Even though we declared the protest of last Saturday as a peaceful demand  of the release of Behrooz Arash and Kozhin Hussein and all illegally  detained refugees, we have been deeply concerned about police violence  and arbitrary arrests. We had mixed feelings about mobilizing people to  join the gathering, because it was obvious that the risk of police  violence would be high. It seems that police crime entered a new level of inhumanity on this  island. People get arrested in handcuffs like criminals just to check  their papers, sometimes they get detained for one night without any  reason even if their papers are valid. After the last protest in Moria  individuals got brutally pulled out of their shelters, arrested and  charged without any evidences and are detained in different prisons all  over Greece without any legal base. In a place like Moria, where  pregnant women get beaten up by police, we expected the worst but  couldn’t resist to show our rage about the injustice and our solidarity  with people who tried to reach safety but instead of receive this right  of protection get treated like criminals. Lucky us that the police kept quiet this time. Lucky us, that it seems  like this time at least one of our common goals was achieved. Behrooz  Arash and Kozhin Hussein got released of their unlawful detention on day  41 of Arash Hampays hungerstrike. Grateful for this moment of victory we  continue our fight until human rights and justice are more than just  fictive words in Europe.

Riot police, with faces masked, pelt peaceful protesters with stones. A refugee in t-shirt and shorts slides down a loose scree slope and places his hands upon his head, only for the police to fall upon him and batter him with boots and batons.  Another protester, already handcuffed, is kicked to the ground by a mob of police. In Moria prison camp and across Lesvos, the same border regime which condemns the alleged “barbarism” of refugees is lashing out with medieval brutality.

Yet police violence is only the bluntest weapon used by the EU and the Greek authorities as they exercise arbitrary power over the lives of our refugee friends. Even more than the refugee left unconscious and bleeding for four hours after a police beating, the brave human rights activists currently on hunger strike inside and out of Moria embody the maltreatment of refugees on Lesvos.

The hunger strikers slowly starve, denied access to basic medical care and shading closer to death on a daily basis. Likewise, refugees trapped on Lesvos to rot for 12 months or more are seeing conditions and care provision deteriorate week by week. The only question is whether an epidemic of self-harm and suicide bids will claim them before they fall victim to frequent and brutal waves of deportation.

Excessive use of force and ill-treatment of refugees by police in Moria last Tuesday shown in a videohttps://t.co/dB9S3NAKhg

— Lia Gogou (@LiaGogou) July 21, 2017

Broken bones and arbitrary arrests

The assaults – bravely captured on camera by refugee activists inside Moria –  clearly depict the way the EU is abusing these vulnerable individuals. Following protests against the lack of action on the cases of refugees from certain countries, riot police forced the demonstrators inside the camp and closed the gates.

Several new squads of riot police have been freshly imported from Athens, to crack down on dissent and round up refugees for deportation. They roamed through the camp alongside their compatriots from Lesvos, arresting at random anyone who seemed to share the protesters’ ethnic background. Covering their faces to avoid identification, they wielded rocks and batons and fired teargas canisters at point-blank range.

Victims were spat upon, subjected to racist abuse (such as “Stupid African”), stamped on by groups of ten or more cops, and beaten inside the police station. Some were dragged out of the boxes where they sleep, having remained inside for the duration of the protest, beaten and arrested. Pregnant women were manhandled. You can read more testimonies here.

https://twitter.com/ralfafari/status/887567251272019969

One victim lost consciousness after the assaults, waking up four hours later in hospital in critical condition. He was bodily dragged to the prison van by police, leaving him with wounds all over his body. Others spent up to six days in jail awaiting pre-trial hearing without access to a doctor. A comrade newly arrived to the island said the sight of the ‘suspects’ arriving to court, splattered in blood and still with open wounds, could only be compared to centuries-old woodcuts depicting the victims of slave traders.

Lawyers were likewise repeatedly denied access to the 35 arrestees. The majority have already been dispersed in handcuffs and tattered clothes to prisons all over Greece, to languish for a year or more until their case is heard – given the near-total lack of evidence against them, the prosecutors are likely to delay their trials for as long as possible.

On top of their ongoing asylum claims, they now face a minimum of €1300 each in legal fees, compounded by long-term isolation from their friends and family – and from their lawyers. We are working with Greek comrades to build a legal and financial solidarity network and will let you know how you can help the ‘Lesvos 35’ soon. We stood in solidarity with them outside the courthouse and will not let them be forgotten.

Self-harm and death by drowning

Sadly, it is not only the cops leaving refugees broken and bleeding. Since the EU-Turkey deal was signed in March 2016, reported instances of self-harm in Moria have increased by 600 per cent, while there have been at least 10 suicide attempts within the camp in recent months – as always, actual figures are likely far higher. You cannot walk down the street in Mytilene without passing young men in ill-fitting hand-me-down clothes, riding up to expose limbs scored with fresh knife wounds and cigarette burns.

A recent report by Médecins Sans Frontières found that 80 per cent of refugees assessed in Moria had “severe” mental health issues. One-fifth had been tortured, two-thirds had suffered violence, and half of all women in Moria examined by a gynecologist had suffered sexual violence. Yet there has been a “dramatic deterioration” in the provision of mental health care, as a “grossly deficient” system aims only to deport refugees wholesale back to Turkey without concern for their wellbeing.

Yet still refugees arrive on Lesvos – nearly 1000 in the last fortnight alone. Just two days ago, five women and two children drowned attempting to cross the Aegean. 2377 refugees have lost their lives crossing to Europe this year alone. 1 in 50 people now dies while making the crossing – it is far more dangerous than back in 2015, when the world was still watching. This figure still does not include those thousands who die crossing the Sahara or at the hands of people smugglers in Libya, where deaths are likely even more commonplace than out at sea.

Deportations and psychological borders

Meanwhile, more and more of our friends are being deported back to face violence, persecution and death abroad. This Monday, police stormed Moria and nearby squats and social centres, arbitrarily arresting 50 refugees. They were forced to release those whose case is still under appeal: around 25 others, less fortunate, joined the ranks of those awaiting deportation.

Stripped of their phone, cash, and everything bar the clothes they stand up in, handcuffed deportees are muscled onto boats surrounded by Frontex minders and returned to Turkey – a “safe country” where journalists, teachers and judges are being imprisoned and brutalised in their thousands. They face 6 months’ internment, in overcrowded prisons where sexual and physical violence are commonplace and those without friends or financial support can easily sink without a trace. By this stage lawyers can do very little, as far as we know securing protection for only 5 out of thousands of non-Syrian refugees in Turkey.

Others face direct deportation to their countries of origin, where the situation is often even bleaker. Many of our friends are now too scared to attend medical appointments or crucial case hearings, for fear they will be seized and deported. They may never see their friends and family here again.

The mental health epidemic, and the generalised terror across the island , must be understood as weapons in the hands of the EU and the Greek authorities. They are breaking down people’s will to struggle and fight for their human rights, coercing vulnerable individuals to return “voluntarily” to unsafe countries. The regime is building borders in the heads of refugees.

We continue to provide food to hundreds of refugees across the island, and have a waiting list of at least 200 more individuals who urgently need our help. Our political programmes also continue, providing direct, legal and personal support to those imprisoned and at risk of deportation. We are looking for one-off or regular donations, solidarity events abroad, and long-term volunteers to come to the island. With this support, we can give these individuals the best chance possible of freedom and security, as well as feeding hundreds more refugees – please contact if you would like to support our work.

The EU is murdering refugees. It is condemning them to drown in the Aegean, to starve to death in prison camps, to open their wrists with razor blades, to be raped and beaten in Turkish prisons, to be tortured and executed in the countries they fled. Their blood is on all our hands.

We remember those who have died, and fight for those whose struggle continues.

Love & rage always

Your NBK crew

Yesterday morning at 5 o’clock, riot police started to detain people in Camp Moria and in Community centers. They arrested around 50 persons of whom 20 – 25 persons were released later today.

First we assumed that they were hunting for people with two negative asylum decisions but as we found out they also arrested people with papers.

We think this happened for one reason: To raise fear.

Again they want to raise dread of deportation and detention among people, to increase suppression and by doing so, preventing the people to ask for their basic human rights.

We believe this, together with the super unjust court hearings that are going on these days in Mytilini court (we will publish an update about that soon!) are all to create an atmosphere of anxiety on the island.

We wish strength to all the people still detained in the police station and Moria’s section B and other places worldwide to not give up the struggle for freedom.

Another world is possible!

The No Borders squat in Lesvos was evicted five weeks ago, and it feels like we’re losing more space every day. It’s been a month of harsh police crackdowns on squatting and rough sleeping, vicious and increasingly frequent deportations, and dwindling financial support. The EU is funnelling the thousands of refugees here into Moria detention centre, deporting them to face persecution and death abroad and washing its blood-stained hands of the whole affair.

No Borders Kitchen are still here, still fighting and still providing food, care and legal support to hundreds of refugees, but our work is more difficult than ever before. Here’s how the situation has deteriorated for the roughly 4000 refugees trapped on Lesvos, how No Borders is struggling to respond, and what you can do to help out.

The beautiful prison

As the time refugees are trapped here lengthens, the island grows smaller and smaller. There is little to do each day but trudge to Moria to hear that no progress has been made on your case, fight over cooking oil, and skim stones into the Aegean Sea. People are making increasingly desperate attempts to escape Lesvos – the ‘beautiful prison’, as one refugee recently described it. Earlier this month, one young man attempted suicide in Moria’s Section B detention centre, stabbing himself in the chest with a switchblade. He remains incarcerated.

It is easy to think of time as standing still, but actually it is sliding away: people have been waiting for 9, 12, 18 months as interview dates are bungled, translators cannot be found, and the broken assessment system grinds slowly on. These months are taken off young lives, eating into education and careers among much else, and cannot be bought back at any cost.

There are months and months of nothing, and suddenly there is no time at all. Once an asylum application fails, as over 90 per cent eventually do, refugees have five days to lodge an appeal before deportation. Many are not told they have this right and so are deported when they still stand a chance of securing asylum. Some physically sick refugees and others with the legal right to remain have been pulled off the deportation ferry by lawyers: others are illegally kicked out ahead of time. Friends of ours awaiting deportation in Section B are shivering with sickness, while others are covered in historic torture wounds and recent self-harm scars. If they are not stopped, these deportations will kill.

Deportees are taken from Moria to the port under cover of darkness, but deported under the cover of tourist-trap sunlight. Handcuffed and stripped of their mobile phones, they are muscled onto private ferries, and the holiday-makers around the harbour never realise human rights are being infringed 20 yards from their cocktail bars. Official figures show 129 deportations under the EU-Turkey deal from Lesvos since the start of April. And as the EU is finally clearing its backlog of stranded refugees – by deporting the overwhelming majority – we expect a severe increase in arrests, detention, and associated police violence.

Some deportees attempt a return as soon as they escape detention abroad – “until they die they will never stop coming back,” one Pakistani refugee recently said. Many take the suicidal Libyan route, through waters where an EU-trained coastguard sprays bullets at drowning toddlers and deaths are so common as to seldom make the news.

Giving up any hope of claiming asylum, those opting for so-called ‘voluntary return’ are bribed and coerced into returning to life-threatening danger in their home countries. Following a lengthy jail spell in Athens, they are imprisoned for months in Pakistan or Afghanistan, until a family member can bribe an official to have them released. For families who spent all they had to send one child to the imagined safety of Europe, this is often impossible, while violence, abuse and suicide are of course rampant in these prisons as well.

No space

Every time we walk the long, hot coastal road from the city centre to Moria, we pass the mocking empty space of the old No Borders squat, still daubed with anti-patriarchy graffiti but now ringed with razor wire and under 24-hour security surveillance. Scores of refugees and activists ate, slept and lived together here in shared struggle.

The squat’s eviction closure makes it hard to even meet with our refugee friends, let alone  support them in resisting deportation. For the crime of sheltering in a derelict building, refugees have been hit with heavy legal fees and court cases which will badly affect their asylum claims. Some former squatters now sleep on the beach or in the woods, and some have returned to Moria. Others have opted for voluntary return, preferring an unknown prison sentence to the certitude of sectarian violence in the prison camp.

The remaining squats are increasingly violent and volatile. Friends of ours have been beaten, robbed of their mobile phones, and extorted for the safe return of sim cards containing their only contacts to their families back home. These squats also face imminent eviction: a derelict white building we called ‘Casablanca’ was forcibly cleared out, and all its occupants detained or charged with squatting, just two days ago.

Pending court cases, combined with the police’s increasingly violent and zero-tolerance approach to squatting, mean we cannot find a new space to live together. While we continue to find shelter for the most vulnerable, we are forced to tell many refugees in desperate need of shelter that we can no longer keep them warm and safe overnight.

Our work

Food is the focus of our practical support. Each week we provide up to 300 refugees with all the ingredients they need to cook for themselves and subsist autonomously, packing up boxes in an abandoned strip club and distributing them in squats and parking lots around the island.

Every month we distribute over 1500kg each of flour and rice, 800kg of potatoes, and hundreds of kilogrammes of fresh fruit and vegetables, lentils and pasta, plus spices, tea, coffee, cooking oil and toiletries. We receive more requests for boxes daily, and are currently forced to turn families away due to a lack of funds. Each day, we provide a hot meal to around 60 refugees, catering for those unable to cook for themselves and creating a small ad-hoc social space, and have recently started meeting for tea, coffee and hot food withrefugees living in Moria. We also feed desperately impoverished Roma families, marginalised and persecuted here since before a single refugee arrived.

Drawing on our network of contacts across the island, in Moria and in detention, we are now offering material support and legal assistance to detained refugees. All deportations are cruel, violent and illegitimate, but many are also illegal, and we are working alongside lawyers and refugee activists to save people from forcible transfer to Turkey. All our work enables us to stand in close, personal solidarity with our refugee friends, particularly those shut out of the asylum system and failed by the big NGOs, and support them in their struggle for asylum and dignity in countless different ways every day.

Our needs

Many more refugees will arrive in Lesvos over the coming summer months, as people-smugglers take advantage of the clear nights and heavy maritime traffic. 16 people recently drowned offshore, while four boats containing hundreds of refugees made land just this weekend. Since the EU-Turkey deal began on 18 March 2016, the number of migrants stranded in Greece has actually increased by 45%. Thousands of new arrivals are currently being dispatched by Turkish smugglers to nearby Chios, and many will be transferred here for detention and deportation.

As the tourism season comes around, Frontex will prevent the ugly sight of refugees washing up on golden beaches by intercepting them in dangerous deep water, and the police will come down even harder on paperless refugees sleeping rough among the olive groves and cobbled streets of Mytilene. The EU is trying to squeeze these refugees out of existence, but we are determined to give them room to breathe, and the best chance possible of continuing onward to a better life.

€20 will feed one refugee for a month

€100 will provide five refugees with phone credit to contact lawyers and loved ones after deportation to turkey

and $2000 per month will provide food boxes for the roughly 100 refugees on our waiting list, currently left hungry because we can’t afford to feed them

If you are able to donate any amount to support our work, please email noborderkitchen(at)riseup.net, message our Facebook page or contact us via telephone or Whatsapp. We also accept credit at local food wholesalers and donations via Just People, a partner organisation based in the Netherlands:

Name: justpeople
IBAN: NL37INGB0007344776
BIC: INGBNL2A
Bank: ING

Payment Reference: LESVOS DONATION

Please also get in touch if you would like to work alongside us in Lesvos. We are particularly looking for longer-term activists who share our political principles, and drivers with cars.

With love, rage and solidarity always

Your No Borders Kitchen crew

Yesterday one of the squats we supported was taken away by the cops and the Alpha Bank and turned from a home into an old abandoned unused building again. All people were arrested and detained for a day and might face charges for trespassing and destroying of property. Now many people are out on the street, with no safe place to go.

What happened yesterday leaves us sad and incredibly angry. What was destroyed by the state and capitalism was not just a building. It was a home. It was a community. It was a place for friendship, for solidarity, for struggling together against this border and this system that creates them.

The squat was not a perfect place. There was always rubbish lying around, the sound of the power factory next door was the lullaby and the toilet was rarely cleaned. But still we loved it.

Yesterday we were awaken at 7 a.m. as the police kicked our doorsover and over. When we came out of the rooms there were numerous policemen, regular city police and OPKE in the yard. For the three days before we already watched workers turning this home into a jail so the eviction didn’t come as a complete surprise. Each day workers would continue the razor wire around the wall of the squat we supported and lived in while we were trying to decide if there was anyway to resist.

At the time of the evictionwe were were around 35 people in the squat and all were gathered in the yard. The segregation and racism began immediately as people that looked like “refugees” had to gather in one corner of the yard and everyones papers were checked and taken by the cops. Then people they considered “Europeans” or people with passports were also asked to give their passports. Some refugees were handcuffed to each other for no apparent reason. We tried to resist the separation but those who insisted on staying were pushed and dragged away. All people with western passports were taken into an arrest van and brought to the police station. We were made to sit down on a corridor and were given contradictory information whether they were arrested or taken for ID control only. When we were waiting we saw that the refugees were also taken to police station. They were all put into cells while everyone with a western passport was kept in the hallway.

After hours of waiting we were informed that we all are accused of vandalism and trespassing. Everyone of us was taken into an office and we were asked to sign papers written in Greek. Only oral translation into English was provided and we had to ask repeatedly for a complete oral translation of the documents. Also everyone had their fingerprints and pictures taken. At around 7 in the evening the last person was released from the police station. When the police let us go they didn’t inform us if we are charged or not. Still it is unclear what will happen now, if we all will face court or not. We left the police station with relief and happiness to feel the sun warming our skin and to see the faces of all friends that were welcoming us outside. The relief stayed only a short while. The eviction left dozens of people out without shelter, without any safe place to go. What was a home is now an empty building surrounded by NATO wire and guarded by securities.

This eviction didn’t come as a surprise. In the last four months the repression on refugees, especially people without valid papers and from certain nationalities, as well as solidarity movements has become worse each week. The destruction of any autonomous spaces for people to live was expected. Many friends we support living out of the camps have been checked and arrested in the last months. There have been many steps taken in order to clear the streets and the city of refugees and keep as many people as possible within the confines of Moria camp. They were tightening security at Moria, police presence on streets became stronger, many people are and were detained during their asylum procedure, deportations happen on a regular basis and so on.

This time it was Alpha Bank, the owner of the building, that had the power to cause the most damage to us. It was Alpha Bank who pressed charges against us and pushed this eviction. We are sure that the building will not be used. It is very old, in the ugliest spot in Mytilini next to a power electric factory billowing steam and chemicals and air and noise pollution. No one wants this building except those with no other option except the prison that is Moria.

All of this also coincides with the announcement that all NGO and international groups will leave Lesvos by July 31^st. As we are one of a handful of groups without government contracts working outside camps, the EU and Greek government would very much like to see No Border disappear from Lesvos.

Unfortunately this eviction is not the end of a series of repression but rather its beginning. We expect evictions of the other remining squats in the next weeks and months. Furthermore we also expect the arrests, imprisonments and deportations to keep going.

But we are not ready to give up. We will stay here, we will continue to support the people in their struggle for freedom of movement and dignity. We will keep fighting.

We send a lot of Love and Rage to all people standing with us and fighting against all borders here on Lesvos and everywhere!

Your Nbk Crew

None of us who were detained yesterday was informed by the police whether we will be charged or not. It looks like at the moment that we will all have a court in approximately 5 months for vandalism and trespassing. What used to be a place full of life is now only an empty building surrounded by NATO wire and guarded by security. We will keep you updated and a longer post about what happened yesterday will follow soon.

Yesterday morning one of the squats was evicted. All of the people inside of the squat were taken to police station and detained for several hours. In the evening everyone was released.

A statement will follow.

We expect two squats to be evicted soon. We hope it will take some more time but we have reasons to believe that at least one of the buildings will be invaded by the cops within a few days. Another eviction will leave dozens of people homeless or forced to stay in Moria camp. Also it is likely that the eviction will go along with the (attempted) arrest of as many people with rejected asylum applications and/or from the nationalities the EU assumes has no claim for staying in Europe.

We will keep you updated.

Our solidarity is stronger than their repression!