people. Already by this point, the non-assistance from Greek authorities and Frontex was causing damage to the people calling for help – but the situation would continue to deteriorate over the coming days.

      On July 27th, 08:18 CEST, Greek authorities again claimed to have searched for the people: “[…]we would kindly like to inform you that after extensive searches by the Greek Authorities and Frontex patrol in the location indicated by the coordinates and also more widely, no human presence was found”. This is despite the Evros region being a highly militarized border area, where the EU has invested hundreds of millions of euros into fortifying the border. The technologies deployed in the area include sensors, thermal cameras and drones – but in spite of this, the Greek authorities and Frontex state they are unable to find a group with a clearly indicated location? How embarrassing. While it is clear that their statement is a blatant lie, it is remarkable that Greek authorities and Frontex have reached a point where such obvious untruths have become implicit to their operational activities. To have reached this point, these strategies have to be widely accepted within their ranks and as such demonstrate how the brutal means of deterrence used at the borders of Greece have become normalised, from overt and brutal violence to misinformation and non-assistance. This is particularly true in the Evros region, as demonstrated over the next days in the developments we witnessed for this case.

      A day later, on July 28th, the group told us again about activities on the Greek side of the river: the people had spotted a black car parked “on the Greek side” and a drone that was flying over them. Shortly after, they reported being attacked by police and what they described as “mercenaries”: “Police and mercenaries stormed us. They started to hit the world. And now we’re in the water”. They sent us several videos showing the cruel attack.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6L5M3Gwiqs&source_ve_path=Mjg2NjY&feature=emb_logo

      We immediately informed the authorities about the attack. It is clear: in this highly militarised and controlled border zone, no such attack could have happened without some level of coordination from the authorities – the very same authorities who had been claiming for days that they could not locate the group. After the attack, the people told us how they were shocked and devastated. However, this attack did not signal the end of their suffering. The group told us that after the attack, they were forced back to the same islet as before by Turkish authorities.

      Together with the Rule39 Initiative, an application for Interim Measures at the European Court of Human Rights was handed in on August 1st. By this point, we had been in contact with the people for 11 days. Throughout this entire period, the authorities had been aware of the group and their calls for assistance. Despite this, the group’s calls for assistance remained ignored. Moreover, instead of receiving help, the people were violently attacked.

      https://twitter.com/alarm_phone/status/1684815225608949760

      During the morning of August 2nd, the response by the European Court of Human Rights arrived: the court had granted the Interim Measures and ordered Greece to provide food, water and medical assistance. We immediately informed authorities, including Frontex and UNHCR about the decision and reiterated the urgent need of assistance for the group.

      https://twitter.com/alarm_phone/status/1686756260085936129

      During the morning of the 3rd of August, Greek authorities sent another email, claiming once again to have searched for, but not found, the people. At the same time, the people shared videos with us showing themselves loudly screaming for help. In desperation, the group decided to cross the river themselves. This is extremely dangerous – every year dozens of people die in the Evros river, which has strong undercurrents that can drown people. Luckily, they managed to cross the river and arrived safely on the Greek riverbank, which they documented with several videos that they sent to Alarm Phone. They reported talking to two people wearing shirts with “police” written on it. This is when an incredibly violent chapter of their journey started.

      https://twitter.com/alarm_phone/status/1687059265427496961

      Following the news that the group were talking with “police”, Alarm Phone shift teams once again called various border guard and police stations, including the ones at Soufli, Alexandroupolis and Thrace. All our calls went unanswered. In the meantime, the people reported they were put into cars and told us that they feared they would be brought back to Türkiye. The position they shared showed them near Soufli:

      We continued to call the authorities, however, they either did not pick up, rejected responsibility – claiming it was outside of their jurisdiction, or refused to give any information.

      https://twitter.com/alarm_phone/status/1687135993235750912

      Shortly after midnight on August 4th, the people reached out to Alarm Phone again. They were pushed back to Türkiye and severely beaten. A woman from the group explained what had happened to them after they were taken in the car:

      She told us how, after half an hour in the car, the young men and even some women were severely beaten. The attackers stripped the women of all their clothes and forced the young men’s eyes open to look the undressed women. They then beat the men badly. The woman said the group was worried that two among the attacked men were beaten to death. The attackers even beat the elderly women and told them to return to their country. The group was, again, forced back onto the islet, and reported that there were now several people missing, among them the two men who had been heavily beaten.

      The people told us how they were left severely shaken and outraged, desperate to know what happened to their friends who went missing who they fear died. They reported that amongst their group are three year old babies who are understandably extremely psychologically distressed and traumatised by the violent assault of the Greek police. “Please please can we help them. Turkey and Greece have left them in the middle. Do we know where the people who went missing are?”.

      https://twitter.com/alarm_phone/status/1687373994909921281

      We want to know: what has happened to the missing? Who is responsible for the brutal attack and the sexual violence? And what was the role of Frontex in this whole story? How can orders of the European Court of Human Rights just be ignored? And why has help been repeated denied for people who are in urgent need of it?

      Not only have the attacks subjected people to overt violence, but the continuous non-assistance has led to many medical emergencies – this includes three elderly people with diabetes in need of medical assistance, an elderly person with circulatory problems in the leg, which were purple on both sides, a pregnant woman who suffered from contractions and was bleeding, and several children who were weak, mentally distressed and badly bitten by mosquitoes. It should also be noted that the group told us how they ran out of food and water days ago and are forced to drink water from the river, which carries with it a risk of poisoning.

      Unfortunately, this is not an isolated incident, but instead sees the recurrence of an all too familiar pattern. The incredible level of violence used – which can only be understood as systematized forms of torture and brutalisation– against people on the move is abhorrent. It is illustrative of the dehumanisation implicit to the racist European migration regime. Furthermore, it demonstrates an obvious dysfunctionality of European institutions, where decisions of the European Court of Human Rights are easily ignored by Greece, without consequence. Instead of being forced to take action, Greek authorities merely responded to both Alarm Phone and the ECHR that the people could not be located. And once again, we see how Frontex is involved in a situation which resulted in a brutal pushback.

      On August 6th, the people were still stuck on the islet. There were also still in very distressed condition – and one that continues to deteriorate. They expressed their shock and disbelief that an ECHR decision obviously does not count in Greece. They themselves have called 112 over 50 times and written emails to Frontex and Greek authorities – but instead of receiving much needed assistance, have been subject to repeated and vicious attacks.

      https://twitter.com/alarm_phone/status/1687425346285494273

      In the early hours of the morning on August 7th, the group reached out to us again to report another attack, telling us that “Mercenaries came upon us while we were asleep [on the islet], and we were sent back to Turkey”. They then told us how they were picked up by the Turkish army, who is forcing them back into Greece. The group was incredibly distressed, commenting that they have “become a football between Greek and Turkish army.” As the situation continues with no end in sight, and the people, who are in dire need of urgent medical assistance, are pushed back and forth across the river by Greek and Turkish forces, we again make it clear, these attacks must end and the people be given the help they so urgently need.

      We, along with the group currently stranded on the islet, are shocked and outraged – even though we witness such crimes and attacks against people on the move almost daily, and with increasing intensity. We will continue to fight against the normalisation of such violence and will never forgive the ones responsible for it. While Greece tries to cover up the mass murder of Pylos, for which the Hellenic Coast Guard is responsible, the real and merciless face of the Greek border regime remains clearly visible in the Evros region, as too does the complicity of the EU.

      https://alarmphone.org/en/2023/08/07/evros-the-brutal-face-of-the-european-border-regime/?post_type_release_type=post

  • A group of 9 people are stuck on an islet of the #Evros river near #Soufli in #Greece (03.07.2023)

    🆘 in the #Evros region! We are in contact with a group of 9 people who are stuck on an islet of the #Evros river near #Soufli in #Greece. They are running out of water & food & 1 child needs urgent medical assistance. We informed @hellenicpolice & asked for evacuation!

    #limbe #zone_frontalière #île #Evros #asile #migrations #réfugiés #frontières #fleuve_Evros #Turquie #Grèce #Thrace #îlots
    #nudité

    –-

    ajouté à la métaliste sur #métaliste sur des #réfugiés abandonnés sur des #îlots dans la région de l’#Evros, #frontière_terrestre entre la #Grèce et la #Turquie :
    https://seenthis.net/messages/953343

  • 19.06.2023 : a group of 36 people stranded on an islet near #Kissari (Evros, Greece) :

    We have been contacted by a group of 36 people stranded on an islet near #Kissari. They are desperate and ask to be allowed to apply for asylum in Greece. We informed local authorities in #Greece about the need for urgent evacuation!


    https://twitter.com/alarm_phone/status/1670835917106425859
    #limbe #zone_frontalière #île #Evros #asile #migrations #réfugiés #frontières #fleuve_Evros #Turquie #Grèce #Thrace #îlots

    –-

    ajouté à la métaliste sur #métaliste sur des #réfugiés abandonnés sur des #îlots dans la région de l’#Evros, #frontière_terrestre entre la #Grèce et la #Turquie :
    https://seenthis.net/messages/953343

  • The deputy defence minister in #Greece visits the border fence at the #Evros river.
    Interesting for me how #Frontex poses there together with the #military.

    https://i.imgur.com/ACIWjCy.png

    https://twitter.com/matthimon/status/1658789440318328833

    –—

    Χαρδαλιάς απ’ τον φράχτη : « Η φύλαξη των συνόρων μας αποτελεί προτεραιότητα, είναι εθνική επιταγή »

    Ο Υφυπουργός Εθνικής Άμυνας Νικόλαος Χαρδαλιάς κατά την επίσκεψη του στον Έβρο την περασμένη Δευτέρα 15 Μαΐου 2023, επισκέφθηκε το Επιτηρητικό Φυλάκιο « ΠΕΤΑΛΟΥ ΠΕΠΛΟΥ » και τον Φράχτη στην περιοχή του ελληνικού προγεφυρώματος Πετάλου.

    Ο κ.Χαρδαλάς, μαζί με τον Ευρωβουλευτή και Αντιπρόεδρο της Κοινοβουλευτικής Ομάδας του Ευρωπαϊκού Λαϊκού Κόμματος στο Ευρωπαϊκό Κοινοβούλιο Ευάγγελο Μεϊμαράκη, ενημερώθηκαν για τα μέτρα επιτήρησης και φύλαξης των ελληνικών και παράλληλα ευρωπαϊκών συνόρων.

    Τον Υφυπουργό Εθνικής Άμυνας συνόδευσαν οι Διοικητές του Δ΄ Σώματος Στρατού Αντιστράτηγος Δημόκριτος Κωνσταντάκος, της XII Μηχανοκίνητης Μεραρχίας Πεζικού Υποστράτηγος Χρήστος Μπακιρτζής και της 31 Μηχανοκίνητης Ταξιαρχίας Ταξίαρχος Λάζαρος Λαζαρίδης.

    Ο κ.Χαρδαλιάς από τον φράχτη στην περιοχή του ελληνικού προγεφυρώματος Πετάλου έκανε την ακόλουθη δήλωση :

    « Η φύλαξη των συνόρων μας αποτελεί προτεραιότητα, είναι εθνική επιταγή. Γιατί πρεσβεύει όλα όσα νοιώθουμε και πιστεύουμε για αυτή την πατρίδα. Και αυτή η πατρίδα πρέπει να είναι θωρακισμένη, να φυλάει τα σύνορά της, και είθε να είναι ασφαλής και πάνω από όλα περήφανη ! ».

    Νωρίτερα είχαν επισκεφθεί το αμερικανικό μεταγωγικό πλοίο “ARC ENDURANCE”, που ελλιμενίζεται στον λιμένα της Αλεξανδρούπολης, όπου τους υποδέχθηκε ο Captain (Κυβερνήτης) Glenn Koshak.

    Κατά την επίσκεψη οι κ.κ. Χαρδαλιάς και Μεϊμαράκης ενημερώθηκαν από τον Κυβερνήτη και το πλήρωμα του θηριώδους πλοίου, για τις μεταφορικές δυνατότητες του και ξεναγήθηκαν στα βασικά διαμερίσματα. Επίσης, ενημερώθηκαν από τον Πρόεδρο του Οργανισμού Λιμένος Αλεξανδρούπολης κ. Κωνσταντίνο Χατζημιχαήλ, για τον γεωστρατηγικό και εμπορικό ρόλο του λιμανιού και για τις δραστηριότητες στο πλαίσιο εφαρμογής της συμφωνίας αμοιβαίας αμυντικής συνεργασίας Ελλάδας – ΗΠΑ και επισκέφθηκαν τερματικό σημείο υποδοχής και προώθησης Αμερικανικών και συμμαχικών στρατευμάτων και στρατιωτικού υλικού στην Κεντρική και Ανατολική Ευρώπη.

    Επιπρόσθετα, οι κ.κ. Χαρδαλιάς και Μεϊμαράκης συναντήθηκαν με αντιπροσωπεία Ιταλών Αξιωματικών του μεταγωγικού πλοίου “SEVERINE”, το οποίο χρησιμοποιεί το λιμάνι της Αλεξανδρούπολης για τη μεταφορά στρατιωτικού υλικού των Ιταλικών Ενόπλων Δυνάμεων, στο πλαίσιο της Βορειοατλαντικής Συμμαχίας.

    https://www.evros-news.gr/2023/05/17/%cf%87%ce%b1%cf%81%ce%b4%ce%b1%ce%bb%ce%b9%ce%ac%cf%82-%ce%b1%cf%80-%cf%8

    #Evros #migrations #réfugiés #frontières #militarisation_des_frontières #Grèce #frontière_terrestre #Turquie #Thraces

  • Avril 2023

    #Urgent! Two #Kurdish #refugees have reportedly been stranded in the buffer zone on the #Greek-#Turkish #border for three days. One of them is called Serhat Karadeniz, who communicated their situation to his family in #Turkey by phone. His father Hüseyin Karadaniz told me about the desperate situation of the two refugees. He also told me that the two refugees want to apply for asylum in #Greece, because they are fleeing political persecution in Turkey and would face political prison charges if they returned. Reportedly, the two refugees have been without food and water for three days and are experiencing health problems due to the cold. According to the last information, that the two Kurdish refugees are in the buffer zone in the Feres region, calling for urgent help from the Greek authorities and the United Nations to receive their asylum requests.


    https://twitter.com/vedatyeler_/status/1645398180949897218

    #limbe #zone_frontalière #île #Evros #asile #migrations #réfugiés #frontières #fleuve_Evros #Turquie #Grèce #Thrace #îlots
    #nudité

    –-

    ajouté à la métaliste sur #métaliste sur des #réfugiés abandonnés sur des #îlots dans la région de l’#Evros, #frontière_terrestre entre la #Grèce et la #Turquie :
    https://seenthis.net/messages/953343

  • Relatives informed us about a group stranded on an islet on #Evros river. The position they sent shows the people on #Greek territory. On the phone, the border guard station of #Soufli promised a quick rescue. We have no direct contact with the group & hope help is on its way!

    https://twitter.com/alarm_phone/status/1600837138345361408

    Commentaire de Lena K sur twitter :

    This seems to be the same islet where people were trapped on in July & August. The ministry announcement states that the coordinates of group ’do not belong to the 🇬🇷 territory’. The 🇬🇷 MoD said it’s crossed by the borderline. Again, this raises the question of non-rescue.

    https://twitter.com/lk2015r/status/1601279830204370944

    #limbe #zone_frontalière #île #Evros #asile #migrations #réfugiés #frontières #fleuve_Evros #Turquie #Grèce #Thrace #îlots

    –—

    ajouté à la métaliste sur #métaliste sur des #réfugiés abandonnés sur des #îlots dans la région de l’#Evros, #frontière_terrestre entre la #Grèce et la #Turquie :
    https://seenthis.net/messages/953343

    • Εβρος : Συναγερμός για ομάδα μεταναστών σε νησίδα – Ανήκει στην τουρκική επικράτεια

      Σε έλεγχο που έγινε σήμερα από τις ελληνικές αρχές, δεν εντοπίστηκαν άτομα επάνω στη νησίδα

      Για την ύπαρξη περίπου δέκα μεταναστών σε νησίδα του Έβρου ειδοποιήθηκε η Ελληνική Αστυνομία από τη ΜΚΟ « Watch the Med ».

      Οι ελληνικές αρχές, σε συνεργασία με την αρμόδια υπηρεσία του Γενικού Επιτελείου Στρατού, εξέτασαν τις συντεταγμένες που τους δόθηκαν και προέκυψε ότι το σημείο δεν ανήκει στην ελληνική επικράτεια.

      Σύμφωνα με τη σχετική ανακοίνωση του υπουργείου Προστασίας του Πολίτη, αμέσως ενημερώθηκαν η ΜΚΟ και η Frontex, ενώ ειδοποιήθηκαν με ΝΟΤΑΜ οι τουρκικές αρχές στο τριεθνή σταθμό του Καπετάν Αντρέεβο για την περισυλλογή των μεταναστών.

      Σε έλεγχο που έγινε σήμερα από τις ελληνικές αρχές, δεν εντοπίστηκαν άτομα επάνω στη νησίδα.

      Δεν είναι γνωστό, πάντως, εάν έγινε περισυλλογή τους από τις τουρκικές αρχές.

      Η ανακοίνωση του υπουργείου

      « Η Ελληνική Αστυνομία ειδοποιήθηκε χθες (8/12/2022) τις πρώτες πρωινές ώρες από την ΜΚΟ « Watch the Med » για ύπαρξη παράνομων μεταναστών σε νησίδα του Έβρου. Οι ελληνικές αρχές σε συνεργασία με την αρμόδια υπηρεσία του Γενικού Επιτελείου Στρατού εξέτασαν τις συντεταγμένες που τους δόθηκαν.

       » Από τον έλεγχο προέκυψε ότι το σημείο δεν ανήκει στην Ελληνική επικράτεια. Αμέσως, ενημερώθηκαν η ΜΚΟ, ο Frontex και ειδοποιήθηκαν με ΝΟΤΑΜ οι τουρκικές αρχές στο τριεθνή σταθμό του Καπετάν Αντρέεβο για την περισυλλογή των μεταναστών ».

      https://www.in.gr/2022/12/09/greece/evros-synagermos-gia-omada-metanaston-se-nisida-anikei-stin-tourkiki-epikrateia

    • 18.01.2023 :

      Now the ~48 people are again on #Greek territory where they wish to exercise their right to claim asylum. They’re without clean drinking water or food and suffer from the cold weather. We hope this time their rights will be upheld! We demand their immediate safety and protection!

      –—

      “On 19 January 2023, the Court (the duty judge) decided, in the interests of the parties and the proper conduct of the proceedings before it, to indicate to the Government of #Greece, under Rule 39, that the applicants should not be removed from Greece and be provided with food, water and adequate medical care as needed until further notice.
      The parties’ attention is drawn to the fact that failure of a Contracting State to comply with a measure indicated under Rule 39 may entail a breach of Article 34 of the Convention.”

      The #Didymoticho border guards told us that a decision to rescue needs to come from the ministry. When the people called 112, they were told that “the mayor of the area must sign the court decision in order to be evacuated”.


      https://twitter.com/alarm_phone/status/1615764908486070272

  • Erdogan opponents allege Greek border pushbacks

    For years #Greece has been accused of illegally pushing asylum-seekers back to #Turkey, a practice it strenuously denies.
    But according to witnesses and rights groups, the summary #deportations are also hitting vulnerable opponents of Turkish President Recep Tayyip #Erdogan.
    Kurdish writer Meral Simsek, 42, is one of several people who told AFP they were sent back to Turkey to face imprisonment and possible torture after already making a perilous crossing of the border on the River #Evros.

    Athens has always denied that its security forces engage in illegal #pushbacks.

    In March, Greece’s national transparency authority said a four-month investigation found no evidence of such practices.

    EU border agency Frontex has also repeatedly been accused by rights groups of illegally returning migrants across EU borders.

    Its chief Fabrice Leggeri quit last month amid an investigation by the European anti-fraud office OLAF, reportedly into alleged mismanagement.

    Alkistis Agrafioti, a lawyer with the Greek Council for Refugees, said the time has come for the EU to mount a “serious” inquiry into pushbacks.

    “Pushbacks not only run contrary to international law, but they are also accompanied by criminal acts — stealing, violence, abuse” and lives being put in danger, she added.

    Marina Rafenberg / AFP

    https://www.rfi.fr/en/erdogan-opponents-allege-greek-border-pushbacks

  • The protectors of refugee children

    They are probably the first and only doctors to examine young #refugees who arrive in #Athens. The pediatricians Stavroula Dikalioti and Smaragda Papachristidou - due to their efforts and personal interest - have managed to facilitate the refugees’ access to #public_health, which is provided at no cost, but remains a complicated maze to navigate.

    Before the journey, they get tattoos as a way to identify their bodies in case they die on the way.

    #greece #health #migration #borders #Europe

    https://wearesolomon.com/mag/on-the-move/the-protectors-of-refugee-children

  • Inside new refugee camp like a ‘prison’: Greece and other countries prioritize surveillance over human rights

    On the Greek island of Samos you can swim in the same sea where refugees are drowning. The sandy beaches and rolling hills, coloured by an Aegean sunset hide a humanitarian emergency that is symptomatic of a global turn against migration.

    #Greece is just one of the many locations across the world where technological experimentation at the #border is given free reign. Our ongoing work at the #Refugee Law Lab attempts to weave together the tapestry of the increasingly powerful and global border industrial complex which legitimizes technosolutionism at the expense of human rights and dignity.

    These technological experiments don’t occur in a vacuum. Powerful state interests and the private sector increasingly set the stage for what technology is developed and deployed, while communities experiencing the sharp edges of these innovations are consistently left out of the discussion.

    Policy makers are increasingly choosing #drones over humanitarian policies, with states prioritizing #security and #surveillance over human rights.

    #refugees #borders #samos #camp #Europe #pushbacks #migration #human_rights

    https://theconversation.com/inside-new-refugee-camp-like-a-prison-greece-and-other-countries-pr

  • Ambassador in limbo makes plea for Afghans to be allowed into EU

    Former Afghan government’s ambassador in Greece appalled by Athens’ media blitz against ‘illegal migrant flows’

    The centre-right government of the prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, unveiled the EU-funded initiative, saying its goal was “to make clear that Greece guards its borders in an organised way and does not allow illegal migration flows”.

    Amid fears of the country again becoming the gateway for thousands of Europe-bound refugees desperate to escape the excesses of Islamist hardliners still seeking international legitimacy, the Greek migration ministry admitted the move had been prompted by “the latest geopolitical developments in Afghanistan”.

    Under the campaign, mainstream Afghan newspapers and social media will be targeted in what officials have called a blitzkrieg of messaging aimed at dissuading Afghans from paying smugglers to help them flee.

    Platforms including YouTube will be employed, with videos reportedly being prepared to convey the unvarnished reality of what awaits people if they succeed in reaching Greece through irregular means. This week asylum seekers on Samos were moved into a “closed” and highly fortified reception centre – the first of five EU-funded facilities on Aegean isles – that is encircled by military-style fencing and equipped with magnetic gates more resonant of a prison than a migrant camp, NGOs say.

    #migration #Greece #Afghanistan #Taliban #refugees #borders #camps #asylum

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/27/ambassador-in-limbo-makes-plea-for-afghans-to-be-allowed-into-eu

    • les principaux journaux afghans et les médias sociaux seront ciblés dans ce que les autorités ont appelé un blitzkrieg de messages visant à dissuader les Afghans de payer des passeurs pour les aider à fuir.

      Des plates-formes telles que YouTube seront utilisées, avec des vidéos qui seraient préparées pour transmettre la réalité sans fard de ce qui attend les gens s’ils réussissent à atteindre la Grèce par des moyens irréguliers. Cette semaine, les demandeurs d’asile à Samos ont été transférés dans un centre d’accueil « fermé » et hautement fortifié – le premier des cinq établissements financés par l’UE sur les îles de la mer Égée – qui est entouré de clôtures de style militaire et équipé de portes magnétiques plus proches d’une prison que un camp de #migrants, disent les ONG.

      #union_européenne #asile #réfugiés

  • #Frontex #Zeppelin in trial flights from #Alexandroupoli airport. The militarisation of the #Evros border continues.

    https://twitter.com/lk2015r/status/1415069475238551561

    #Evros #asile #migrations #réfugiés #frontières #Grèce #militarisation #militarisation_des_frontières

    –—

    Κάτι τρέχει στον Έβρο

    Τα βλέμματα τράβηξε το λευκό αερόστατο τύπου Zeppelin, όσοι το αντίκρυσαν στον ουρανό της Αλεξανδρούπολης σήμερα το πρωί.

    Από το πρωί πραγματοποιεί το συγκεκριμένο Ζέπελιν δοκιμαστικές πτήσεις στο αεροδρόμιο « Δημόκριτος » και σύντομα θα μπει στη « μάχη » της φύλαξης των συνόρων.

    Tα βλέμματα όσων το αντίκρυσαν στον ουρανό της #Αλεξανδρούπολης τράβηξε το αερόστατο τύπου Zέπελιν το οποίο στέλνει η...

    https://www.e-evros.gr/gr/eidhseis/3/aerostato-zeppelin-ston-oyrano-ths-ale3androypolhs-poia-h-xrhsimothta-toy/post44126

  • A ne pas oublier...

    „I thank #Greece for being our European #shield

    Dixit #Ursula_von_der_Leyen, March 2020.

    Phrase complète:

    Those who seek to test Europe’s unity will be disappointed. We will hold the line and our unity will prevail. Now is the time for concerted action and cool heads and acting based on our values. Turkey is not an enemy and people are not just means to reach a goal. We would all do well to remember both in the days to come. I thank Greece for being our European #ασπίδα [English: #shield] in these times.

    Source:
    https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/statement_20_380

    voir aussi:
    https://seenthis.net/messages/830355

    #bouclier #internal_externalization #Grèce #asile #migrations #frontières #EU #UE #Union_européenne #réfugiés #von_der_Leyen

    ping @isskein @karine4

    • –-> 05.06.2021 :

      Link here of the speech [in Greek, google translation OK] of #Margaritis_Schinas in Komotini yesterday.
      Among other things: ’Evros, thrace, are now the symbol of the “European shield”...

      https://twitter.com/lk2015r/status/1401198056603856896

      –—

      Σχοινάς : Σύμβολο της “ευρωπαϊκής ασπίδας” ο Έβρος και η Θράκη

      Ο αντιπρόεδρος της Ευρωπαϊκής Επιτροπής, Μαργαρίτης Σχοινάς, πραγματοποίησε χθες βράδυ ομιλία σε εκδήλωση στο Αρχαιολογικό Μουσείο Κομοτηνής, με τη συμμετοχή εκπροσώπων των τοπικών φορέων.

      Ο κ.Σχοινάς, που συνεχίζει σήμερα την διήμερη περιοδεία του στην Θράκη και χθες επισκέφθηκε το νομό Έβρου, συνοδευόμενος από τον Περιφερειάρχη Ανατολικής Μακεδονίας και Θράκης Χρήστο Μέτιο, τόνισε ότι :

      “Η Θράκη της ισότητας είναι πρότυπο κοινής συμβίωσης χριστιανών και μουσουλμάνων, για όλη την Ευρώπη, διαπολιτισμικής και διαθρησκευτικής συνεργασίας, πολιτικής και κοινωνικής αντιπροσώπευσης στη δημόσια ζωή”, υπογράμμισε ο αντιπρόεδρος της Ευρωπαϊκής Επιτροπής, Μαργαρίτης Σχοινάς.

      “Η Θράκη είναι η καρδιά του πολιτικού, δημοκρατικού και κοινωνικού, κοινού ευρωπαϊκού στοιχείου, καθρεφτίζει το σπουδαίο πολυπολιτισμικό μας ψηφιδωτό, αλλά και την σπουδαιότητα των κοινωνικών μας κατακτήσεων, τον ευρωπαϊκό τρόπο ζωής που αποτελείται από ένα μοναδικό πλαίσιο αρχών και αξιών που μόνο εδώ, στην Ευρώπη, μπορεί κάποιος να τις βρει συγκεντρωμένες, όλες μαζί.”, είπε ο κ. Σχοινάς και συνέχισε : “Ο ευρωπαϊκός τρόπος ζωής είναι οι κατακτήσεις που πετύχαμε όλοι μαζί οι Ευρωπαίοι διαχρονικά για να δημιουργήσουμε το αρτιότερο πολιτικό σύστημα, το πιο σύγχρονο δημοκρατικό πλαίσιο που γνώρισε ποτέ ο κόσμος και που η Ελλάδα έκανε κτήμα της τα τελευταία 40 χρόνια της ένταξης της στην Ενωμένη Ευρώπη, που περήφανα γιορτάζουμε φέτος όλοι οι Έλληνες μαζί”.

      Η Θράκη στην καρδιά του Ευρωπαϊκού Τρόπου Ζωής
      Όπως σημείωσε, ο ευρωπαϊκός τρόπος ζωής περιλαμβάνει την ασφάλεια, τη δημόσια υγεία, το μεταναστευτικό, την εκπαίδευση, τις δεξιότητες, την ενσωμάτωση, τον Πολιτισμό, τον διαθρησκευτικό διάλογο και την συνύπαρξη, την ανεκτικότητα στο διαφορετικό και την καταπολέμηση του ρατσισμού, της μισαλλοδοξίας, του αντισημιτισμού ή κάθε άλλης μορφής θρησκευτικού εξτρεμισμού – που δεν ταιριάζουν με την ποικιλόμορφη ευρωπαϊκή μας ταυτότητα, τις αξίες, τις ευκαιρίες, την κινητικότητα, τον σεβασμό στην ιστορική μας ταυτότητα αλλά και τα ανθρώπινα δικαιώματα.

      “Τα τελευταία σαράντα χρόνια αποτελούν τη μακρύτερη περίοδο ειρήνης, δημοκρατίας και ευημερίας που γνώρισαν οι Έλληνες, κάθε θρησκεύματος, κάθε φύλου, κάθε καταγωγής ή κοινωνικής τάξης”, τόνισε και για τη Θράκη σημείωσε πως αν και βρίσκεται στα σύνορα της Ευρώπης, “είναι η καρδιά της Ευρώπης, ζωτική της περιφέρεια και φάρος ελπίδας για πολλές άλλες περιοχές με συναφή χαρακτηριστικά. Η Θράκη είναι στη καρδιά του ευρωπαϊκού τρόπου ζωής και χάρις στα ευρωπαϊκά εργαλεία για την εκπαίδευση, την ενσωμάτωση, την συνεργασία, την κινητικότητα, την πολιτιστική δημιουργία είναι σήμερα υπόδειγμα ισονομίας και ισοπολιτείας”.

      Ανέφερε πως από την αρχή της θητείας της η νέα Ευρωπαϊκή Επιτροπή εργάζεται σκληρά για να εμπλουτίσει το κεκτημένο της Ευρώπης που δημιουργεί ευκαιρίες για όλους. Κάνει χρήση πρωτοβουλιών, όπως το νέο Θεματολόγιο για τις δεξιότητες, που κατατέθηκε το καλοκαίρι, και μέσω αυτού θέλουμε να βοηθήσει όλους τους Eυρωπαίους πολίτες να προετοιμαστούν για την επανάσταση δεξιοτήτων που θα φέρει η πράσινη και ψηφιακή εποχή.

      Προγράμματα που προωθεί η Κομισιόν στην Ανατολική Μακεδονία – Θράκη
      Αυτό θα γίνει, μεταξύ άλλων, και μέσω του προγράμματος Erasmus του οποίου διπλασίασε τους πόρους και μιας νέας οικογένειας υποστηρικτικών μέσων, τον Ενιαίο Ευρωπαϊκό Χώρο Εκπαίδευσης, που φιλοδοξεί να συγκροτήσουμε μαζί με τα κράτη μέλη, ως ένα εξαιρετικό οικοσύστημα μάθησης και αριστείας, προσβάσιμο και ανοιχτό σε όλους, που θα διευκολύνει την κινητικότητα στην εκπαίδευση, την κατάρτιση, τις επαγγελματικές συνεργασίες, την κοινωνική ένταξη και ενσωμάτωση.

      Παρέθεσε αναλυτικά στοιχεία, σύμφωνα με τα οποία :

      Περισσότερες από 2.500 υποτροφίες κινητικότητας έχουν χορηγηθεί μέσω του Δημοκρίτειου Πανεπιστημίου Θράκης (ΔΠΘ), του Διεθνούς Πανεπιστημίου και του ΤΕΙ Καβάλας σε φοιτητές, διδακτικό προσωπικό και εργαζόμενους σε προγράμματα στην Ελλάδα, την Γαλλία, την Γερμανία, την Ισπανία, την Ιταλία, την Κύπρο, την Πολωνία, την Ρουμανία, την Τσεχία, την Βουλγαρία, την Τουρκία.
      Το Δημοκρίτειο Πανεπιστήμιο συμμετέχει στα προγράμματα Καινοτομίας και Έξυπνης Εξειδίκευσης για τα οποία σκοπεύουμε να εκδώσουμε σχετική έκθεση το ερχόμενο καλοκαίρι.
      Η Ελλάδα, κυρίως στα προγράμματα του Ορίζοντα 2020, έχει να επιδείξει μια ακόμη ιστορία επιτυχίας μιας και είναι στην πρώτη δεκάδα απορροφητικότητας με 1,62 δισ. ευρώ στους 27 συν το Ηνωμένο Βασίλειο.

      Η Ανατολική Μακεδονία και Θράκη συμμετέχει μέσω του ΔΠΘ, των ΟΤΑ αλλά και ιδιωτών και τη νέα προγραμματική περίοδο, με το διευρυμένο πρόγραμμα Ορίζοντας Ευρώπη όπου θα υπάρχουν ακόμη μεγαλύτερες δυνατότητες για την χρηματοδότηση της Καινοτομίας και της Έρευνας με περισσότερα κονδύλια για όλη την χώρα αλλά και την δική σας περιφέρεια. Μέχρι στιγμής η Ανατολική Μακεδονία και Θράκη έχει προσελκύσει κεφάλαια 6,4 εκατ. ευρώ που είμαι σίγουρος ότι θα πολλαπλασιαστούν.
      Συστατικό κομμάτι της πολιτικής μας που απαντά στην ενίσχυση των δεξιοτήτων και της εκπαίδευσης καλύπτουμε με το Σχέδιο Δράσης για την Ψηφιακή Εκπαίδευση, που εγκρίναμε τον περασμένο Σεπτέμβριο, και μπορεί να υποστηρίξει την χώρα στην ανάπτυξη των ψηφιακών δεξιοτήτων και υποδομών.

      Με τα άλματα που έχει κάνει η χώρα τους τελευταίους μήνες στην ψηφιοποίηση και την αποτελεσματικότητα των υπηρεσιών μπορεί να εκμεταλλευτεί πλήρως τα νέα αυτά ευρωπαϊκά εργαλεία για τη χορήγηση βασικών – αλλά και πιο εξειδικευμένων – ψηφιακών δεξιοτήτων στους συμπολίτες μας. Για να επιτύχουμε μια πραγματική ψηφιακή επανάσταση δεν αρκεί να επενδύσουμε μόνο σε τεχνολογίες και υποδομές, αλλά – πρωτίστως – σε ανθρώπους. Όλους τους ανθρώπους, χωρίς αποκλεισμούς, ενδιάμεσους και ημέτερους.
      Εκτός από την ψηφιακή μετάβαση, την ασφάλεια και το μεταναστευτικό που αποτελούν δομικά συστατικά του δικού του χαρτοφυλακίου, ο κ. Σχοινάς είπε ότι η Πράσινη Συμφωνία αποτελεί μια εξίσου σπουδαία προτεραιότητα που παρέμεινε ψηλά στη ατζέντα παρά το ηλεκτρικό σοκ που επέφερε η πρωτοφανής πανδημία που χτύπησε την ανθρωπότητα. Επίσης, μέσα από την ενίσχυση του μοναδικού φυσικού κάλους της Θράκης μπορούν να προκύψουν επιπλέον ευκαιρίες παράλληλα με την προστασία της βιοποικιλότητας για την οποία έχουμε ήδη συγχρηματοδοτήσει 42,8 εκατομμύρια ευρώ από το πρόγραμμα LIFE.Σε λίγο καιρό, πιθανότατα εντός του Ιουνίου θα ανοίξει και για νέες συμμετοχές-ανοιχτές και σε προτάσεις που αφορούν την ενέργεια. Μέσα από συνέργειες με τα συναφή εκπαιδευτικά ιδρύματα του ΔΠΘ που παράγουν σπουδαίο ερευνητικό έργο, αλλά και ΣΔΙΤ, με την δική μας χρηματοδότηση μπορεί να δοθεί περαιτέρω έμφαση σε δράσεις για τον αγροτοδιατροφικό κλάδο, την έξυπνη και αειφόρο γεωργία και δασοκομία, το θαλάσσιο και παράκτιο περιβάλλον, τη βιοοικονομία, τα ποτάμια και τους υδροφόρους ορίζοντες της περιοχής.

      Μέσω του προγράμματος αγροτικής ανάπτυξης έχουμε ήδη στηρίξει 586.000 αγρότες και γεωργικές επιχειρήσεις, 29.000 νέους ενώ 25.000 αγρότες έχουν καταρτιστεί ή επιμορφωθεί. Το 9,8% των εγκεκριμένων προγραμμάτων και το 10,9% των συνολικών πληρωμών αφορούν την Ανατολική Μακεδονία και Θράκη. Ενώ έχουμε φροντίσει να προστατεύσουμε δεκάδες τοπικά προϊόντα της πατρίδας μας πολλά από τα οποία δικά σας όπως το Ούζο Θράκης, κρασιά από τους αμπελώνες όλων των νομών της περιφέρειας, τον Ίσμαρο την Δράμα, ελιές από την Θάσο, τις περίφημες πατάτες και τα φασόλια Νευροκοπίου και άλλα πολλά που προσθέτουν σημαντικά οφέλη στην τοπική παραγωγή και οικονομία. Για την περίοδο 2021-2027, η Ελλάδα θα επωφεληθεί από συνολική κατανομή της 19,4 δισεκατομμυρίων ευρώ που έχουμε αποφασίσει για την Κοινή Γεωργική Παραγωγή στην Ευρώπη και ήδη δουλεύουμε ως Ευρωπαϊκή Επιτροπή στενά με τις εθνικές αρχές για την κατάρτιση και την έγκριση της νέας περιόδου.

      Σχετικά με την Περιφέρεια Ανατολικής Μακεδονίας και Θράκης είπε ότι διαθέτει ένα μοναδικό σύνολο ιδιαιτεροτήτων που μπορούν να συνδράμουν ουσιαστικά στην εξέλιξη και τον εκσυγχρονισμό της περιοχής, όπως :

      Η μεταποιητική της παράδοση από την ιστορική μεταξουργία στο Σουφλί.
      Η γεωστρατηγική και οικονομική σημασία των ενεργειακών δικτύων που τέμνουν την περιοχή αλλά και οι προοπτικές των λιμανιών της Αλεξανδρούπολης και της Καβάλας – με την δεδομένη στήριξη της Ευρώπης – μπορούν να εκτοξεύσουν τον παραγωγικό ιστό όχι μόνο της Περιφέρειας αλλά της ευρύτερης περιοχής εντός και εκτός συνόρων. Όλα αυτά μαζί με τον δυναμισμό των επιχειρήσεων που έχουν ήδη επενδύσει στην περιοχή κι έχουν δημιουργήσει σημαντικές παραγωγικές δομές, με τα πανεπιστημιακά ιδρύματα και τα εργαστήρια που τονώνονται συνεχώς με το δυναμισμό των νέων που σπουδάζουν και δημιουργούν εδώ.

      Η Ευρώπη αποδεδειγμένα βρίσκεται στο πλευρό της περιφέρειας, των δήμων και των επιχειρήσεων της περιοχής και σχεδόν 460 εκατομμύρια ευρώ κατευθύνθηκαν στην Ανατολική Μακεδονία και Θράκη την περίοδο 2014-2020 από τα Ευρωπαϊκά Διαρθρωτικά Ταμεία και αλλάζουν τη φυσιογνωμία του τόπου.

      άλλαξε ουσιαστικά τις ζωές μας, την πορεία του κόσμου, όπως τον γνωρίζαμε, οδήγησε σε τομές στην ευρωπαϊκή πολιτική που ποτέ ξανά δεν τολμήσαμε και τόνισε πως “στην τωρινή δύσκολη συγκυρία ίσως τη κρισιμότερη σε βάθος γενεών, χτίζουμε το κοινό μας μέλλον σε τέσσερα κρίσιμα ευρωπαϊκά εργοτάξια”.

      Στην Υγεία. Στην πρώτη γραμμή της μάχης μεα ασφαλή και προσβάσιμα σε όλους ακόμη και εκτός Ευρώπης μιας και η ΕΕ είναι η μοναδική έως σήμερα που εξάγει σχεδόν τον ίδιο αριθμό εμβολίων που έχει εξασφαλισμένα ήδη έως το 2023 για τους πολίτες της και στον υπόλοιπο κόσμο.

      Με τη νέα Ευρωπαϊκή Ένωση Υγείας που το εν εξελίξει εμβολιαστικό πρόγραμμα – το μεγαλύτερο στην ιστορία της ανθρωπότητας με εμβόλιθα μας θωρακίσει στις υγειονομικές προκλήσεις του αύριο, αλλά και την επέκταση της κοινής προμήθειας σε θεραπευτικά σκευάσματα κατά του COVID-19 που ήδη εγκρίναμε πριν λίγες εβδομάδες. Από τον ευρωπαϊκό προϋπολογισμό σήμερα υποστηρίζουμε κινητές μονάδες υγείας, τα εμβολιαστικά κέντρα, τα διαγνωστικά testcenters.

      Στο σημείο αυτό έκανε ειδική αναφορά στο Πανεπιστημιακό Νοσοκομείο Αλεξανδρούπολης που επισκέφθηκε το μεσημέρι και υπογράμμισε : “Όλα τα νοσοκομεία της περιφέρειας και ιδιαίτερα το Πανεπιστημιακό της Αλεξανδρούπολης που επισκέφτηκα νωρίτερα ως το κέντρο αναφοράς για την πανδημία έχουν ενισχυθεί σημαντικά από τις έκτακτες ενισχύσεις ενώ είναι το μοναδικό δημόσιο νοσοκομείο στη Βόρεια Ελλάδα (περίπου 3,1 εκατομμύρια πολίτες) με δυνατότητες ενδοαγγειακής θεραπείας, με αποτέλεσμα τη περίθαλψη ασθενών από όλους τους νομούς της Μακεδονίας και της Θράκης χάρις στη διαχρονική του χρηματοδότηση από τα εργαλεία της Ευρωπαϊκής Επιτροπής”.

      Μίλησε για το Πιστοποιητικό Κινητικότητας, το χαρακτήρισε “ένα νέο πακέτο για την ασφαλή επανέναρξη των μετακινήσεων, στο οποίο η Ελλάδα και ο πρωθυπουργός της πρωτοστάτησαν” και συμπλήρωσε : “Δεν πρόκειται μόνο για ένα πιστοποιητικό εμβολιασμού, αλλά ένα κλειδί ασφαλείας για την επάνοδο στην κανονικότητα, τον τουρισμό και την κινητικότητα. Την προηγούμενη εβδομάδα εγκαινιάσαμε μαζί με τον πρωθυπουργό και τον Σαρλ Μισέλ, τον πρόεδρο του Ευρωπαϊκού Συμβουλίου, και τον αρμόδιο υπουργό την ελληνική του έκδοση στο Υπουργείο Ψηφιακής Διακυβέρνησης στην Αθήνα. Ένα κλειδί ασφαλείας για την δημόσια υγεία αλλά και τις μετακινήσεις και τον τουρισμό. Μάλιστα, όταν συνήθως η νομοθετική διαδικασία στην ευρωπαϊκή γραφειοκρατία ολοκληρώνεται περίπου σε 2 χρόνια, το συγκεκριμένο fasttrack πιστοποιητικό – χωρίς εκπτώσεις στα προσωπικά δεδομένα – το ολοκληρώσαμε μόλις σε 2 μήνες”.

      Στη θωράκιση της οικονομίας με ιστορικά νέα εργαλεία και αποφάσεις. Μαθαίνοντας από τα λάθη της προηγούμενης κρίσης, αναστείλαμε τους δημοσιονομικούς περιορισμούς του Συμφώνου Σταθερότητας για τρία χρόνια, δίνοντας στα κράτη μέλη πλήρη ευελιξία να στηρίξουν τις οικονομίες τους όσο χρειάζονται μέχρι να γυρίσουν στα προ-κρίσης επίπεδα.
      Δημιουργήσαμε σε χρόνο ρεκόρ ένα νέο χρηματοδοτικό εργαλείο αξίας 100 δισ. ευρώ για την στήριξη της απασχόλησης (SURE) το οποίο παρέχει στην Ελλάδα άνω των 5 δισ. ευρώ μέσω του προγράμματος Συν-Εργασία. Η Ευρωπαϊκή Κεντρική Τράπεζα ενίσχυσε τις προσπάθειες των χωρών μας με τεράστιο πρόγραμμα αγορών ομολόγων αξίας 1.8 τρισ. ευρώ, μειώνοντας το κόστος δανεισμού σε ιστορικά χαμηλά επίπεδα για περιπτώσεις όπως η Ελλάδα.

      Ως έκτακτα μέτρα για την στήριξη της τοπικής αγοράς στην Περιφέρεια έχουν ήδη επιλεγεί 10000 επιχειρήσεις με συνολικό στόχο τις 25000 και στις οποίες επενδύουμε 65 εκατομμύρια από τους διαθέσιμους πόρους του Ευρωπαϊκού Ταμείου Περιφερειακής Ανάπτυξης. Για την αντιμετώπιση των κοινωνικοοικονομικών συνεπειών της κρίσης από την πανδημία και για την παροχή στήριξης στις πληγείσες μικρομεσαίες επιχειρήσεις. Επίσης, ενισχύουμε 41 επενδυτικά Project καινοτομίας, με σχεδόν 58 εκατομμύρια για δράσεις κοινωνικής ενσωμάτωσης και περίπου 6 εκατομμύρια για την στήριξη της απασχόλησης.

      Και πάνω απ’ όλα, δημιουργήσαμε το εμβληματικό και χωρίς προηγούμενο Σχέδιο Ανάκαμψης με τα 750 δισ. ευρώ του κοινού δανεισμού, που μαζί με το πολυετές δημοσιονομικό πλαίσιο για την περίοδο 2021-2027, δημιουργεί ένα υπερόπλο σχεδόν 2 τρισ. ευρώ για την οικονομική ανάκαμψη, πολλαπλάσιο του Πακέτου Μάρσαλ σε πραγματικούς όρους.

      Αναλογικά με το μέγεθος της οικονομίας της, η Ελλάδα θα είναι η 4η πιο ευνοημένη χώρα, λαμβάνοντας πάνω από 60 δισ. ευρώ σε επιδοτήσεις, ποσό που αντιστοιχεί στο ένα τρίτο του προ-κρίσης εθνικού προϊόντος μας.

      Εδώ και πάλι η Ελλάδα βγήκε μπροστά με παρρησία, καταθέτοντας δεύτερη σε όλη την Ευρώπη το Εθνικό της Σχέδιο Ανάκαμψης και Ανθεκτικότητας « Ελλάδα 2.0 » για την αξιοποίηση αυτών των κονδυλιών.

      Όπως προδίδει η ονομασία του, το Σχέδιο αποτελεί μια ιστορική ευκαιρία για την δημιουργία μίας νέας Ελλάδας : σύγχρονης, εξωστρεφούς, και έτοιμης να ανταποκριθεί όχι μόνο στις τρέχουσες επιπτώσεις της πανδημίας αλλά και στις παγκόσμιες επαναστάσεις που είναι ήδη εδώ όπως η Πράσινη Συμφωνία και η Ψηφιακή Μετάβαση που προανέφερα, που πλέον και ο πιο δύσπιστος καταλαβαίνει ότι η Ελλάδα έχει κάνει άλματα.

      Με λίγα λόγια, ένα σχέδιο Ελληνικό, Made in EU Greece, που γράψαμε εμείς, όχι άλλοι για μας και που αφορά κάθε Ελληνίδα και Έλληνα. Να είστε σίγουροι ότι προβάλλει μια Ελληνική, με περισσότερη Ευρώπη, δεκαετία. Το ελληνικό σχέδιο θα είναι από τα πρώτα που θα εγκριθούν τις επόμενες ημέρες με έναν ιδιαίτερο πολιτικό ευρωπαϊκό συμβολισμό.

      Σύμβολο της “ευρωπαϊκής ασπίδας” ο Εβρος
      Στη Μετανάστευση. “Εδώ επιτρέψτε μου έναν ιδιαίτερο προσωπικό τόνο, μιας και λίγες μέρες πριν μπει ο κορονοϊός στη ζωή μας, η Ελλάδα υπερασπιζόταν τα ευρωπαϊκά σύνορα με την ιστορική, εμβληματική παρουσία της ευρωπαϊκής ηγεσίας στο πλευρό του πρωθυπουργού στον Έβρο. Που σήμερα, Ευρωπαίοι συνοριοφύλακες και ακτοφύλακες δεν προστατεύουν μόνο τα κοινά μας σύνορα αλλά και γίνονται ανάχωμα στην εργαλειοποίηση κάθε είδους σκοπιμότητας εκμετάλλευση αθώων συνανθρώπων μας. Ποτέ ξανά φίλες και φίλοι, δεν έχει συστρατευτεί σύσσωμη η ευρωπαϊκή ηγεσία στον ίδιο τόπο, στο μέτωπο της κρίσης.

      Ο Έβρος, η Θράκη αποτελεί πλέον το σύμβολο της « ευρωπαϊκής ασπίδας », την καρδιά της ευρωπαϊκής άμυνας απέναντι σε κάθε επίδοξο και αστάθμητο παράγοντα. Στην περιοχή του Έβρου, η Frontex συνεργάζεται με τα τοπικά κέντρα συντονισμού της Ελληνικής Αστυνομίας στην Ορεστιάδα και την Αλεξανδρούπολη, όπου πραγματοποιείται η καθημερινή διοίκηση και ο έλεγχος των επιχειρησιακών δραστηριοτήτων. Η περιοχή φιλοξενεί σήμερα τη μεγαλύτερη εγκατάσταση προστασίας χερσαίων συνόρων στην Ευρώπη και περιλαμβάνει και τις τρεις κύριες κατηγορίες προσωπικού του Frontex, δηλαδή : Με αξιωματικούς του μόνιμου σώματος του Frontex, παρουσία δυνάμεων από άλλα κράτη μέλη με μακροπρόθεσμο σχεδιασμό αλλά και ορισμένου βραχυπρόθεσμου χρονικού πλαισίου ανάπτυξης. Οπως είπε, ξεκίνησε την περιοδεία του στη Θράκη από τα σύνορα στον Εβρο, όπου η Frontex αναπτύσσει δυνάμεις με οχήματα, φορτηγά με θερμικές κάμερες, σκοπούς με συνοδεία σκύλων και ειδικούς σε θέματα επιχειρησιακά.
      “Η πρόταση μας για ένα νέο « Σύμφωνο Αλληλεγγύης » για την μετανάστευση και το άσυλο που βρίσκεται ήδη στη διαπραγμάτευση ανάμεσα στα κράτη μέλη στο Συμβούλιο Υπουργών, προτείνει δίκαιο καταμερισμό των βαρών και των ευθυνών, αναβαθμίζει την Ευρώπη ως έναν προορισμό ασύλου αλλά μόνο για αυτούς που αποδεδειγμένα έχουν ανάγκη”, σημείωσε και πρόσθεσε : “Με το Σύμφωνο, στόχος μας είναι να δημιουργήσουμε μια εντελώς νέα αρχιτεκτονική, βασισμένη στη συνολική προσέγγιση του μεταναστευτικού. Επαναλαμβάνω : η αλληλεγγύη και ο επιμερισμός των βαρών θα γίνει ο κανόνας. Μέσα από ένα κυκλικό σύστημα όπου τα επιμέρους στοιχεία του Συμφώνου συνδέονται λειτουργικά : διαδικασίες διαλογής, συνόρων, ασύλου, επιστροφών, αλληλεγγύης – όλα μαζί, αδιάρρηκτα.

      Γυρνάμε σελίδα σε ένα σύστημα που δεν δούλεψε, που δεν περιποιεί τιμή στην Ευρώπη. Αλλάζουμε το υπόδειγμα, διασφαλίζοντας ότι οι προκλήσεις της μετανάστευσης αντιμετωπίζονται συνολικά και διεξοδικά – εντός και εκτός της Ένωσης. Σήμερα, έχουμε για πρώτη φορά μετά από χρόνια την ευκαιρία μίας ανθεκτικής, ενιαίας, συνεκτικής μεταναστευτικής πολιτικής. Μια ευκαιρία που δεν πρέπει να χαθεί”.

      Στη γεωπολιτική της Ευρώπης. “Ας ξεκινήσουμε με μια απλή παραδοχή : παρ’ όλες τις ατέλειες, τις ελλείψεις, τα όποια λάθη μας, αυτός ο σύγχρονος κόσμος πάει καλύτερα χάρις και στην Ευρώπη”, είπε και συνέχισε : “Να παραδεχτούμε υπερήφανα ότι μας αναγνωρίζει ο υπόλοιπος κόσμος, ότι η Ευρώπη είναι πάντα συνεπής στην υπεράσπιση ενός πολυμερούς, βασισμένου σε κανόνες δικαίου κόσμου. Είμαστε οι μεγαλύτεροι δωρητές αναπτυξιακής βοήθειας στον αναπτυσσόμενο κόσμο οι μεγαλύτεροι εξαγωγείς και χορηγοί εμβολίων, πρωταγωνιστές στη μάχη κατά της κλιματικής αλλαγής, πρότυπο δημοκρατικών και κοινωνικών δικαιωμάτων, υπερασπιστές της ειρήνης και δημοκρατίας παντού στον κόσμο. Η Ευρώπη έχει πολλά ατού για να μείνει αμέτοχη. Την μεγαλύτερη εσωτερική αγορά και το δεύτερο νόμισμα στον κόσμο, το μοντέλο της οικονομίας της αγοράς με ανοικτές αγορές αλλά και συστήματα υγείας και πρόνοιας για όλους, την προστασία των προσωπικών δεδομένων και των ανθρώπινων δικαιωμάτων”.
      Από την “ευρωπαϊκή αθωότητα” στην “ευρωπαϊκή ωριμότητα”
      Ο κ. Σχοινάς επισήμανε ότι η κρίση του COVID επιτάχυνε την πολιτική μετάβαση μας από την περίοδο “ευρωπαϊκής αθωότητας » σε εκείνη της « ευρωπαϊκής ωριμότητας », ίσως το τέλος μιας εποχής όπου η Ευρωπαϊκή Ένωση εθεωρείτο παίκτης αποκλειστικά « ήπιας δύναμης » στην γεωστρατηγική σκακιέρα.

      “Η Ελλάδα και σε αυτό το σημείο έχει αποδείξει ότι μπορεί να διαδραματίσει ρόλο πρωταγωνιστικό. Οι σθεναρές ελληνικές τοποθετήσεις στα ζητήματα που αφορούν την Ανατολική Μεσόγειο, η εποικοδομητική στάση στα Βαλκάνια, ο άξονας Φιλίας στον Κόλπο και το εύρος των δεσμών της στον Εύξεινο Πόντο και τον Καύκασο. Η επιμονή της στο κράτος δικαίου και το διεθνές κεκτημένο και η ενεργή ανάμειξη της χώρας στα στρατηγικής σημασίας ερωτήματα στα οποία καλείται να δώσει απάντηση η Ευρώπη, την καθιστούν σημαντική φωνή το επόμενο διάστημα. Αυτή η 70χρονη πορεία μας θυμίζει και κάτι άλλο : οι ευρωπαϊκές επιτυχίες έρχονται μόνο όταν τολμάμε, σπάνια όταν συμβιβαζόμαστε. Η τόλμη πάντα τέμνει τις εξελίξεις, οι συμβιβασμοί στον χαμηλότερο κοινό παρονομαστή συνήθως μετακυλούν τα προβλήματα. Η ενιαία εσωτερική αγορά, η γέννηση της ΟΝΕ και του ευρώ, το Σένγκεν και η Frontex, η δημιουργία του ESM, τα εμβόλια και το Ταμείο Ανάπτυξης, η Ευρωπαϊκή Πολιτική Προστασία και η κλιματικά ουδέτερη και ψηφιακά ώριμη Ευρώπη μας δείχνουν τον αυτονόητο δρόμο”, τόνισε.

      Στην αρχή της ομιλίας του ο αντιπρόεδρος της Κομισιόν μίλησε για τη Θράκη στη διαδρομή των αιώνων. Η Θράκη ήταν αδελφή της Ευρώπης κατά την ελληνική μυθολογία, έδωσε το όνομα της στη περιοχή που φιλοξένησε τον προστάτη των Θρακών, ‘Αρη, και μοιράζεται πολλούς κοινούς ηγεμόνες με τις γειτονικές περιοχές της Μακεδονίας, είπε. Η ευρύτερη περιοχή από τον Στρυμόνα στον Νέστο και από το Παγγαίο στην οροσειρά της Ροδόπης ως την Δαδιά και τον Έβρο, την χερσαία είσοδο της Ενωμένης Ευρώπης αναβλύζουν το σπουδαίο πέρασμα από την αρχαία Ελλάδα στην Ρωμαϊκή εποχή του πολυμήχανου Σπάρτακου και μετέπειτα στο Βυζάντιο με τις πολλές δυναστείες που είχαν την καταγωγή τους από τον τόπο αυτό.

      Εποχές που γέννησαν τις αρχές και τις αξίες της ίδιας της Ευρώπης και του σύγχρονου δυτικού πολιτισμού. Στις περιοχές αυτές που ενέπνευσαν τις αναζητήσεις του Λευκίππου, του Δημόκριτου που μίλησε για τους διαφορετικούς κόσμους στο σύμπαν και τον Πρωταγόρα, όλοι τους παιδιά των Αβδήρων. Την Ρωμαϊκή Εγνατία, τις τραγωδίες που αντήχησαν στα αρχαία θέατρα των Φιλίππων και της Μαρώνειας. Τον Απόστολο Παύλο που δίδαξε στις περιοχές αυτές, την Αγία Λυδία που βαφτίστηκε ως η πρώτη χριστιανή στην Ευρώπη, αλλά και την οθωμανική περίοδο που συνέθεσε στο αρχιτεκτονικό και μνημειακό τοπίο της περιοχής όπως το περιγράφει στις αναφορές του ο σπουδαίος χρονικογράφος Εβλιγιά Τσελεμπί, το εμβληματικό τέμενος του Διδυμοτείχου για παράδειγμα και αλλά πολλά στην περιοχή.

      Ανθρωποι των επιστημών και του πνεύματος όπως ο Καραθεοδωρής, ο Βιζυηνός ή ευεργέτες όπως ο Μαρασλής και ο Ευγενίδης που συνέβαλαν τα μέγιστα στην Ελλάδα, την Οθωμανική Αυτοκρατορία αλλά και την δύση και την ευρύτερη περιοχή της Μεσογείου συμβάλλοντας στην εξέλιξη και άλλων λαών ή περιοχών.

      Πριν την ομιλία ο κ. Σχοινάς συναντήθηκε με τον Περιφερειάρχη Ανατολικής Μακεδονίας και Θράκης Χρήστο Μέτιο, ο οποίος τον συνοδεύει σε όλη την διήμερη περιοδεία του στην Θράκη.

      https://www.evros-news.gr/2021/06/05/%cf%83%cf%87%ce%bf%ce%b9%ce%bd%ce%ac%cf%82-%cf%83%cf%8d%ce%bc%ce%b2%ce%bf

  • Asyl im Dialog - der #Podcast der #Refugee_Law_Clinics Deutschland

    Episonden

    Flucht und Behinderung

    70 Jahre Genfer Flüchtlingskonvention

    Rechtswidrige Hausordnungen für Geflüchtete

    Wieso Menschen aus Eritrea fiehen

    Somalia - Frauen* auf der Flucht

    Alarmphone statt Küstenwache

    Warum Afghanistan nicht sicher ist

    Brutalität und Menschenrechte auf der Balkanroute

    Solidarität kindgerecht: Eine Wiese für alle

    Wenn der Klimanwandel zum Fluchtgrund wird

    Migrationssteuerung durch die EU in Westafrika

    Abschottung reloaded - die Zukunft der Hotspots durch den Nwe
    Pact der EU

    FRONTEX - Grenzschutz außer Kontrolle

    Flucht und Trauma

    Das Asylrecht aus Sicht eines Verwaltungsrichters

    Wenn JUMEN e.V. Familiennachzug durch strategische
    Prozessführung erkämpft

    Wieso das AsybLG ein Gestz für Menschen zweiter Klasse ist

    Wie hängen Flucht und Menschenhandel zusammen? Wie die EU ihre
    Verpflichtung zur Seenotrettung umgeht

    Die Härtefallkommission als Gandeninstanz

    Haft ohne Straftat - aus der Praxis einer Abschiebehaft

    Entrechtung von Geduldeten -die neue Duldung light

    Die griechischen Hospots

    Das Kirchenasyl als ultima ratio

    Zuständigkeiten im Asylverfahren

    Gestzgebung im Asylrecht seit 2015 - rechtsiwedrig und populistisch?

    Was machen Refugee Law Clinics?

    #podcast #audio #RLC #Germany #migration #refugees #EU #Frontex #migration_law #Duldung #trauma #gender #women* #handicap #children #family #asylum #Balkans #church_asylum #Greece #hotspot #Alarmphone #human_rights #Eritrea #Afghanistan

    ping @cdb_77

    https://www.podcast.de/podcast/778497/asyl-im-dialog-der-podcast-der-refugee-law-clinics-deutschland

  • ‘Living in this constant nightmare of insecurity and uncertainty’

    DURING the first week of 2021, Katrin Glatz-Brubakk treated a refugee who had tried to drown himself.

    His arms, already covered with scars, were sliced open with fresh cuts.

    He told her: “I can’t live in this camp any more. I’m tired of being afraid all the time, I don’t want to live any more.”

    He is 11 years old. Glatz-Brubakk, a child psychologist at Doctors Without Borders’ (MSF) mental health clinic in Lesbos, tells me he is the third child she’s seen for suicidal thoughts and attempts so far this year.

    At the time we spoke, it was only two weeks into the new year.

    The boy is one of thousands of children living in the new Mavrovouni (also known as Kara Tepe) refugee camp on the Greek island, built after a fire destroyed the former Moria camp in September.

    MSF has warned of a mental health “emergency” among children at the site, where 7,100 refugees are enduring the coldest months of the year in flimsy tents without heating or running water.

    Situated by the coast on a former military firing range, the new site, dubbed Moria 2.0, is completely exposed to the elements with tents repeatedly collapsing and flooding.

    This week winds of up to 100km/h battered the camp and temperatures dropped to zero. Due to lockdown measures residents can only leave once a week, meaning there is no escape, not even temporarily, from life in the camp.
    Camp conditions causing children to break down, not their past traumas

    It is these appalling conditions which are causing children to break down to the point where some are even losing the will to live, Glatz-Brubakk tells me.

    While the 11-year-old boy she treated earlier this year had suffered traumas in his past, the psychologist says he was a resilient child and had been managing well for a long time.

    “But he has been there in Moria now for one year and three months and now he is acutely suicidal.”

    This is also the case for the majority of children who come to the clinic.

    “On our referral form, when children are referred to us we have a question: ‘When did this problem start?’ and approximately 90 per cent of cases it says when they came to Moria.”

    Glatz-Brubakk tells me she’s seen children who are severely depressed, have stopped talking and playing and others who are self-harming.

    Last year MSF noted 50 cases of suicidal thoughts and attempts among children on the island, the youngest of whom was an eight-year-old girl who tried to hang herself.

    It’s difficult to imagine children so young even thinking about taking their lives.

    But in the camp, where there are no activities, no school, where tents collapse in the night, and storms remind children of the war they fled from, more and more little ones are being driven into despair.

    “It is living in this constant nightmare of insecurity and uncertainty that is causing children to break down,” Glatz-Brubakk says.

    “They don’t think it’s going to get better. ‘I haven’t slept for too long, I’ve been worrying every minute of every day for the last year or two’ — when you get to that point of exhaustion, falling asleep and never waking up again is more tempting than being alive.”

    Children play in the mud in the Moria 2 camp [Pic: Mare Liberum]

    Mental health crisis worsening

    While there has always been a mental health crisis on the island, Glatz-Brubakk says the problem has worsened since the fire reduced Moria to ashes five months ago.

    The blaze “retraumatised” many of the children and triggered a spike in mental health emergencies in the clinic.

    But the main difference, she notes, is that many people have now lost any remnant of hope they may have been clinging to.

    Following the fire, the European Union pledged there would be “no more Morias,” and many refugees believed they would finally be moved off the island.

    But it quickly transpired that this was not going to be the case.

    While a total of 5,000 people, including all the unaccompanied minors, have been transferred from Lesbos — according to the Greek government — more than 7,000 remain in Moria 2.0, where conditions have been described as worse than the previous camp.

    “They’ve lost hope that they will ever be treated with dignity, that they will ever have their human rights, that they will be able to have a normal life,” Glatz-Brubakk says.

    “Living in a mud hole as they are now takes away all your feeling of being human, really.”

    Yasser, an 18-year-old refugee from Afghanistan and Moria 2.0 resident, tells me he’s also seen the heavy toll on adults’ mental health.

    “In this camp they are not the same people as they were in the previous camp,” he says. “They changed. They have a different feeling when you look in their eyes.”

    [Pic: Mare Liberum]

    No improvements to Moria 2.0

    The feelings of abandonment, uncertainty and despair have also been exacerbated by failures to make improvements to the camp, which is run by the Greek government.

    It’s been five months since the new camp was built yet there is still no running water or mains electricity.

    Instead bottled water is trucked in and generators provide energy for around 12 hours a day.

    Residents and grassroots NGOs have taken it upon themselves to dig trenches to mitigate the risk of flooding, and shore up their tents to protect them from collapse. But parts of the camp still flood.

    “When it rains even for one or two hours it comes like a lake,” says Yasser, who lives in a tent with his four younger siblings and parents.

    Humidity inside the tents also leaves clothes and blankets perpetually damp with no opportunity to get them dry again.

    Despite temperatures dropping to zero this week, residents of the camp still have no form of heating, except blankets and sleeping bags.

    The camp management have not only been unforgivably slow to improve the camp, but have also frustrated NGOs’ attempts to make changes.

    Sonia Nandzik, co-founder of ReFOCUS Media Labs, an organisation which teaches asylum-seekers to become citizen journalists, tells me that plans by NGOs to provide low-energy heated blankets for residents back in December were rejected.

    Camp management decided small heaters would be a better option. “But they are still not there,” Nandzik tells me.

    “Now they are afraid that the power fuses will not take it and there will be a fire. So there is very little planning, this is a big problem,” she says.

    UNHCR says it has purchased 950 heaters, which will be distributed once the electricity network at the site has been upgraded. But this all feels too little, too late.

    Other initiatives suggested by NGOs like building tents for activities and schools have also been rejected.

    The Greek government, which officially runs the camp, has repeatedly insisted that conditions there are far better than Moria.

    Just this week Greek migration ministry secretary Manos Logothetis claimed that “no-one is in danger from the weather in the temporary camp.”

    While the government claims the site is temporary, which may explain why it has little will to improve it, the 7,100 people stuck there — of whom 33 per cent are children — have no idea how long they will be kept in Moria 2.0 and must suffer the failures and delays of ministers in the meantime.

    “I would say it’s becoming normal,” Yasser says, when asked if he expected to be in the “temporary” camp five months after the fire.

    “I know that it’s not good to feel these situations as normal but for me it’s just getting normal because it’s something I see every day.”

    Yasser is one of Nandzik’s citizen journalism students. Over the past few months, she says she’s seen the mental health of her students who live in the camp worsen.

    “They are starting to get more and more depressed, that sometimes they do not show up for classes for several days,” she says, referring to the ReFOCUS’s media skills lessons which now take place online.

    One of her students recently stopped eating and sleeping because of depression.

    Nandzik took him to an NGO providing psychosocial support, but they had to reject his case.

    With only a few mental health actors on the island, most only have capacity to take the most extreme cases, she says.

    “So we managed to find a psychologist for him that speaks Farsi but in LA because we were seriously worried about him that if we didn’t act now it is going to go to those more severe cases.”

    [Pic: Mare Liberum]

    No escape or respite

    What makes matters far worse is that asylum-seekers have no escape or respite from the camp. Residents can only leave the camp for a period of four hours once per week, and only for a limited number of reasons.

    A heavy police presence enforces the strict lockdown, supposedly implemented to stop the spread of Covid-19.

    While the officers have significantly reduced the horrific violence that often broke out in Moria camp, their presence adds to the feeling of imprisonment for residents.

    “The Moria was a hell but since people have moved into this new camp, the control of the place has increased so if you have a walk, it feels like I have entered a prison,” Nazanin Furoghi, a 27-year-old Afghan refugee, tells me.

    “It wouldn’t be exaggerating if I say that I feel I am walking in a dead area. There is no joy, no hope — at least for me it is like this. Even if before I enter the camp I am happy, after I am feeling so sad.”

    Furoghi was moved out of the former Moria camp with her family to a flat in the nearby town of Mytilene earlier last year. She now works in the new camp as a cultural mediator.

    Furoghi explains to me that when she was living in Moria, she would go out with friends, attend classes and teach at a school for refugee children at a nearby community centre from morning until the evening.

    Families would often bring food to the olive groves outside the camp and have picnics.

    Those rare moments can make all the difference, they can make you feel human.

    “But people here, they don’t have any kind of activities inside the camp,” she explains.“There is not any free environment around the camp, it’s just the sea and the beach and it’s very windy and it’s not even possible to have a simple walk.”

    Parents she speaks to tell her that their children have become increasingly aggressive and depressed. With little else to do and no safe place to play, kids have taken to chasing cars and trucks through the camp.

    Their dangerous new game is testament to children’s resilience, their ability to play against all odds. But Nazanin finds the sight incredibly sad.

    “This is not the way children should have to play or have fun,” she says, adding that the unhygienic conditions in the camp also mean the kids often catch skin diseases.

    The mud also has other hidden dangers. Following tests, the government confirmed last month that there are dangerous levels of lead contamination in the soil, due to residue from bullets from when the site was used as a shooting range. Children and pregnant women are the most at risk from the negative impacts of lead exposure.

    [Pic: Mare Liberum]

    The cruelty of containment

    Asylum-seekers living in camps on the Aegean islands have been put under varying degrees of lockdown since the outbreak in March.

    Recent research has shown the devastating impact of these restrictions on mental health. A report by the International Rescue Committee, published in December, found that self-harm among people living in camps on Chios, Lesbos and Samos increased by 66 per cent following restrictions in March.

    One in three were also said to have contemplated suicide. The deteriorating mental health crisis on the islands is also rooted in the EU and Greek government’s failed “hot-spot” policies, the report found.

    Asylum-seekers who arrive on the Aegean islands face months if not years waiting for their cases to be processed.

    Passing this time in squalid conditions wears down people’s hopes, leading to despair and the development of psychiatric problems.

    “Most people entered the camp as a healthy person, but after a year-and-a-half people have turned into a patient with lots of mental health problems and suicidal attempts,” Foroghi says.

    “So people have come here getting one thing, but they have lost many things.”

    [Pic: Mare Liberum]

    Long-term impacts

    Traumatised children are not only unable to heal in such conditions, but are also unable to develop the key skills they need in adult life, Glatz-Brubakk says.

    This is because living in a state of constant fear and uncertainty puts a child’s brain into “alert mode.”

    “If they stay long enough in this alert mode their development of the normal functions of the brain like planning, structure, regulating feeling, going into healthy relationships will be impaired — and the more trauma and the longer they are in these unsafe conditions, the bigger the impact,” she says.

    Yasser tells me if he could speak to the Prime Minister of Greece, his message would be a warning of the scars the camp has inflicted on them.

    “You can keep them in the camp and be happy on moving them out but the things that won’t change are what happened to them,” he says.

    “What will become their personality, especially children, who got impacted by the camp so much? What doesn’t change is what I felt, what I experienced there.”

    Glatz-Brubakk estimates that the majority of the 2,300 children in the camp need professional mental health support.

    But MSF can only treat 300 patients a year. And even with support, living in conditions that create ongoing trauma means they cannot start healing.

    [Pic: Mare Liberum]

    Calls to evacuate the camps

    This is why human rights groups and NGOs have stressed that the immediate evacuation of the island is the only solution. In a letter to the Greek ombudsman this week, Legal Centre Lesvos argues that the conditions at the temporary site “reach the level of inhuman and degrading treatment,” and amount to “an attack on “vulnerable’ migrants’ non-derogable right to life.”

    Oxfam and the Greek Council for Refugees have called for the European Union to share responsibility for refugees and take in individuals stranded on the islands.

    But there seems to be little will on behalf of the Greek government or the EU to transfer people out of the camp, which ministers claimed would only be in use up until Easter.

    For now at least it seems those with the power to implement change are happy to continue with the failed hot-spot policy despite the devastating impact on asylum-seekers.

    “At days I truly despair because I see the suffering of the kids, and when you once held hands with an eight, nine, 10-year-old child who doesn’t want to live you never forget that,” Glatz-Brubakk tells me.

    “And it’s a choice to keep children in these horrible conditions and that makes it a lot worse than working in a place hit by a natural catastrophe or things you can’t control. It’s painful to see that the children are paying the consequences of that political choice.”

    #Greece #Kara_Tepe #Mavrovouni #Moria #mental_health #children #suicide #trauma #camp #refugee #MSF

    https://thecivilfleet.wordpress.com/2021/02/21/living-in-this-constant-nightmare-of-insecurity-and-uncerta

  • Mental health ’emergency’ among child refugees in Greece
    Katy Fallon

    Concerns mount for children who have witnessed violence, a devastating camp fire, and other horrors in Greece.

    Names marked with an asterisk* have been changed to protect identities.

    Lesbos, Greece – Laleh*, an eight-year-old Afghan girl, is one of the thousands of children who live in the new, temporary camp on Lesbos, which was established in the wake of a devastating fire that destroyed the notorious Moria camp last September.

    She is among several children who are currently being treated at a mental health clinic on Lesbos, which is run by Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres, or MSF), an organisation which has warned of a mental health “emergency” in the Greek island camps.

    Last year in Moria, a camp known for its poor living conditions, Laleh witnessed a violent fight as she was waiting in a queue for food with her father.

    Her mother Hawa*, 29, said that afterwards, Laleh started having panic attacks and became increasingly withdrawn and uncommunicative.

    The child was since hospitalised because she stopped eating. These days, she finds most activities challenging.

    The family now resides in the new camp in Mavrovouni, a dusty patch of earth where everyone lives in tents. The site is strictly monitored and most residents are only allowed to leave once a week.

    “During the day, she just lies down and closes her eyes,” said Hawa.

    A drawing by a child in Lesbos of the perilous sea journey to Europe undertaken by many migrants and refugees [Courtesy: MSF]

    At night, Laleh wears a nappy because she does not always say if she needs to go to the toilet.

    Something as simple as climbing steps can be difficult and feel overwhelming for her.

    “Before she was always drawing and painting,” Hawa said. “She was very hopeful, she wanted to be a doctor in the future.

    “It’s really hard for me as a mother. Laleh never had this problem before. When it started I was so worried and sad, I didn’t know how to manage,” she said. “She doesn’t really speak, she’s very quiet.”

    The fire which reduced Moria to ashes traumatised the family further.

    “Laleh had a psychogenic [non-epileptic] seizure and she fell down, everyone was shouting and running, it was a very difficult time.”

    A drawing by a child in Lesbos depicting the fire which raced through the Moira refugee camp in September [Courtesy: MSF]

    Laleh has had trouble sleeping and so Hawa lies with her and tells her stories, massaging her head in the hope it will soothe her.

    The family has seen some improvement in Laleh’s condition since she started attending MSF’s clinic, but she is still very withdrawn.

    Hawa said the securitised nature of the camp also has an effect on the children who live there.

    It is yet unclear whether the camp is being policed because of the pandemic and fears that the refugees may contract or spread the coronavirus, or as part of an increasingly securitised approach towards camps on the Greek islands.

    “Most of the children are afraid of the police because there are so many police around, it’s very difficult to go out of the camp and the children believe it’s a prison and that they can’t get out,” she said.

    Hawa herself said she views the camp as a “prison”, adding: “I hope that we leave this camp, this is my only hope for now.”

    Refugees and migrants wait to be transferred to camps on the mainland after their arrival on a passenger ferry from the island of Lesbos at the port of Lavrio, Greece, in September 2020 [File: Costas Baltas/Reuters]

    In 2020, child psychologists at MSF noted 50 cases of children with suicidal ideation and suicide attempts.

    “I never imagined it would be this bad,” said Katrin Glatz-Brubakk, a mental health supervisor for MSF on Lesbos.

    She told Al Jazeera they have seen children with severe depression, suicidal thoughts and that many have stopped playing.

    “As a child psychologist, I get very worried when children don’t play at all and we see a lot of that in the camp,” Glatz-Brubakk said.

    “Many of the children have experienced trauma but if they were moved to a [place with] safe and good [conditions] they would start healing from it. Now they get sicker and sicker because of the conditions they live in.

    “We are basically giving them skills to deal with a situation they should never be living in in the first place, it’s not treatment: it’s survival.”

    #Greece #mental_health #trauma #suicide #children #camps #Lesbos #MSF

    https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/2/11/children-dont-play-at-all-mental-health-crisis-stalks-lesbos

  • Scene Report : Stoner Rock in Greece | Bandcamp Daily
    https://daily.bandcamp.com/scene-report/stoner-rock-in-greece-list

    In the summer of 2015, several hundred stoner rock artists and fans travelled to a small festival by a lake in the northern part of Greece. And though that turned out to be the Fuzztastic Planet Festival’s final year—so far, anyway—the scene’s pulse has hardly diminished. In 2016, fans headed to the Los Almiros Festival to watch their local heroes share the stage with international acts like Truckfighters.

    Heavy music has been popular in Greece for decades. In the ’90s, underground black metal bands like Athens’ Rotting Christ responded to the Nordic dominance in the genre with albums that included themes from ancient Greece. In the panic and slump that followed Greece’s economic crash in 2010, scores of young people fled the country. For some of those who chose to stay, fuzzed-out rock provides an escape from the daily routine. Radio stations like Downtuned, the self-described home of the Greek heavy underground, have become a beacon of the scene, spreading the word across the globe.

    Needless to say, stoner rock has very little in common with traditional Greek music—don’t expect bouzouki, Cretan lute, or Epirus clarinet here, though a handful of bands, like Villagers of Ioannina City, have managed to merge the two sounds successfully. Most of them, though, including bands like Nightstalker and Planet of Zeus, keep the focus simple: guitar, bass, drums, and vocals. If you’re a fan of groups like Kyuss or Turbonegro, there are plenty of interesting things happening in Greece to warrant your attention.

    http://www.downtunedmag.com/p/downtuned-radio.html
    https://planetofzeus.bandcamp.com/track/king-of-the-circus

    #greece #radio #planet_of_bouzouki

  • Giorgos Tsiakalos: “In Europe, a racist policy is being implemented”

    EU policy can rightly be called “Black lives don’t matter in the Mediterranean”

    In June 2020, recognized refugee families, most of which had just arrived in Athens from the Moria camp on the island of Lesvos, were unable to find housing and remained homeless for days, sleeping in Athens’ Victoria Square. June 1, 2020, marked the implementation of the Greek law which terminates the provision of shelter for 11,237 refugees and beneficiaries via the ESTIA housing program.

    “They arrived at Victoria Square, as others had come before them about five years ago. Back then we had said we were caught off guard. Now what do we say? I was there today”, wrote George Tsiakalos, Professor of Pedagogy at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, in a Facebook post dated June 14.

    George Tsiakalos, along with his wife, Sigrid Maria Muschik, have been providing support to these families not only in recent months, but continuously − since the early days of what became known as the “refugee crisis”.

    https://wearesolomon.com/mag/q-and-a/giorgos-tsiakalos-in-europe-a-racist-policy-is-being-implemented/?mc_cid=a5016dd865&mc_eid=3444239cea

    #greece #refugees #migrants #Moria #camps #Europe #Migration #borders #housing

  • Taking Hard Line, Greece Turns Back Migrants by Abandoning Them at Sea

    The Greek government has secretly expelled more than 1,000 refugees from Europe’s borders in recent months, sailing many of them to the edge of Greek territorial waters and then abandoning them in inflatable and sometimes overburdened life rafts.

    Since March, at least 1,072 asylum seekers have been dropped at sea by Greek officials in at least 31 separate expulsions, according to an analysis of evidence by The New York Times from three independent watchdogs, two academic researchers and the Turkish Coast Guard. The Times interviewed survivors from five of those episodes and reviewed photographic or video evidence from all 31.

    RHODES, Greece — The Greek government has secretly expelled more than 1,000 refugees from Europe’s borders in recent months, sailing many of them to the edge of Greek territorial waters and then abandoning them in inflatable and sometimes overburdened life rafts.

    Since March, at least 1,072 asylum seekers have been dropped at sea by Greek officials in at least 31 separate expulsions, according to an analysis of evidence by The New York Times from three independent watchdogs, two academic researchers and the Turkish Coast Guard. The Times interviewed survivors from five of those episodes and reviewed photographic or video evidence from all 31.

    “It was very inhumane,” said Najma al-Khatib, a 50-year-old Syrian teacher, who says masked Greek officials took her and 22 others, including two babies, under cover of darkness from a detention center on the island of Rhodes on July 26 and abandoned them in a rudderless, motorless life raft before they were rescued by the Turkish Coast Guard.

    “I left Syria for fear of bombing — but when this happened, I wished I’d died under a bomb,” she told The Times.

    Illegal under international law, the expulsions are the most direct and sustained attempt by a European country to block maritime migration using its own forces since the height of the migration crisis in 2015, when Greece was the main thoroughfare for migrants and refugees seeking to enter Europe.

    The Greek government denied any illegality.

    “Greek authorities do not engage in clandestine activities,’’ said a government spokesman, Stelios Petsas. “Greece has a proven track record when it comes to observing international law, conventions and protocols. This includes the treatment of refugees and migrants.”

    Since 2015, European countries like Greece and Italy have mainly relied on proxies, like the Turkish and Libyan governments, to head off maritime migration. What is different now is that the Greek government is increasingly taking matters into its own hands, watchdog groups and researchers say.

    ​For example, migrants have been forced onto sometimes leaky life rafts and left to drift at the border between Turkish and Greek waters, while others have been left to drift in their own boats after Greek officials disabled their engines.

    “These pushbacks are totally illegal in all their aspects, in international law and in European law,” said Prof. François Crépeau, an expert on international law and a former United Nations special rapporteur on the human rights of migrants.

    “It is a human rights and humanitarian disaster,” Professor Crépeau added.

    Greeks were once far more understanding of the plight of migrants. But many have grown frustrated and hostile after a half-decade in which other European countries offered Greece only modest assistance as tens of thousands of asylum seekers languished in squalid camps on overburdened Greek islands.

    Since the election last year of a new conservative government under Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Greece has taken a far harder line against the migrants — often refugees from the war in Syria — who push off Turkish shores for Europe.

    The harsher approach comes as tensions have mounted with Turkey, itself burdened with 3.6 million refugees from the Syrian war, far more than any other nation.

    Greece believes that Turkey has tried to weaponize the migrants to increase pressure on Europe for aid and assistance in the Syrian War. But it has also added pressure on Greece at a time when the two nations and others spar over contested gas fields in the eastern Mediterranean.

    For several days in late February and early March, the Turkish authorities openly bused thousands of migrants to the Greek land border in a bid to set off a confrontation, leading to the shooting of at least one Syrian refugee and the immediate extrajudicial expulsions of hundreds of migrants who made it to Greek territory.

    For years, Greek officials have been accused of intercepting and expelling migrants, on a sporadic and infrequent basis, usually before the migrants manage to land their boats on Greek soil.

    But experts say Greece’s behavior during the pandemic has been far more systematic and coordinated. Hundreds of migrants have been denied the right to seek asylum even after they have landed on Greek soil, and they’ve been forbidden to appeal their expulsion through the legal system.

    “They’ve seized the moment,” Professor Crépeau said of the Greeks. “The coronavirus has provided a window of opportunity to close national borders to whoever they’ve wanted.”

    Emboldened by the lack of sustained criticism from the European Union, where the migration issue has roiled politics, Greece has hardened its approach in the eastern Mediterranean in recent months.

    Migrants landing on the Greek islands from Turkey have frequently been forced onto sometimes leaky, inflatable life rafts, dropped at the boundary between Turkish and Greek waters, and left to drift until being spotted and rescued by the Turkish Coast Guard.

    “This practice is totally unprecedented in Greece,” said Niamh Keady-Tabbal, a doctoral researcher at the Irish Center for Human Rights, and one of the first to document the phenomenon.

    “Greek authorities are now weaponizing rescue equipment to illegally expel asylum seekers in a new, violent and highly visible pattern of pushbacks spanning several Aegean Islands,” Ms. Keady-Tabbal said.

    Ms. al-Khatib, who recounted her ordeal for The Times, said she entered Turkey last November with her two sons, 14 and 12, fleeing the advance of the Syrian Army. Her husband, who had entered several weeks earlier, soon died of cancer, Ms. al-Khatib said.

    With few prospects in Turkey, the family tried to reach Greece by boat three times this summer, failing once in May because their smuggler did not show up, and a second time in June after being intercepted in Greek waters and towed back to the Turkish sea border, she said.

    Najma al-Khatib after being rescued on July 27 in Turkish territorial waters, in a photograph made available by the Turkish Coast Guard.Credit...Turkish Coast Guard Command
    On their third attempt, on July 23 at around 7 a.m., they landed on the Greek island of Rhodes, Ms. al-Khatib said, an account corroborated by four other passengers interviewed by The Times. They were detained by Greek police officers and taken to a small makeshift detention facility after handing over their identification documents.

    Using footage filmed at this site by two passengers, a Times reporter was able to identify the facility’s location beside the island’s main ferry port and visit the camp.

    A Coast Guard officer and an official at the island’s mayoralty both said the site falls under the jurisdiction of the Port Police, an arm of the Hellenic Coast Guard.

    A Palestinian refugee, living in a disused slaughterhouse beside the camp, confirmed that Ms. al-Khatib had been there, recounting how he had spoken to her through the camp’s fence and bought her tablets to treat her hypertension, which Greek officials had refused to supply her.

    On the evening of July 26, Ms. al-Khatib and the other detainees said that police officers had loaded them onto a bus, telling them they were being taken to a camp on another island, and then to Athens.

    Instead, masked Greek officials transferred them to two vessels that ferried them out to sea before dropping them on rafts at the Turkish maritime border, she and other survivors said.

    Amid choppy waves, the group, which included two babies, was forced to drain the raft using their hands as water slopped over the side, they said.

    The group was rescued at 4:30 a.m. by the Turkish Coast Guard, according to a report by the Coast Guard that included a photograph of Ms. al-Khatib as she left the life raft.

    Ms. al-Khatib tried to reach Greece for a fourth time, on Aug. 6, but said her boat was stopped off the island of Lesbos by Greek officials, who removed its fuel and towed it back to Turkish waters.

    Some groups of migrants have been transferred to the life rafts even before landing on Greek soil.

    On May 13, Amjad Naim, a 24-year-old Palestinian law student, was among a group of 30 migrants intercepted by Greek officials as they approached the shores of Samos, a Greek island close to Turkey.

    The migrants were quickly transferred to two small life rafts that began to deflate under the weight of so many people, Mr. Naim said. Transferred to two other rafts, they were then towed back toward Turkey.

    Videos captured by Mr. Naim on his phone show the two rafts being tugged across the sea by a large white vessel. Footage subsequently published by the Turkish Coast Guard shows the same two rafts being rescued by Turkish officials later in the day.

    Migrants have also been left to drift in the boats they arrived on, after Greek officials disabled their engines, survivors and researchers say. And on at least two occasions, migrants have been abandoned on Ciplak, an uninhabited island within Turkish waters, instead of being placed on life rafts.

    “Eventually the Turkish Coast Guard came to fetch us,” said one Palestinian survivor who was among a group abandoned on Ciplak in early July, and who sent videos of their time on the island. A report from the Turkish Coast Guard corroborated his account.

    In parallel, several rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch, have documented how the Greek authorities have rounded up migrants living legally in Greece and secretly expelled them without legal recourse across the Evros River, which divides mainland Greece from Turkey.

    Feras Fattouh, a 30-year-old Syrian X-ray technician, said he was arrested by the Greek police on July 24 in Igoumenitsa, a port in western Greece. Mr. Fattouh had been living legally in Greece since November 2019 with his wife and son, and showed The Times documents to prove it.

    But after being detained by the police in Igoumenitsa, Mr. Fattouh said, he was robbed and driven about 400 miles east to the Turkish border, before being secretly put on a dinghy with 18 others and sent across the river to Turkey. His wife and son remain in Greece.

    “Syrians are suffering in Turkey,” Mr. Fattouh said. “We’re suffering in Greece. Where are we supposed to go?”

    Ylva Johansson, who oversees migration policy at the European Commission, the civil service for the European Union, said she was concerned by the accusations but had no power to investigate them.

    “We cannot protect our European border by violating European values and by breaching people’s rights,” Ms. Johansson said in an email. “Border control can and must go hand in hand with respect for fundamental rights.”

    Patrick Kingsley reported from Rhodes, Greece, and Karam Shoumali from Berlin.

    #Greece #Turkey #Migration

    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/14/world/europe/greece-migrants-abandoning-sea.html

  • Coronavirus COVID-19 is excuse to keep people on Greek islands locked up | MSF

    COVID-19-related lockdown measures have had an impact on the lives of everyone around the world and generated increasing levels of stress and anxiety for many of us. However, the restriction of movement imposed in places like Moria and Vathy, on the Greek islands, have proven to be toxic for the thousands of people contained there.

    When COVID-19 reached Greece, more than 30,000 asylum seekers and migrants were contained in the reception centres on the Greek islands in appalling conditions, without access to regular healthcare or basic services. Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) runs mental health clinics on the islands.

    In March 2020, a restriction of movement imposed by the central government in response to COVID-19 has meant that these people, 55 per cent of whom are women and children, have essentially been forced to remain in these overcrowded and unhygienic centres with no possibility to escape the dangerous conditions which are part of their daily life.

    Despite the fact that there have been zero cases of COVID-19 in any of the reception centres on the Greek islands, and that life has returned to normal for local people and tourists alike, these discriminatory measures for asylum seekers and migrants continue to be extended every two weeks.

    Today, these men, women and children continue to be hemmed in, in dire conditions, resulting in a deterioration of their medical and mental health.

    “The tensions have increased dramatically and there is much more violence since the lockdown, and the worst part is that even children cannot escape from it anymore,” says Mohtar, the father of a patient from MSF’s mental health clinic for children. “The only thing I could do before to help my son was to take him away from Moria; for a walk or to swim in the sea, in a calm place. Now we are trapped.”

    MSF COVID-19 should not be used as a tool to detain migrants and refugees. We continue to call for the evacuation of people, especially those who belong to high-risk groups for COVID-19, from the reception centres to safe accommodation.

    Listen to Marco Sandrone, the MSF field coordinator on Lesbos, describe life for people trapped on the islands.

    MSF cannot stay silent about this blatant discrimination, as the restriction of movement imposed on asylum seekers dramatically reduces their already-limited access to basic services and medical care.

    In the current phase of the COVID-19 epidemic in Greece, this measure is absolutely unjustified from a public health point of view – it is discriminatory towards people that don’t represent a risk and contributes to their stigmatisation, while putting them further at risk.

    “The restrictions of movement for migrants and refugees in the camp have affected the mental health of my patients dramatically,” says Greg Kavarnos, a psychologist in the MSF Survivors of Torture clinic on Lesbos. “If you and I felt stressed and were easily irritated during the period of the lockdown in our homes, imagine how people who have endured very traumatic experiences feel now that they have to stay locked up in a camp like Moria.”

    “Moria is a place where they cannot find peace, they cannot find a private space and they have to stand in lines for food, for the toilet, for water, for everything,” says Kavarnos.

    COVID-19 should not be used as a tool to detain migrants and refugees. We continue to call for the evacuation of people, especially those who belong to high-risk groups for COVID-19, from the reception centres to safe accommodation. The conditions in these centres are not acceptable in normal times however, they have become even more perilous pits of violence, sickness, and misery when people are unable to move due to arbitrary restrictions.

    Up Next

    Philippines
    Displaced communities in Marawi living with COVID-19 and ongoing uncertainty

    Project Update 17 July 2020
    Displaced in Marawi living with COVID-19 and ongoing uncertainty
    COVID-19 response in Marawi

    When the number of patients with confirmed COVID-19 began to rise in March 2020, the Philippines quickly put in place strict community quarantine measures. As of July 2020, there has been no local transmission in the southern city of Marawi, showing how these measures appear to have contributed to containing the new coronavirus.

    However, they have also affected the livelihoods of the city’s residents, particularly displaced people living in and around Marawi.

    Marawi is the only city in the Philippines with a Muslim majority in an otherwise overwhelmingly Catholic country.

    Video

    Rocel Ann Junio/MSF

    “From the outset of the public health emergency, residents in Marawi observed precautionary measures very strictly, with the hope that the community quarantine would be lifted by the time Ramadan approached,” says Chika Suefuji, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) project coordinator in Marawi. “However, the community quarantine continued, and people couldn’t go to their masjid or mosque, which is one of the most important practices during Ramadan.”

    “Some people were understandably upset to learn that they had to observe Ramadan differently this year; some questioned this decision, since only a few cases of COVID-19 infections had been reported in the area,” continues Suefuji. “We discussed this with the community and religious leaders, explaining how the virus spreads. They understood well and put out a statement asking people to follow the safety measures.”

    “This approach helped to disseminate accurate information and convinced a larger number of residents to follow the measures,” says Suefuji. “Overall, people have respected social orders to protect their families and communities, and it has helped contain the virus in the community.”
    COVID-19 brought a lack of access to clean water and healthcare

    While the COVID-19 pandemic has so far not hit the area severely, it has added extra burdens on to the people of Marawi. During the community quarantine, medical consultations at health facilities were suspended. The lack of access to clean water made following the recommendations to contain the spread of the virus particularly challenging.

    Patients suffering from non-communicable diseases, such as hypertension or diabetes, were especially vulnerable to the virus. MSF teams carried out home visits to ensure patients continued to receive their medication and to provide patients with a leaflet about the virus and on how to protect themselves and their families from it.
    Marawi under siege – and then in ruins

    The city of Marawi came under siege in May 2017 by a group related to Islamic State group, which tried to take control of the city, resulting in a conflict erupting between the army and the group. The siege lasted five months and forced around 370,000 people to flee their homes.

    More than three years later, parts of the city still lie in ruins. Around 70,000 people continue to live in harsh conditions in temporary shelters and another 50,000 are estimated to be living in other family members’ houses. They all have vivid memories of the siege. Thirty-four year old Ajibah Sumaleg recalls how her family had to flee their home with only a few days’ notice and returned to find it destroyed five months later.

    Around 200,000 people live in Marawi, which is located in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (BARMM), in the south of the Philippines. The region is currently in transition to increase its autonomy from the Philippines. It has long struggled with the weakest health and economic indicators in the country and, since the end of the siege in October 2017, there have been outbreaks of measles, dengue and polio.

    Before 2017, the political situation in the region was unstable, with regular conflicts between various armed groups. However, people there are hopeful that political changes will bring long-term stability and prosperity to the region.
    Displaced living in difficult conditions

    Initially, displaced people were provided with tents, until the evacuation centres and temporary shelters had been built. The last families moved from tents to the shelters only in January 2020.

    Sobaida Comadug, 60, recalls how her husband died of a heart attack when the city was besieged. According to her, the shelters are not much better than the tents.

    “We were told that these would be built to last for five years,” says Sobaida. “Do you think the government will build a longer-lasting shelter? No!”

    Video

    Rocel Ann Junio/MSF

    She has spent all her life in Marawi. She describes the daily challenges which displaced people face.

    Water is lacking, and the temporary shelters are far from the markets. Food is costly. All these factors push people to eat ready-to-eat meals, while doctors recommend healthy food to complement treatment for non-communicable diseases.

    “It is more difficult to cook healthy meals,” says Sobaida. “We are far from the fruit and vegetable vendors, and even if we could reach them, we don’t have clean water to wash them.”

    The limited access to clean water creates hardships.

    “The living conditions of the people are concerning. The water trucking saves lives, but is only a temporary measure as opposed to a long-term solution,” says Chika Suefuji. “I hope that the plight of internally displaced people in Marawi and Lanao del Sur becomes known and that leads to a better future for the people.”
    MSF improves difficult access to healthcare

    During the community quarantine in April and May, families faced tough decisions since most people were not able to work. People had to decide whether to use their money for the family’s food, or healthcare for a sick family member.

    Even before the community quarantine, healthcare was difficult to obtain following the siege. Only 15 of the 39 health facilities in Marawi and the surrounding areas were functioning; the others had been destroyed or were unable to reopen. MSF rehabilitated four health centres after the siege to support communities in Marawi, and began providing clean drinking water and mental health services.

    Non-communicable diseases were responsible for 41.5 per cent of deaths in the BARMM region in 2015. Hypertension and diabetes are among the 10 most prevalent diseases.

    We currently support three health centres in the area, provide mental healthcare, treat non-communicable diseases, such as hypertension and diabetes, and provide free medication.
    A long road back to normal
    34-year-old Ajibah Sumaleg, pregnant with her eighth child, has her high blood pressure checked during a check-up with an MSF doctor at our clinic in Marawi. The Philippines, January 2020.

    Veejay Villafranca

    “It is critical for the people of Marawi, especially patients suffering from non-communicable diseases, that the spread of COVID-19 remains in check,” says Janoa Manganar, MSF medical team leader.

    In the Philippines, surveillance and contact tracing activities for COVID-19 are also conducted at the community level. We have started to train teams in all 72 districts within Marawi city in how to conduct surveillance and contact tracing, and how to share information related to COVID-19 prevention, home quarantine and mental health together with the local health authority.

    People living in Marawi face an uncertain future. The rehabilitation of the area in central Marawi that was destroyed during the siege continues to be a challenge because of the presence of the remnants of war, such as unexploded ordnance, among several other reasons.
    Many still hope that political changes will bring positive change to their futures; however, the reality is that, almost after three years after the end of the siege, many people are still displaced from their homes, living in temporary shelters or in the homes of relatives, not knowing how long this will last.

    The siege and the pandemic added to the worries of people in Marawi, says Sarah Oranggaga. She was forced to move in with her siblings again after having to give up her small corner store in Marawi. She says, “I am okay for now, and we just accept how things are and slowly we’ll overcome this.”

    Up Next

    Belgium
    Left behind in the time of COVID-19

    Report 17 July 2020
    Left behind coronavirus Belgium care homes report
    MSF Mobile Team in retiry home in Brussels

    In our report, Left behind in the time of COVID-19, MSF gives a detailed account of our intervention in nursing care homes in Belgium during the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic, describing the situation a real humanitarian crisis. The report contains a list of concrete recommendation to avoid the repetition of this drama if a second wave of the new coronavirus hits the country.

    “If we want to be better prepared for a second wave, we need to learn lessons from the past months,” says Dr Bertrand Draguez, President of MSF Belgium and coordinator of the intervention.

    There was a real fear that hospitals would be overwhelmed, as had happened in Italy and Spain, and therefore Belgian authorities focused solely on preserving hospital capacity. As a result, nursing care homes were neglected. They suffered from a lack of protective equipment, material, staff and expertise to fight the pandemic. Consequently, care homes paid a high price: by the end of June, 6,200 care home residents had died of COVID-19, which is 64 per cent of all COVID-19 deaths in Belgium.

    “At the time we did our assessments in care homes, only 54% of them had sufficient personal protective equipment; 64% had a lack of FFP2-masks, and only 42% of the staff doing the laundry had access to proper protective equipment”, said Stéphanie Goublomme, who managed the care home project.

    More than half of the care homes said their staff didn’t have sufficient knowledge about the disease and the risk of infection.

    The possibility to refer patients from care homes to external medical services, most notably hospitals, decreased significantly. Before the crisis, 86% of care home residents who needed a hospital referral were admitted, but this dropped to 57% during the pandemic.

    “Almost a third - 30% - of the care homes we visited told us not even all their emergency calls got an adequate answer,” said Goublomme. “The number of visits by general practitioners to care homes decreased 50%. That’s worrying, because it had a clear impact of the quality of care for the residents.”

    Nursing care home staff were overwhelmed and had to work in extreme conditions, which led to an increase of mental health problems and the appearance of post-traumatic stress symptoms. This was observed in staff as well as residents.

    “There’s no time to lose. We need to tackle the specific problems of care homes in a fast, practical, and effective way, both for the staff and for the residents. This is the only way to avoid that our elderly will again have to pay the price for our indifference,” said Dr Bertrand Draguez.

    #migration #coronavirus #mental_health #Greece #islands #lockdown #MSF

    https://www.msf.org/covid-19-excuse-keep-people-greek-islands-locked

  • L’Ultra droite prend les rues de Lesbos

    Aujourd’hui à Lesbos, les ONG sont harcelées, menacées et attaquées par la police et l’ultra droite. La procédure d’asile est stoppée pour un mois et les nouveaux réfugié·e·s dorment dans un navire de guerre surpeuplé en attendant d’être expulsé·e·s vers leurs pays d’origine. Aucun solidaire ne peut les atteindre. Après avoir fui leurs pays, les gens sont en prison sur ce navire. Un témoignage sur place d’une militante de Mare Liberum.

    https://blogs.mediapart.fr/sabrina-lesage/blog/110320/lultra-droite-prend-les-rues-de-lesbos
    #extrême_droite #anti-réfugiés #asile #migrations #racisme #réfugiés #xénophobie #attaques_racistes #Grèce #Lesbos

    • Réfugiés : la #haine se réveille tout au long de la #route_des_Balkans

      Patrouilles de civils en armes dans le nord de la Grèce, manifestations xénophobes en Serbie, nationalistes croates qui s’enflamment, et Milorad Dodik qui appelle à la « défense de l’Europe chrétienne »... La crise provoquée par Recep Tayyip Erdoğan soulève une vague de réactions anti-migrants dans les Balkans, terres de transit vers l’Europe occidentale. Tour d’horizon avec nos correspondant.e.s.

      Grèce : violences en hausse contre les réfugiés et les humanitaires

      Depuis l’annonce par la Turquie, le 28 février, qu’elle n’empêchait plus les réfugiés présents sur son sol de franchir ses frontières occidentales, les actes xénophobes sont en forte hausse en Grèce. Dernier en date : l’incendie d’une école pour enfants réfugiés, gérée par une ONG suisse sur l’île de Lesbos. Il y a quelques jours, les images montrant des habitants de l’île en train de repousser violemment un canot rempli de migrants avaient fait le tour du monde. Des journalistes et des humanitaires ont aussi été menacés, leur matériel cassé, et certains ont même été physiquement agressés.

      À la frontière terrestre gréco-turque, dans la région de l’Evros, la tension monte dangereusement : des patrouilles civiles rassemblant anciens militaires, agriculteurs, pêcheurs et chasseurs s’organisent pour aider les forces de l’ordre à arrêter les migrants qui essaient de s’introduire en Grèce. Lundi, Jordan Bardella, le vice-président du Rassemblement national, était en visite sur place pour rencontrer ces citoyens grecs qui, fusils à l’épaule, sont prêts à « défendre » leurs frontières.

      Des manifestations ont néanmoins rassemblé plus de 7000 personnes à Athènes et à Thessalonique en fin de semaine dernière pour dénoncer le durcissement de la politique migratoire du gouvernement conservateur grec, la militarisation des frontières et les violences faites aux réfugiés et aux humanitaires.

      « L’armée bulgare est prête à réagir »

      Les rumeurs vont bon train en Bulgarie et, mardi, le ministère des Affaires étrangères a démenti une « information » laissant entendre qu’Athènes avait demandé à Sofia de vider les eaux d’un barrage à proximité de la frontière pour faire monter le niveau du fleuve Evros et empêcher les migrants en provenance de Turquie de pénétrer sur le sol grec. Rapportée par les médias grecs, cette « information » est le dernier acte de ce qu’une analyste bulgare a appelé « la pièce d’Erdoğan jouée aux frontières de l’Union européenne ».

      Le ministre de la Défense, le nationaliste Krassimir Karachanov, a exprimé mardi son mécontentement face au projet de construction d’un centre de rétention fermé par la Grèce dans la région de Serres, près de la frontière bulgare. « Une installation pour les migrants illégaux du côté grec, près de nos frontières, renforcera les tensions. C’est absurde et ce n’est pas l’acte d’un bon voisin », a-t-il écrit sur Facebook. « L’armée bulgare est prête à réagir. Je garantis que je ne permettrai pas à une nouvelle vague de migrants de venir dans notre pays. »

      La Bulgarie, dont le Premier ministre Boïko Borissov a tenté en vain une mission européenne de médiation auprès de Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, reste néanmoins épargnée par cette nouvelle crise, les migrants évitant soigneusement de s’aventurer près de ses frontières bulgares, par peur ou par impossibilité.

      La Macédoine du Nord craint plus le coronavirus qu’une nouvelle vague migratoire

      Malgré la proximité avec la Grèce et le peu de cas détectés dans le pays, le coronavirus reste le sujet n°1 dans l’actualité macédonienne, reléguant la question des réfugiés aux oubliettes. Ou presque. Samedi soir, la police a découvert 56 réfugiés (54 Pakistanais, 2 Afghans) dans la remorque d’un camion près de Gevgelia, la ville qui fait frontière avec la Grèce sur l’autoroute qui file de Skopje vers Thessalonique, mais les médias locaux ont très peu évoqué l’affaire.

      Le Premier ministre intérimaire Oliver Spasovksi a d’ailleurs très rapidement évacué la question migratoire lors de la conférence de presse qu’il a tenue dimanche, se contentant de répéter que la Macédoine du Nord résisterait à toute vague migratoire. « Nous aurons une tolérance zéro et nous n’autoriserons pas l’entrée de migrants, car c’est la politique de tous les États de la région. »

      Surenchères électorales en #Serbie

      Après des rassemblements anti-migrants dans les villes de Požarevac, Šid et Subotica, c’est devant le gouvernement, à Belgrade, que se sont rassemblés dimanche environ 200 manifestants, très majoritairement de jeunes hommes, à l’appel d’une « patrouille massive du peuple », se disant « prêts à défendre le pays si l’État et la police ne peuvent pas le faire ».

      Ces militants d’extrême-droite brandissaient des drapeaux serbes et grecs et des pancartes proclamant : « On ne veut pas de migrants », « La Serbie aux Serbes » ou encore, en anglais « Terrorists not welcome ». Arborant des insignes tchétniks et des badges à l’effigie du criminel de guerre Ratko Mladić, ils s’en sont pris au Commissariat pour les réfugiés, jetant des pavés dessus. « C’est une honte pour la Serbie, mais le faible nombre de personnes mobilisées par la haine est rassurant », a estimé le Commissaire aux réfugiés et aux migrations, Vladimir Cucić.

      Selon Gordan Paunović, de l’Ong Infopark, « la question n’est pas humanitaire ou sécuritaire aujourd’hui en Serbie, mais politique ». En effet, à l’approche des élections législatives et municipales prévues le 26 avril prochain, la droite et l’extrême-droite instrumentalisent la question des réfugiés pour tenter de marquer des points.

      En #Bosnie-Herzégovine, Milorad Dodik veut défendre « l’Europe chrétienne »

      Milorad Dodik, le membre serbe de la Présidence tripartite, a aligné son discours sur celui de l’extrême-droite européenne. Connu pour ses liens avec le nationaliste autrichien Heinz Christian Strache, il dénonce une « mise en danger de la chrétienté européenne », comme le rapporte Al Jazeera Balkans. « Ce qu’on propose à la Bosnie-Herzégovine c’est de devenir un parking à migrants », a-t-il expliqué, estimant qu’il s’agit là « d’une forme d’occupation du monde chrétien ».

      Selon l’homme fort de Banja Luka, l’attitude du Président turc Recep Tayyip Erdoğan s’inscrirait dans « un grand jeu stratégique », sous-entendant que ce dernier viserait à islamiser de l’Europe en ouvrant les frontières de son pays. Pas question néanmoins, estime-t-il, d’avoir une frontière étanche avec la Serbie, les deux États doivent « gérer cette question migratoire conjointement ».

      Zagreb propose son aide, les nationalistes croates s’enflamment

      « La #Croatie est prête à s’adapter à la situation de crise et à accueillir des enfants non-accompagnés », assure la ministre de la Démographie, de la Famille, de la Jeunesse et de la Politique sociale de Croatie Vesna Bedeković. Des propos qui font suite à la promesse du Premier ministre Andrej Plenković d’accueillir près de 5000 mineurs isolés, aujourd’hui bloqués dans des camps en Grèce. Ces jeunes devraient être hébergés dans deux centres d’accueil à Zagreb et à Split.

      En pleine crise à la frontière gréco-turque, cette décision du gouvernement conservateur a provoqué une vague de réactions négatives, dans les médias et sur les réseaux sociaux.

      « Les habitants des communes frontalières ne se sentent pas en sécurité, surtout en cette période de travaux agricoles, ils n’osent pas travailler dans les champs, sortir le soir », a lancé le très nationaliste Marijan Pavliček, adjoint au maire de Vukovar et chef du Parti conservateur croate. Les forces de l’ordre croates patrouillent depuis plusieurs années à la frontière avec la Serbie pour empêcher l’entrée de migrants, n’hésitant pas à recourir à la violence.

      « Tous les moyens de force légitimes doivent être activés pour protéger la frontière », a de son côté réagi le député Hrvoje Zekanović, qui préside le parti des Souverainistes croates.

      En #Slovénie, le futur « gouvernement anti-migrants » se prépare

      Ces derniers jours, la Slovénie est avant tout préoccupée par le coronavirus. Pour empêcher sa propagation, le petit pays a d’ailleurs fini par fermer sa frontière avec l’Italie voisine.

      La directrice générale de la police slovène a néanmoins exprimé sa « grande préoccupation » dans les colonnes de Nedelo, le journal du dimanche. Plus de 1240 migrants sont entrés illégalement en Slovénie au mois de janvier, une hausse de plus de 20 % par rapport à l’an dernier. Les autorités se veulent néanmoins rassurantes, expliquant que Ljubljana est prête en cas de « nouvelle vague migratoire ». Deux camions d’aide humanitaire ont été envoyés en renfort à la frontière gréco-turque.

      Anže Logar, qui doit prendre la tête du ministère des Affaires étrangères du futur gouvernement dirigé par Janez Janša, a annoncé mardi qu’il allait renforcer « pour le bien commun »la coopération avec les pays voisins, à commencer par la Croatie, « au vu de la crise sanitaire et migratoire inédite ».

      https://www.courrierdesbalkans.fr/Refugies-la-haine-se-reveille-tout-au-long-de-la-route-des-Balkan

    • Oumar, sur l’île de Chios : « Le bâtiment s’est enflammé alors que des personnes dormaient à l’intérieur »

      Oumar*, originaire d’Afrique de l’ouest, vit dans le camp de Vial, sur l’île grecque de Chios, depuis plusieurs mois. En contact avec InfoMigrants, le jeune homme raconte comment les violences ont éclaté dans la soirée du samedi 18 avril, provoquant l’incendie de plusieurs structures.

      "Les violences ont débuté samedi soir. Une femme irakienne, malade et souffrant terriblement, s’est vu refuser l’accès à un médecin par les autorités du camp. Un peu plus tard, elle est décédée. [Selon l’agence de presse grecque ANA, cette femme avait été hospitalisée plus tôt dans la semaine en raison d’une fièvre. Elle avait alors été testée négative au Covid-19, NDLR.]

      Les communautés arabe et afghane se sont alors révoltées. Les migrants se sont mis à vandaliser et incendier des boutiques, les bureaux administratifs et les services de l’asile, le poste de police, les toilettes mobiles, etc.

      Ils étaient très en colère. Je les comprends car la situation est très compliquée dans le camp [Plus de 5 000 migrants vivent entassés dans le camp de Vial, prévu initialement pour 1 000 personnes, NDLR]. C’est encore plus dur avec le coronavirus car nous sommes livrés à nous-mêmes et nous avons très peu d’informations.

      Face à la révolte, la police a fait usage de la force et a utilisé des gaz lacrymogènes. Les migrants prenaient la fuite, ils couraient dans tous les sens.

      « Tout a brûlé, nous n’avons plus rien »

      Dans leur riposte, les policiers ont jeté des gaz lacrymogènes en direction du bâtiment des Africains, qui eux n’avaient pas pris part aux violences. La structure s’est enflammée alors que des personnes dormaient à l’intérieur. Les femmes et les enfants criaient de peur. On était tous en panique. Heureusement, tout le monde a réussi à sortir sain et sauf.

      Mais nos documents administratifs ont brûlé à l’intérieur. Nous n’avons plus rien, à part les vêtements que nous portions. Tout a brûlé !

      Après l’intervention de la police, le calme est rapidement revenu dans le camp. Les autorités nous ont relogés dans un autre bâtiment, qui servait à stocker des bidons d’eau.

      Hier (dimanche, NDLR), la directrice du camp est venue nous rendre visite en réaction aux violences. Elle nous a seulement dit que le Premier ministre travaillait sur le dossier et allait revenir avec des solutions.

      Pour l’heure, nous ne savons pas ce qu’il va se passer."

      https://www.infomigrants.net/fr/post/24226/oumar-sur-l-ile-de-chios-le-batiment-s-est-enflamme-alors-que-des-pers

  • GREECE REFLECTION: Poems from the Brink of Despair; powerful voices of refugees in detention of Moria

    In Moria, refugees are proud to be sick.
    I broke my arm to get a medical certificate.

    If you have been tortured you can sell yourself as vulnerable.
    Being mentally ill is the price to pay for safe passage.
    It’s easier for a sinner to enter paradise
    than for a refugee to get asylum in Greece.

    Why do you, all the guilty ones,
    Want to teach us lessons in morality?
    You prevent us from being happy.
    Us, the brave ones.

    #moria #lesbos #greece #refugees #migrants #migrations #réfugiés #Grèce

    https://www.cpt.org/cptnet/2017/08/15/greece-reflection-poems-brink-despair-powerful-voices-refugees-detention-moria

    • Refugee protest on Lesvos, February 3rd, 2020
      On February 3rd 2020 about 2000 refugees demonstrated in Mitilini against arbitrary deportations and horrific conditions in Moria camp as well as demanded freedom of movement. Peaceful protest was stopped by riot police which used tear gas against refugees, journalists and internationals. ReFOCUS team was caught between police and demonstrators when walking to our everyday classes. This is what we experienced over three hours of being stuck in the protest.
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHjqNjGfx-o&feature=youtu.be