Since 2013, Welcome to Europe (w2eu) and Youth Without Borders (JOG) organise journeys for young refugees, to make it possible for them to return to the place where they had first reached Europe: The Island of Lesvos/Greece. This year, the ‘back to the border’ journey turned into a horror trip, especially, for all of us who were without European identity cards. Twice, the police and coast guard didn’t let us take the ferry to Piraeus (Athens) and leave the island as they said they had to re-check the asylum seekers cards for their genuinity – a paper issued by the Greek government itself. We observed dozens of people who were pulled out of the passengers queues at the airport while providing for passports or Greek aliens documents and dozens more who were unsuccessfully trying to leave from the island from the port along with us even though some of them were living and working in Greece for years. Continue reading Frontex’s Prison Island Lesvos: Apartheid in the tourist paradise →

Mahdi needs to return, back to Germany. Back to his Father and to his smaller brother, he has to take care of. He leaves his mother on Lesvos, waiting for an unkown period of time for finally being together again when their family refunification will be accepted. Behind them a huge picture to advertise for the famous hospitality of the island. The inhabitants of Lesvos have been nominated for the Peace Nobel Price.

Now hospitality is not the en vogue any more. Instead all newly arriving refugees will first be imprisoned and even after their release from the hot spot Moria they are not allowed to leave the island that became a big prison for refugees with this new policy.

6.000 people are waiting, some since many months. Waiting for the EU-policy to change. Waiting to finally manage to go and reach their final destinations.

Mahdis mother belongs into the arms of her son. She should be part of his life that he has built up in Germany. She should not be stuck in here, waiting for months for the burocracy to finish their job and to finally allow her to reunify with her family.

Freedom of movement!

Tuesday 25.10. 2016

On Tuesday evening we met some social workers, lawyers, teachers and other people who work with minor refugees on the island. We started with an overview about the system in Germany: what happens when the unaccompanied minors arrive in Germany, the situation of the housing, the guardianships and the school system.

The people were very interested, had a lot of questions and we started the discussion. They told us about the problems in Greece and we exchanged about the different possibilities and difficulties in both countries. The situation in Greece, especially on the islands, changed a lot because many people arrived here and cannot move on. But when they left their countries they wanted to live in better conditions, planned to go to other countries for example to join their families and it’s hard for them to see that’s impossible to move on now.
Continue reading Meeting at the Lesvion Hotel with social workers from different organisations working with minor refugees in Lesvos →

On Tuesday we finally got the guide! We were really happy and started to hand out them at the same day. We went to Moria and Kara Tepe and gave it to the people we met. This year it is much more difficult, we are not allowed to enter the camps and we can only reach some refugees. If we can speak with them they are happy to get informations – like we know it from the last years. In the last time there have been organisations which tried to hand out bibles and religious things. Because of that there is a big mistrust against everybody who is handing out paper. In Kara Tepe we have not been allowed to hand out the guides between the cantinas which are in front of the camp and where the people are sitting. We had to stand close to the dangerous road – outside the ground which belongs to the camp. In Moria they check identities of two of us – the cantinas are on the other side of the road, so that we could stay there and continue.

When we started to hand out the guides we realised that this year the French version is missing because there are many more people from (western) Africa here in Lesvos. Many of them are French speakers. We will try to speed up the French translation to at least have an online version.

What is really clear this year: everything is controlled very much. Many big NGOs are working in the camps, networks like us are not welcome and they don‘t let us in. This was really frustrating, although we met people, spoke with them and spread the guides.

You can find the online-versions here:

Arabic: http://w2eu.info/greece.ar.html

Farsi: http://w2eu.info/greece.fa.html

English: http://w2eu.info/greece.en.html

PDFs in all languages:http://w2eu.info/greece.en/articles/greece-guide.en.html