Author: borderviolencelesvos

What would have been a moment of joy for many people turned yet into another slap in the face.

After waiting for over a year for an outcome on their asylum procedure, during the last months over 2000 people have received their positive decision. However, being recognized as a refugee doesn’t mean that you can leave the camp or the island immediately, since it can take several months for travel documents to be issued. However, the special task force is currently on Lesvos and is issuing documents in the hope of speeding up the process. Regardless, people still have to wait over a month in order to get their papers. On Tuesday 14 December, the camp’s policy suddenly changed once again.

Continue reading A Fitting End To Yet Another Miserable Year

The EU has just introduced a new Migration and Asylum Pact, and it’s significant for all the wrong reasons.. Brace yourselves for a useless migration policy that’s full of lies about why people move, and is even more vicious against them, further boosting the extreme right framework. The Migration Pact comprises five regulations: data control, border supervision, legal safeguards, crisis management, and the treatment of asylum seekers. The latter is pivotal because under the current arrangement, countries such as Spain, Italy, or Greece bear the brunt as the initial destination.

The pact tightens the criteria for granting asylum, resulting in prolonged detention periods at the borders. Remarkably, the pact sanctions the indefinite detention of children. Families, kids included, might find themselves caged at the borders or booted off to some so-called “safe third countries.”

Border officials are now authorized to conduct thorough pre-entry control, including fingerprint identification and the collection of facial data from children as young as six. They are also empowered to conduct searches if an individual is perceived as a “security threat, violent, or unlawfully armed,” as stated by the European Parliament.

The pact oversees every aspect, from the arrival of asylum seekers on EU soil to the decision of acceptance or rejection. It is designed to replace and fortify existing regulations, a deadlock that persisted for years until the EU Council reached an agreement in June. The newly implemented rules outline “flexible compulsory solidarity,” mandating each EU country to either accommodate a specified number of asylum seekers or contribute monetarily to a collective fund to finance the borders.

The “mandatory but flexible solidarity” sets quotas for the redistribution of asylum seekers. If a state rejects its share, a contribution of 20,000 euros per person to the common fund is mandated. Partners can also contribute tangible resources or assume management of individuals on their territory, even if they entered through another route.

But here’s the real talk: No pact can stop us.

We will not cease until the borders are destroyed.

No one is illegal.

No to the European border regime.

Get the PDF including background information here

“What am I to do without exile, without a long night staring at the water?”
– Mahmoud Darwish

For Gazans, the Eastern shore of the Mediterranean is a horizon. On all other frontiers, they have been subject to blockade since 2006, enclosed in what has been called “the world’s largest open-air prison”. The sea at least carries the possibility of hope. When, however, they try to cross this sea through the Aegean into Europe, it becomes a prison wall: from 2022-2023, more than 10,000 Palestinians were pushed back from the Greek islands while attempting to cross the Aegean Sea, the second largest nationality group (after Afghans) to be subject to this practice. Not only does Europe, through its blind-eye to the current Israeli onslaught, fail to protect the right of Palestinians to live in their own land, it even denies them the right to live in exile.

Continue reading From Gaza to Lesvos