01 September 2016
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No Border Kitchen Lesvos report (Facebook, link) ·
"Repression is high on the island at the moment. We hear from different sources about an increasing number of deportations. According to our information a lot of people were deported in the last days directly from Mytilini to Turkey. We heard about 175 people but cannot confirm this number or the exact way of deportation at the moment. What we are sure about is that there are a lot of arrests and that the people are brought on ferries.
The arrests happen in Moria as well as on the streets. We know of several cases of people being arrested while walking in the city. People also told us about severe violence being used by the police during these arrests. At the moment we assume that people from North Africa (Algeria etc) are the most at risk for being arrested.
Some people, according to one of our sources at least 60, have been brought to a prison close to Athens a few days ago. It is a prison for refugees, many of them are accused of having committed a crime. What it is really beside a deportation prison is a prison for so called troublemakers. They face between 6 and 18 months of prison, we were told.
For both the people being forcefully brought to Turkey and to Athens the numbers could be significantly higher than what we heard so far.
We know that some of the people were at the moment of their arrest still in the middle of their asylum process.
At this point we can only guess what excuse will be given for the detaining of these people. Nontheless we want to make clear that no arrest and no deportation can ever be justified.
Instead of having access to a proper asylum process in a country of their choice, the people on lesvos are imprisoned in this island for months. The asylum procedure after the Eu-Turkey-Deal in March is not only completly untransparent but basically illegalizes the majority of refugees until they are granted asylum…if their process ever finishes. Lesvos is a legal gray zones with a lot of things happening that are not supposed to be known. That makes the people on the island being in constant danger of being arrested…even if they actually have the precondition to get refugee protection in any (other) European state with a asylum system.
In the next days we will work on getting a better picture of the situation and will hopefully soon be able to publish more infornation! If you are reading this and can give us more information or contacts please write us on noborderkitchen@riseup.net!
Nobody is illegal! Stop EU-Turkey-Deal
Update:
We know now that the number of deportations on Monday was 136 people.
Also we heard from different sources that the heads of the people that were brought to Athens on Saturday night were covered with black bags so that no witnesses could see the faces of the deported."
Refugee crisis: latest news from across Europe 30.9.16
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights on the refugee crisis 27..9.16
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