‘GREEK BROTHERS WE SEEK FOR YOUR SUPPORT’
…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
CANCELLATION OF PLAN FOR THE CREATION OF FENCE IN EBRO
REPEAL OF FRONTEX
CLOSURE OF MODERN CONCENTRATION CAMPS
OPENING OF BOARDERS FOR ALL THE PEOPLE WHO NEED DISPLACEMENT.
FACTUAL SOLIDARITY TO ALL IMMIGRANTS
INITIATIVE SOLIDARITY TO THE IMMIGRANTS (ΧΑΝΤΗΙ-ISKETCHE), 27-1-11
http://venna.espivblogs.net/2011/02/15/%E2%80%98greek-brothers-we-seek-for-your-support%E2%80%99/