Monday the 3rd of November is the court date for the immigrants accused for the Amygdaleza uprising. In August of 2013, immigrants in Amygdaleza started a riot when they heard that they were going to be held there indefinitely longer. During and after the riot 65 immigrants were arrested and are now facing serious charges. A year after the incident, some of them are captives in various prisons across the country, some of them are still being kept in detention centers while others are free (5 of the escapees were never arrested) or have been deported.

Some words regarding being held in a detention centre:

“Detention centres are the way the greek state and police have come up with to torture migrants. Lots of them go crazy even by thinking that they are in there without knowing when their captivity will end. In there, nothing is provided, the only thing you can do is to sleep. The summer heat is unbearable. The food is bad and too little. They do not give us medicine, clothes and, even when someone is sick, the ones deciding whether they must see a doctor or not is are cops themselves, and they are always postponing it or do not care at all. The migrants cannot contact their families, since they do not have any phones, while visiting hours last only a little or are not being held at all, depending on the cops. Moving people around is a regular form of punishment, making it even harder for us to get in touch with our own people. They treat us like objects, like we are not humans. We demand the immediate change of such conditions.”

But even outside the walls, what migrants are facing seems like a giant prison:

“When we left our countries, we believed that we would at least continue to live freely. But we lost our freedom the moment we arrived in Greece, even though getting in meant that we risked losing our lives at the open sea, like those who were drown at Farmakonisi and more recently at Mitilini. So after managing to get in, we found ourselves in a kind of a prison, a prison without walls. They deny us the right to work by utilizing ancient and racist laws. Cops, fascists, racists hunt us in the streets. And they do not hunt only us working around ASOEE. This is happening also at Monastiraki, Thisio, Omonia, and the neighborhoods where we live in. We live every day under the threat of being imprisoned, or taken to a police station or to the detention centres. Cops often stop and search us as much as three times per day, and they harass us by taking us to the police station to eventually let us go. For the media we are thieves, murderers, disease bearers.”

The riot of Amigdaleza detention center is a bright act of resistance against the everyday war that the greek state is fighting against immigrants. A war that includes murders at the border, deportations, imprisonment in detention centers and in police stations, denial of asylum requests, racist laws, constant police controls, labor exploitation, pushing migrants to the limits of despair.

The only solution for us is to find ways to live together and act united against what is happening and what will come. Together immigrants and locals with no hierarchies, no discriminations due to race, sex or color stand, to fight against any kind fascist or police brutality for a better tomorrow. Our weapons are solidarity and equality.

Solidarity with the captive migrants and to everyone oppressed

No detention centres anywhere, ever.

Call for solidarity at the court
Monday, 3rd of November, Degleri Court (Alexandras Ave.)