Greece, Part I

Thanks to the people in Mitilini!

To

  • The village of all together
  • Siniparxis in Aegeais
  • ERGATIKI LESXI – Workers Center in Mitilini
  • ERA AEGAIOU – Radio Era
  • Club of the fishermen of Thermi-Poseidon
  • 3 whales who showed up shortly after the memorial in Thermi
  • The mayor of Mitilini
  • The administration of Tsamakia beach- ADEL
  • Hotel Votsala
  • Epimelitirio for giving the possibility to show the exhibition
  • Web for the printings
  • The boys from Agiassos

    • And all who have welcomed us on Lesvos and supported us in so many ways…

20th of October 2013

Dear people in Mitilini,

we have left the island – many of us with the feeling of having left a place where we all felt at home somehow. This feeling is mainly dedicated to all of you: without you this journey back to the border would have never been possible! We want to thank all of you. We will never forget the warm welcome you gave to us. We left with the feeling of a great experience and with a lot of strength for all coming struggles.

We left also with worries for all those we had to leave behind.

Our worries are with all those who are still imprisoned in the detention centre

close to Moria. We wish all of them that they will overcome this horrible place and that they will arrive safely at their destination, in the country they wish to arrive and settle.

Our worries are with all those who will start tomorrow or in the following days, weeks and months from Turkey with a boat. We wish to be able to stop the senseless border regime of Frontex that risks their lives soon.

Our worries are with all those who are still in Agiassos and struggle for some hope for their future. We hope the new period of Agiassos will establish proper conditions for all minors arriving on the island and will give them a home like many of us had found it for a period of time in Villa Azadi, the house of freedom. We hope that all those who have to leave this home will always be able to count on the hospitality of the people in Mitilini who have proved with Pikpa that a village of all together is possible.

Our worries are with all of you, who remain in this place that is so full hopes and dreams but also tragedies. We thank all of you for having shared your experiences of being pressed by the Troika, of being unpaid in your workplace or having lost it and who have to struggle the same struggle for survival than us on a daily level.

For us it was not easy to leave this place. With some of you we could not even say good-bye. We would have liked to stay with you. In our hearts the idea of a welcoming island at the entrance of Europe remains. We want to give you a promise: we will return again! Until then we will do our best to spread all the stories about incredible encounters with people who gave us the strength to continue.

We hope we can leave some memories for you and to have been able to express properly what belongs to all of you who have been involved to keep alive the idea that humanity is possible. That it is possible even when there are forces who try to put pressure on your island to host all these ugly forces of a deadly border regime.

We want to continue together with you. May Lesvos be known as a place full of memories of successful struggles against prisons and walls and the war against refugees at sea. We want no more victims of this regime. We want to stop this senseless loss of lives.

In our heart and mind we are still here with you. We want to continue the struggle together with you and we will reach finally what we are longing for.

Against all prisons and walls!

For another, a welcoming Europe!

Welcome to europe and JOG-Youth without borders