[ΕΝ] STATE OF THE WORLD’S MINORITIES AND INDIGENOUS PEOPLES 2012 – GREECE

On 3 January 2011, the Minister for Citizen Protection, Christos Papoutsis, announced plans to build a 12.5 km fence along its border with Turkey, to prevent undocumented migrants entering the country. The minister stated that some 128,000 migrants and asylum-seekers reached Greece in 2010, more than 40,000 of them crossing the border from Turkey at the Evros border post. Greece's land border with Turkey is more than 200 km long, running mostly along the Evros River, and is increasingly used by Asian and African migrants to enter the country since traditional routes across the central and western Mediterranean have been blocked by strengthened maritime surveillance and bilateral repatriation deals between Italy and Spain with various African countries. But it is unlikely that a 12.5 km fence will prevent waves of immigrants from flowing into the country.

[ΕΝ] LOST AT BORDER – A journey to the lost and the dead of the Greek borders

New report of Infomobile Greece, published in January 2012

LOST AT BORDER reports on the reality of loss and death at the Greek borders. As a close friend of ours said once: “If you are a refugee and you die nobody asks any questions. But for living somewhere, everybody is questioning you!” We want to break the silence and ask: What happened with all these people whose traces got lost?
Accidents and death at border belong unfortunately to the daily experiences of refugees trying to reach a safe haven. The European Border Control Agency FRONTEX in co-operation with national authorities are heightening and thickening the fences and walls around us, controlling and patrolling the borders and externalizing them to European neighbour states such as Turkey, Morocco, Tunisia a.o. They have created treaties of co-operation in deportations and huge refugee detention camps at the gates of Europe. Trying to cross a number of borders, among them the ones of Fortress Europe is a huge risk of death! The numbers are shocking: more than 2.000 people died in the Mediterranean Sea only in 2011. Each single person left behind a big gap in the life of relatives and friends.