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Τετάρτη 22 Μαΐου 2013

[EN] ‘WHAT DOES EUROPE WANT FROM US?’ – MIGRANTS DETAINED FOR MONTHS ON END IN GREECE


By Irem Arf Rayfield, Researcher on Refugee and Migrants’ Rights in Europe

http://www.whenyoudontexist.eu/

 

Flying back from our research mission in Greece, I can’t shake off the image of exhaustion in the eyes of the newly arrived migrants on the island of Lesvos when describing their dangerous journey across the Aegean Sea.

The same fatigue was shared by Syrian women we met in Athens – forced to leave their loved ones behind when they fled to Greece – where they now live in fear of racist attacks and the perils for their children in a merciless urban setting.
And finally the suffering of migrants and refugees held for months in the detention centres and police stations in north-eastern Greece, where our mission came to an end.
Migrants and refugees fleeing conflict and destitution have been funnelled towards this area where the Evros River marks the Greece-Turkey border and Europe’s frontier.

Τετάρτη 1 Μαΐου 2013

[EN] THE EU HAS TO FINALLY MAKE UP ITS MIND ABOUT A COMMON ASYLUM AND MIGRATION POLICY








In February 2012, Greece announced that it will build a “six-mile long fence topped with razor wire on its border with Turkey to deter illegal immigrants.”[1] While the fence, even during its construction, cut arrivals of illegal immigrants by land down, these outdated measures of control and deterrence have simply diverted immigration flows to the sea and the Greek islands of the Aegean. Thousands of ‘boat people’, mostly from Africa, attempt each year to cross the Mediterranean in overcrowded and frequently unseaworthy vessels in order to enter the southernmost EU member states. As Greece was about completing its fence, twenty Iraqis drowned when, within sight of Turkey, their small overcrowded boat sank off the Greek island of Lesbos.