From Tuesday to Thursday this week there were once again violent clashes erupting between different groups inside of Moria camp. According to local news 15 people needed treatment in the hospital. As far as we know at least some of them were innocent bystanders. Furthermore several tents burned, leaving innocent people without shelter. We are still waiting for news if the injured will recover. The rumors that three people died in the hospital is not officially confirmed nor denied yet.

A huge police raid on Thursday followed this violence. Riot cops swarmed the camp and arrested several dozens people. Targeted were refugees with the second rejection on their asylum claim. Many arrested were brought to prison. We condemn this police action and we expect and fear that many will be held in prison until being forcefully deported back to into a horrible Turkish detention center.

It is time that the government takes responsibility. They create the conditions that fuel the recurring violence that every time endangers innocent people and gets families, children and other bystanders injured.

It is time to open the islands.

Stop deportations and freedom of movement for all!

On Thursday December 14^th 8 people were deported back to Turkey under EU-Turkey-Deal. Among them was one man in a wheelchair. Only two weeks ago another severly sick refugee that could not even walk by himself was forcefully deported back to Turkey, and prior to that two families with small children.
Maybe the deportation of the person in the wheelchair was legal. Maybe it could not have been stopped. But if it was legal is not the only question we need to ask ourselves.
The question we need to ask is HOW can it be legal?
How can obviously vulnerable refugees be sent back to an obviously unsafe country?
How will they be able to access decent medical care in a cramped and unhygienic detention center in Turkey?
What future will they have?
How did it happen that the EU politics and laws are so corrupt and inhuman that they allow the most vulnerable people to be sent to places where they will definitely NOT get the care they need and decent live that they deserve?

Stop deportations NOW!
Freedom of Movement for All!

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14 protesters are still detained at the pre-removal center in Moria camp. Only two people were released. Among the 14 detainees there is one cancer patient and one suffering from epilepsy. We are very worried that their health will deteriorate if they are not immediately released and can access sufficient medical care outside of the prison.

All of the 14 arrested protesters are North-Africans and therefore subjected to an accelerated asylum procedure. We expect that they will be detained for the entire course of their procedure and then deported. This accelerated procedure is very biased and does not guarantee that each persons case is considered properly. All of them will most likely be rejected on the prejudice that all North-Africans are “economic migrants” and do not deserve international protection.

Two brothers from Nigeria who made the deadly crossing from Turkey to Lesvos in a rubber dinghy were immediately detained in the pre-removal prison inside the so-called “Hotspot camp”, Moria. For almost three months they were isolated from society, adequate legal assistance or support structures. All refugees from countries with less than 33% acceptance rate (which are more than 28 countries including Syrian single men) can currently be detained immediately after their arrival on Lesvos, for the entire duration of their asylum procedure. While the two brothers were held in detention, their asylum application was rejected twice under the fast-track border procedure implemented on the Greek islands since the EU-Turkey statement of March 18^th 2016. It has been repeatedly pointed out by the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights and lawyers such as those from the Legal Centre Lesbos that the fast-track procedure tramples roughshod over human rights. In practice, individuals are targeted because of their nationality and stripped of their legal right to a fair and proper asylum hearing.

Together with eight fellow detainees, the two brothers were deported back to Turkey on November 30^th by ferry from Mytilene. They only experienced Europe from behind the barbed wire and blank walls of a detention centre, guarded by policemen subject to a constant feeling of isolation and suffering inhuman treatment.

“The conditions in the closed Section B of Moria Centre [are] particularly poor and could be considered as inhuman and degrading,” one Council of Europe researcher reported.

Inmates are stripped of their personal possessions, denied blankets and often live among flooded sewage. Some can only be seen by a doctor at the discretion of the prison guards.

Thanks to these conditions and a lack of medical support, one of the brothers got seriously sick. A video of his deportation shows that he was not even able to walk on his own when he was brought handcuffed on the ferry. Obviously, this condition was no reason for FRONTEX and the Police to postpone his deportation – as we have seen in several similar incidents across recent months.

In Turkey, the two brothers will be detained in prison for an unknown period of time under even more inhumane conditions. By law they can be detained up to one year. Experiencing racism as a person of colour will be a cruel inevitability. One brother said: “It’s even better to be in prison in Greece, then to go back to Turkey.”

Many of the people who are deported from Greece to Turkey will, after the detention period, eventually be deported once again to home countries that they fled due to persecution in the first place.. The story of the two brothers is just one example out of thousands, as people flee suffering only to face the brutal detention and deportation politics of this so-called bastion of human rights, the European Union.