Update
It seems that Yusuf belongs to a group of 120+ migrants arrested on Friday. The official claim is that the arrests were made after a fight between refuggees of different nationalities. The minister of migration mouzalas said that the 'law will be implemented to any one who violates it'... Without having a very clear image of what happened in the stadion we know that it was only Moroccans and north african nationals who arrested, and we can assume that it happend in a collective way.
Corinth detention camp has a capacity of more than 500 persons was in use from 2012 (constructed during the racist police operation Xenios Zeus) and in the last months was almost empty. The group of Moroccans is the first group that is detained in order to be deported in the new period that started after the (selective) closure of the gr-mc borders. I think that what we see here is the reimplementation of repressive and mass detention policies, which previously were hard criticized by syriza.
Hello all,
here some news from Athens (from the MovingEurope-Crew):
Today we talked to a Moroccan guy called Yusuf, who is detained in
Corinth. He told us what happened to him and to a whole group of
Moroccans. After having been out until late and coming back to the Tae
Kwon Do stadium early Saturday morning (around 5am), Yusuf was woken up
by the police after an hour of sleep (so around 6am). They told him to
follow them and that they would like to check his papers. They brought
him and 150-200 other Moroccans to a „migration center“ (I couldn’t
understand the exact name, he said something with migration, the place
was in Athens). They were kept there the whole day. Their fingerprints
were taken and they were told to sign a paper that was called
„passport request“. The Moroccans think that the police did this in
order to send them back to Morocco. The people who first refused to sign
got pushed to do it by force. They didn’t get any food the whole day.
Although the police had told them when they left that they would be
brought back to the Tae Kwon Do stadium, they were brought to another
place in Corinth (we got a screenshot from googlemaps-locator). They got
there around midnight (Saturday night). Yusuf says that it is like a
prison. 8-12 people share a room. They are locked in this room and they
are only allowed to walk outside for 2 hours (in some kind of
courtyard). They only have one blanket for each person which is not
enough because it is really cold there. The police doesn’t give them any
information on how long they will be there. Most of the people that are
detained there, are still legal in Greece (their 30-days Visa has not
expired yet).
best,
Lukas
