Per la libertà di movimento, per i diritti di cittadinanza

Thessaloniki – Eviction of squats for migrants’ housing needs: solidarity from Over The Fortress

The eviction which took place yesterday morning of three housing squats, Nikis, Orfano Trofio and Kinotita Hurriya, represents another worrying sign of what’s going on inside the Greek laboratory on migrations.

It is compulsory to tell the reasons that led to the decision of liberating a eight floors building, Kinotita Hurriya, in the centre of Thessaloniki, because this eviction is a slap against all of those who supported the migrants in Idomeni and the others informal camps, and also to the migrants who see themselves compelled to live in the precariousness of those governmental camps that we got to know through the reports of the #overthefortress campaign.

Many of the activists who, together with the migrants, decided to start this housing experience, met each other in Idomeni, in a phase in which the dream of thousands of migrants of get through Greece and get to their destination shattered against the closed border. In Idomeni and in the others camps the activists established relations and activated projects with the migrants, their biographies intertwined with those of the migrants, they lived together moments of tension and small joys, they walked in the same mud and got wet by the same rain.

After the evictions of the areas close to the border and the deportation of the migrants in the governmental camps, they kept being present, working outside the camps trying to improve the situation and collect the stories and denounce the indecent conditions thousands of migrants have to bear. At the same time, again, they decided not to stand by idly and be obey the enacting systems of confinement of migrants imposed by the European Union and by the Tsipras government, instead they decided to imagine and build, from the bottom, a housing alternative fair and replicable. They decided to tear up, again, the cloak of invisibility that engulfed the migrants, hidden and divided in hangars.

That’s why some of the activists of the #overthefortress campaign present in
Greece
at the moment decided to take part in this new collective project and risk in first person, aware of the consequences but determined to continue the experiences of solidarity to overcome the logic of camps.

In this moment the reports from the lawyers from Thessaloniki are telling us that they are accused of squatting and damage, and we are waiting to know the result of the trial.

To all of them goes our solidarity and our thoughts because what they are experiencing is unfair, not only because that building has been abandoned for years, but also because they were improving the place in order to make it immediately a house suitable for the migrants.

To give a real support starting from today a crowfunding will start in order to sustain the legal and trial expenses. It is possible to contribute to the current account
N. IT72Z0830401804000003354899 – Associazione Commons.

Solidarity campaign Over The Fortress

info: [email protected]

– Il video di Kinotita Hurriya