ANNOUNCEMENT BY 'MOVEMENT FOR THE HUMAN RIGHTS - SOLIDARITY WITH MIGRANTS - SAMOS ISLAND

During the mourning of Thursday 18th February, 50 migrants were transfered from Samos' Detention Center to Athens in order to be deported. Since then we have lost them because they can not contact anybody or reach any legal assistance. This event gets added to the illegal transfers for deportation of 85 migrants on 12.12.2009 and the 24 Afghans and Iranis on 14.01.2010 without complying with either the basic guarantees of their rights as refugees and prisoners. The refugees do not get informed about the reason there should be transferred neither about the destination of the transfer. They get signed by the Greek authorities with the assistance of FRONTEX arbitrarily the Afghans as Iranis without the knowledge of their own refugees and they try to be expelled to Turkey under the Greek-Turkish readmission protocol.

While FRONTEX gets upgraded, and in cooperation with the Coast Guard Authorities of Samos intensify the effort to 'secure' the borders - east of the island - from the influx of refugees, the number of refugee shipwrecks also rises up (two in the first two months of 2010) and we are counting corpses on the beaches of the island (9 drawned refugees). The missing persons are also a lot, but Mass Media and authorities do not report about because people who search for them are invisible with voices not heard.

Additionally to these, reports from refugees come on top that talk about the Coast Guards - not for first time - and say: "...they have beaten us up, they sweared against us, we still have scars on our bodies, some of us have broken bones, they threatened us with guns and fired on the air, they threw our mobile phones in the sea", on a text of their own which they gave us during our visit in the Detention Center on 05.02.2010.

The immunity of the borders and the anti-refugee policy that the government enforces, the chase from the side of FRONTEX - that can not stop the waves of refugees but open war in the region against unarmed and persecuted people who come even from war areas - rise up and feed the illegal human (slave) trading. The only aim of such actions are accorded to the Non Tolerance Fortress Europe idea.

REFUGEES GET DRAWNED, CHASED, IMPRISONED AND FROM NOW ON THEY GET KIDNAPPED BY FRONTEX AND AUTHORITIES.

We continue AND expect:

--> Effective access to political asylum.

--> Translations by people who can translate in the refugees' languages and not by agents of Frontex.

--> Stop the 'War' in our neighborhood that serves the requirements of EU.

--> We do not want the refugee hunters of Frontex. Banish Frontex.