Refugees on Lesvos started a protest on Lesvos island yesterday. They marched from the Moria camp to Mytilini and occupied Sappho square. They stayed over night and continued their protest today. The refugees demand to open the islands and let them travel to the main land.

Image: Sappho square in Mytilini, Lesvos last night. Image by Arash Hampay Facebook page.

Published by Enough is Enough.

Note: Enough is Enough is not organizing any of these events, we are publishing this text for people across the US and Europe to be able to see what is going on and for documentation only.

Read all our reports about Lesvos; here.

Enough is Enough! Open The Islands! Refugees Protest on Lesvos

Refugees on Lesvos started a protest on Lesvos island yesterday. They marched from the Moria camp to Mytilini and occupied Sappho square. They stayed over night and continued their protest today. The refugees demand to open the Greek islands and let them travel to the main land.

In a documentary that we produced about the situation on Lesvos, we exposed the inhuman treatment of people who are forced to stay on the island.

More and more people are arriving on the Greek islands and because people are not allowed to leave the islands, the islands are more and more overcrowded. We, and more than 60 other groups support the Open The Islands campaign. Winter is coming and after people frozen to death last year, the overcrowded islands could face more deaths in the coming months.

The inhuman conditions where many people are forced to live on the Greek islands lead to rising tension and insecurity for many people. Yesterday the No Border Kitchen Lesvos crew released a statement on their Facebook page:

“Refugees mainly from Afghanistan are marching from Moria to the city centre in Lesvos. Again.

This protest follows yesterday’s violence in Moria as people were fighting with each other inside of the camp. The fights left several people, including children, injured. 200 Afghanis including families decided to sleep outside the prison camp Moria yesterday, too scared to go back inside because they feared more violence.

This is not the first protest against Moria camp and the conditions on the island. You may recall that members of the Afghani community occupied the city centre of Mytilene 2 months ago, demanding that their cases be processed after 6-18 months of stagnation in the brutal confines of Moria. They were lied to and manipulated and their condition has not improved.

Yesterday has shown once again that Moria is not safe. But even now after more than 1 1/2 years of repeated violence, fire and deaths in the camp the government shows no interest in solving these problems they themselves created. Separately, a man died of a health problem in Moria yesterday. He was 43 years old. People keep up the struggle though there is no hope. Please remember and support them. with love and rage always your NBK crew”, October 21, 2017 Today Greek authorities tried to divide people who are still protesting on Sappho square in Mytilini by offering them a transfer from the Moria camp to the Kara Tepe. First it seemed that the strategy worked but soon the people who went to the Kara Tepe camp came back to Sappho square and continued their protest, stating that they don’t want to change into another camp but that they demand to be allowed to leave the island and travel to the main land. Day2. #Lesvos refugees refuse offer to move to Karatepe camp and demand freedom of movement to mainland #EU #opentheislands #refugeesgr pic.twitter.com/wkfFep92mR — Legal Centre Lesbos (@lesboslegal) October 22, 2017 Yesterday the protests were started by Afghani refugees but Arash Hampay wrote on his Facebook profile today that Kurdish and Iranian refugees joined the protest. Images by Twitter account @AHampay. Help maintain our site and continue our work: Donate We are back in Barcelona again. Please continue to support our independent on the ground reports. Its your support that makes it possible. On Decermber 16 we will return to Lesvos to report about the situation of refugees on the Greek island. We want to stay independent and want to expand our work with coverage from on the ground across Europe and even beyond. Therefore we need your support. Help maintain our site and continue our work. You can donate on our Paypal account: enough14@gmx.net Crowdfunding campaign: https://www.youcaring.com/enough14solidarity

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