You will get to know this country for real only if you don’t get drown somewhere in Aegean or if you manage somehow to cross the fence in Evros. From the detention centers in Amygdaleza; Korinthos; Paranesti to Patision; Amerikis sq.; Acharnon, the daily life for all those who have the wrong color or the wrong papers is suffocating. Or to put it better; unbearable.

In the center of the city you feel like you cant do anything. Without papers it s impossible for you to work. But even when you do find a job that would be “black”; without insurance. And the boss would do whatever s/he wants and you would be forced to go through that otherwise s/he would call the cops. Without papers you can’t move as you please, visit your family and your friends. Without papers, when you get sick, you are not sure whether the hospital will take you in. Without papers, when you are a bit late to pay the rent, your landlord is ready to throw you out and you ll either pay immediately or go away because there’s nothing else to do. Without papers, you cant even go out on the streets; most of the times you ‘re locking yourself at home when the sun goes down. And when you finally find the courage and get out, you are walking waveringly and full of fear. Every day that you go out it is like an adventure; you go out and you are not sure whether you will come back because there is one place that you might end up, and this is…

…the detention centers and the police departments. “Detention centres are one of the ways 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 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. And when 18 months or more have gone by they let us go -if they haven’t meanwhile deported us yet- by giving us one paper stating we should abandon the country within the next month. And all those just because we are immigrants.”

But it s not just that. It s all these that used to happen and are still going on everyday even if you are not in a detention center; even if you do have papers. It’s the 2 hours or even the whole night, that you are forced to stay at allodapon when the cop that checked your papers wants to be sure that the papers belong to you. It’s the familiar fascists-policemen who are still working for the police without being controlled by anyone. It’s the laws that allow cops to capture you whether you have or not papers because they consider you as a “danger for public provision and security”. It’s the situation that exists at the metro and the buses, when most of the people won’t sit next to you; when they exchange gazes that clearly say “check out the black; the pakistani; the..; the..” ; when they look at you and you know that they would prefer you to get off. It’s the cops behaviour during the street controls. And it’s not enough for them only to see your papers, but they want to humiliate you, to prove that you’ re nothing. Every time they’re asking you again and again your nationality and the reason why don’t you go back to your country and what are you doing here. Finally when they check your papers, they throw them down and they force you to pick them up. It’s all those things that lead you thinking: “why am I not coming back. Even I often wonder. Why do I stay in a country that I am seen as a stranger; as a threat; as someone who is responsible for everything bad that has happened to their lives. Because day after day you learn that you don’t belong here”.

Here however live also those who weren’t afraid. Those, who overcome together their fears by supporting each other. Those, who fought against the every day oppression. They are the immigrants, who revolted in the detention center of Amygdaleza at August of 2013. The immigrants, who revolted against the inhuman living conditions, against the complete lack of medical care, against the extension of their detention time. They are the same immigrants, who managed -with the support of the local solidarians- to let freeuncategorized in their trial, which took place one year after the rebellion at Amygdaleza. They are the same immigrants, who used to work in the fields of Skala Lakonias and Manolada; at the recycling factory at Aspropyrgos; at the fish shops at Nea Mixaniona and they united to strike against the misarable wages and the constant racist police attacks. They are the immigrants of Ermou and Asoee, who have resisted again and again -side by side with the local solidarians- to the police and the fascist attacks by defending their right to gain their lives by selling things on the street.

Those daily struggles and others less significant, who gives each one of us by her/himself, we are going to keep deep in our memory, because they give us strength for the future. The strength to face the moment, where we’ re looking beyond the fear and we’ re claiming a life with dignity. We want to raise our voices so everyone obtains papers from the very first moment without any conditions. We claim the closure even of the latter detention or hosting center of immigrants. We demand an everyday life  without racism and continuous humiliations by the police.

MIKROFONIKI AMERIKIS SQ. 7/3 17.00

RALLY SYNTAGMA 14/3 17:00

MIKROFONIKI OMONOIA SQ. 28/3 15.00

DEMONSTRATION VICTORIA SQ. 4/4 17:30

Assembly of immigrants and solidarians of asoee

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.)

Strawberries and human exploitation
These are the two basic export products, both in big amounts, of Nea Manolada, a region in Ilia, 260km west of Athens. On one hand, we can see the strawberries every spring, red and fresh, in the supermarkets and the street markets. On the other hand, the exploitation of the immigrant workers, during the whole year, a well hidden secret in the racist and xenophobic local society, being published in local and international Medias only when some landowners’ minions do something very extreme to the workers.
A few words about the medieval fields of Manolada
In the fields of Manolada the recent years’ work around 4000-5000 land workers. All of them immigrants, mostly from Bangladesh and from Pakistan, with many of them having no papers. Their basic job is farming, harvesting and packing the strawberries but depending on the period of the year they work also in other farming operations like harvesting potatoes, oranges etc. Their work starts at 6 o’clock in the morning and ends at 9-10 o’clock at night with a day work of 25 euro and off course without insurance and any medical help in case of a work accident. They live, winter and summer, in tents or inside the greenhouses without water, electricity, toilet and other basic necessities. The working conditions are totally inhuman, as apart from the grueling working time they have to work under the constant surveillance and blackmails of the big landowners’ minions who treat them as slaves. Beatings and derogatory behaviors on a daily basis, threats of their life, blackmails to those who don’t have papers that the police will arrest them, deny of paying them and even shooting them, when the workers dare to speak for their rights.
The incident
200 immigrants from Bangladesh working at one of the many fields of the area, that of the big landowner Baggelatos, started to demand their money that the landowner owed them since 6 months. They were asking constantly for their money but the big landowner and his guards were always answering with insults and threats. They even wrote a letter of complaints trying to give it to the police and the local authorities but without any success. A few days before the murderous attack against them they had a one day strike but the big landowner threatened them by bringing other workers to take their place, Albanians, Rumanians, Bulgarians and that he won’t pay them. The workers’ answer was : “give us the money that you owe us and we will leave”. Obviously the landowner didn’t bring new workers because the Balkan workers demand 40 euro per day. So at 17/4 the same Bangladesh workers decided to go at his house and protest. What they receive as an answer was the bullets of landowner’s minions guns, injuring 30 workers, 7 of them severe. Except that it took 2 hours for the ambulance to arrive, the first thing that the police did was to try to arrest the immigrants not having papers without caring about the murderous gunmen.
It was the local and mainly the foreign medias reports and the damage to the country’s fame[1], the incapability of hiding the incident and the fear of the immigrants’ workers reaction that forced the authorities to deal with the matter and prosecute the perpetrators.
The following 2 days, 18 and 19 of April, none of the immigrant workers, in the whole area, went to the fields and there was even a protest with the participation of more than 10.000 immigrant farm workers. The media didn’t report anything about the protest but it was the main reason that made the minister of public order, N. Dendias to promise the immigrants the obvious, that they would be paid and that the police would arrest the killers and their boss.

It was not an isolated incident; it is the future they try to impose
At 2008 some photos of the same area that of Manolada, were showing the inhuman living and working conditions of the immigrant land workers. Then most of the immigrants were from Pakistan. As now all of us were “shocked” from the incident, the media had put for a while their charity mask and the state declared the solution of the problem, saying it was just an isolated incident. But also the years before 2008 the agriculture production model was the same. The only difference was that instead of Pakistani and Bangladesh workers, the workers were from Albania.
After all this year’s nothing has changed. The working conditions are even harder and the exploitation of immigrants is a plan of the state and the bosses for economic growth and overcoming the crisis.
It’s the state itself that directly or indirectly pushes the immigrants to work at the fields of these local big landowners. Those immigrants in fact who manage to pass alive from the minefields of Evros or the depths of the sea. Those for whom there is not enough space in the hellholes of the police stations and the detention centers. All those who have to answer in the question of staying alone and frightened enclosed and starving in their homes, as in every corner there are police and fascists, or working like a slave avoiding in this way the deportation or the enclosure in a detention center. And this, because there is an agreement among the state, the local authorities and the big landowners not allowing the police to arrest all these immigrants working in Manolada’s fields[2].
In this way the labor under these terms seems to the immigrants as the only way out and lifeline and for the bosses a great tool for exploiting more and more the workers. Icing on the cake of exploitation, as for the bosses’ minions not having any complaints, the money withholding from immigrants land workers’ day work for giving them just a piece bread[3].
What happened at 17th of April at Manolada it is not just another isolated incident. It’s a violent and inhuman working status that is firstly imposed to the outcasts and those being in the bottom of the barrel. And as the crisis becomes deeper this barrel’s bottom fits more and more of us. As long as we fight each other and put the blame on the immigrants and the “others” for what we suffer, we make it easier for the exploitation and oppression to spread out. As long as we do not fight the real enemy, those who are getting richer to our detriment, we doff our eyes with our own hands.

COMMON STRUGGLES OF LOCALS AND IMMIGRANTS

AGAINST EVERY OPPRESSOR OF OUR LIFE

Assembly of immigrants and solidarians of ASOEE

__________________________________________________________________________

1 The image of the injured immigrants land workers traveled around the world. For one more time different international organizations redacted convictions against Greece for her immigrants’ handling policy considering that 5 signatures are enough to give a solution to this problem. Furthermore, various entities and organizations have started, mainly through social medias (facebook, tweeter, etc) a campaign named “Blood and Strawberries” for boycotting the strawberries of Manolada.
2 The plan is :The local big landowners, in awareness of the local authorities and the government, are asking every time a specific number of workers. They communicate with an immigrant considered “their cooperator” known as ‘the craftsman”, usually having the same citizenship as the workers, who finds the workers living in Athens. There is no need for the immigrants future workers to have papers, all they need is good acquaintances and a bit of luck. Their transportation to the fields is done by cars that arrive and collect them to Athens. The only guarantee of the deal is that for as long as they work without creating any troubles, they will not have problem with the police.
3 The day works are between 17 and 25 euro but are paid every 2 to 3 months. The food expenses and any other subsistence costs of the immigrants are withhold from their total salary. Even at this case, the exploitation has no end. The shopping is not done by the immigrants themselves but by the supervisors or by the “craftsman”. Even though every immigrant needs 70-80 euro to meet these needs, they have a withholding that sometimes reaches the amount of 400 euro per month, getting paid finally with 150 euro per month. It’s obvious that this withholding money end to the big land owners’ and their guards pockets.