…is what is written on the banners of 300 immigrants who are on a hunger strike in Athens and Salonika, since January 25, claiming the legalization of all immigrants and the consolidation of equal and social rights. This mass hunger strike consists a desperate, but also determined answer to the choices, the attitude and the practices on the authority’s as well as the society’s part, against immigrants.
The so far practiced Greek immigration politics has shown a series of laws and measures, which are in fridge of human rights and contribute to the distinction of working hands.
Concisely:
- Armed repulsion chasing of uniformed against debased people, in land and water boarders, ports and transference stations,
- Keeping new coming immigrants in modern concentration camps, where full police arbitrariness, cold , fear, illnesses, dirt, crush and ignorance preponderate,
- Thousands of unexamined asylum applications,
- Wild pogroms and ‘cleaning’ operations, including beating, prosecutions and deportations,
- Xenophobic and racist propaganda of media, aiming at the public opinion guidance,
- Huge, as well as unspecified, number of murdered immigrants from ‘accidental detonations’, ‘unspecified conditions’, ‘pathological causes’, ‘inexplicable suicides’, ‘land mines in Ebro’, ‘droughts in Aegean Sea’ , ‘industrial accidents’, ‘mighty and armed locals’.
The present government intentions are…is what is written on the banners of 300 immigrants who are on a hunger strike in Athens and Salonika, since January 25, claiming the legalization of all immigrants and the consolidation of equal and social rights. This mass hunger strike consists a desperate, but also determined answer to the choices, the attitude and the practices on the authority’s as well as the society’s part, against immigrants.
The so far practiced Greek immigration politics has shown a series of laws and measures, which are in fridge of human rights and contribute to the distinction of working hands.
Concisely:
Armed repulsion chasing of uniformed against debased people, in land and water boarders, ports and transfere the following: ‘Only the legal immigrants will stay in Greece’ (pure and simple derision, as the amount of impetration concerning refuge applicants in Greece is just 1 %!). ‘The boarder security is a matter of national dominance’ (Papoutsis’ declaration in the parliament during the discussion of the bill for the new regime of asylum supply). The differentiation of workers in Greeks and foreigners with –so to say- different goods, contributes to the disorientation of the working class from its real enemy; the system.
The recent action of the pan European, pan armed and hypermodern boarder security, Frontex, in S.E Aegean Sea and the Greek Turkish land boarders, as well as the proclamation for the creation of a fence in Ebro, have in view the materialization of all these political intentions.
The majority of Greek society seems to consent with the legislative and executive commands against the immigrants, as the government ,the political mouthpieces and the media ‘parrots’ present them. Commands that not only contrast the common sense, but also undermine the human dignity.
The unjudicial acceptance and use of the terms-senses ‘illegal’ and ‘smuggled’ immigrants, concerning the people who don’t have credentials, not only verify the former ascertainment , but also undermine the social consciousness, disguise, preserve and turn the social hypocrisy into idealism.
The people who travel from the depths of east and south, that is the depths of poverty, war, dictatorships, hunger, come to the north and the west of ‘higher subsistence level’; the west of ‘respect of human rights’ for a better life. Even if the south itself and the west itself are the culprits of the mainstream situation in their countries.
The majority of Greek society has forgotten its own, not so distant, history of immigration. Recognizing the differentiations of the immigration phenomena , in the way they are fixed from the social and historical conditions of past and present, we ought to, non the less, show off that this history of Greek immigration has been hushed from the school books; it is not shown on TV; it has fallen asleep under the collective unconscious of Albano phobia and Islam phobia; it takes revenge for its luck in the modern slave market of Manolada; it consists a notoriety for the hot headed that scrape along Attiki Square and Igoumenitsa; it accomplishes its moral duty through church commons; it pays off the political duty with symbolic concerts and humanitarian proclamations.
If –taking as possible the validity and credibility of the recent polls- we believe that the social acquiescence for the creation of the fence in Ebro has been assured; if we see the immigrants, the most weak in the social pyramid, as financial competitors in the sphere of capital crisis; if the police state boasts our democracy; if we find rest to the fascists for the comedown of our debased neighborhood, by the political factors that we chose; if we put the struggles for the dismantlement of the Berlin and Israel Walls to the shelve of our political archive; if we boast for our academic society that prizes the extreme right chauvinist educators; if we abide Nazi greetings in our borough councils; if our social and class struggle is confined in claiming rights only for the syndicalistic and political horizontals, then there is only one feeling that we will be carrying to our graves and we will bequeath to our children as well: SHAME. Individual, collective, national, European, social, cultural; no matter how we classify it, it won’t stop being shame. The only way to wash out this shame is by at long last listening to the immigrants’ voice, by learning their rights and by fighting with them.
- RESPECT AND SOLIDARITY TO THE STRUGGLE OF 300 HUNGER STRIKERS
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CANCELLATION OF PLAN FOR THE CREATION OF FENCE IN EBRO
- REPEAL OF FRONTEX
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CLOSURE OF MODERN CONCENTRATION CAMPS
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OPENING OF BOARDERS FOR ALL THE PEOPLE WHO NEED DISPLACEMENT.
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FACTUAL SOLIDARITY TO ALL IMMIGRANTS
INITIATIVE SOLIDARITY TO THE IMMIGRANTS (XANTHI-ISKETCHE), 27-1-11