Fortress Europe Border Updates
Update 9 from Edirne and Istanbul - 19.03.2020
Our teams report from Pazarkule/Edirne, the border of humanity, and Istanbul, where thousands of refugees are stranded.
The people at the border survived another day, even more surprising now that we know that the teargas being fired on them is long expired. I wonder what the 700 million Euros the EU paid for "border protection" are used if they don't even buy new tear gas. As if tear gassing people in search of protection would not be horrible enough in and of itself, using expired one is a new level of cruel that one day the people responsible will have to stand on trial for.
The amount of tear gas used has constantly increased in the past days as the refugees are more and more desperate. They are cold, hungry and their only hope is Europe’s mercy. So they keep trying to cross the border again and again, unsuccessfully, and Greece keeps firing expired tear gas.
At least there was some food distributed today – one small sandwich, one small juice bottle and one biscuit per person.
But our local contacts managed to find an agreement with the Red Crescent, allowing them to at least distribute milk for children and milk powder for babies.
Tonight, a baby was born in the hospital and our local partners are trying to arrange the family's stay at the hospital for as long as possible and are buying supplies for the mother and the newborn right now with your donations.
People are told that they will be given 300 Lira and new clothes if they are willing to take the bus back to Istanbul – but as it turns out, this promise is just another blatant lie. So they end up stranded in Istanbul with no money, no place to stay, no food and no hope for help as the local law forbids NGOs from helping people with no legal status. So Lorenz is stepping up and supporting them. Today he and some other helpers prepared food bags, including fruits, vegetables, canned beans, tuna, nuts and bread that were greatly appreciated. There was a group of other individual volunteers helping in the same way at the busstation, so we decided to join forces.
Together we made use of the new UNHCR program which pays bus tickets back to other Turkish cities, at least for those that still possess Turkish papers. The main problem we are faced with is those that had not only their money and clothes but also their documents taken away from them by the Greeks. Every single person who had managed to cross the border at least once tells this story, in pain.
With some replacement document issued by the Red Crescent, many Syrians still can buy a bus ticket. But there are numerous cases of people who have neither. Official foreign IDs don’t count for Turkish bus companies or the Police. The latter is also not willing to help people to get new papers. Luckily, Hayata Detest (Support for Life) - a Turkish NGO - arrived in the evening and offered to take over these very complicated cases of people without any papers but willing to take a bus back to their previous homes. Their future remains uncertain nevertheless.
An Armenian man, politically persecuted in his home country, didn’t want to go back to the Turkish city he had lived in before. He was suffering under the oftentimes strong anti-Armenian discrimination in Turkey. But wether through UNHCR or with papers, there is just one way to go: the city they had stayed in before being promised the chance of crossing the border.
Early in the day, our Arabic translator Mustafa arrived, making it a day with only little language barriers. Being from Syria and living in Istanbul, he was very convinced that even though some people had nothing to go back to in their respective Turkish cities, it would be better to go there instead of staying in Istanbul. The city is filled with foreigners struggling on the streets, it’s hard for them to find jobs and most importantly a home they can afford, as it is the most expensive city of the country. He was able to convince some people to give up the idea and return to other cities with better chances tof survival, which of course isn’t a real solution, but the best advice we have for the people at the moment. It is a very similar situation as with people going to the Greek border, trying their luck to cross into Europe: as much as we are convinced that these people should be allowed save passage and protection in Europe, we must warn them of the suffering that will await them on EU territory and that it most likely will all be for nothing and only worsen their situation.
The people at the border survived another day, even more surprising now that we know that the teargas being fired on them is long expired. I wonder what the 700 million Euros the EU paid for "border protection" are used if they don't even buy new tear gas. As if tear gassing people in search of protection would not be horrible enough in and of itself, using expired one is a new level of cruel that one day the people responsible will have to stand on trial for.
The amount of tear gas used has constantly increased in the past days as the refugees are more and more desperate. They are cold, hungry and their only hope is Europe’s mercy. So they keep trying to cross the border again and again, unsuccessfully, and Greece keeps firing expired tear gas.
At least there was some food distributed today – one small sandwich, one small juice bottle and one biscuit per person.
But our local contacts managed to find an agreement with the Red Crescent, allowing them to at least distribute milk for children and milk powder for babies.
Tonight, a baby was born in the hospital and our local partners are trying to arrange the family's stay at the hospital for as long as possible and are buying supplies for the mother and the newborn right now with your donations.
People are told that they will be given 300 Lira and new clothes if they are willing to take the bus back to Istanbul – but as it turns out, this promise is just another blatant lie. So they end up stranded in Istanbul with no money, no place to stay, no food and no hope for help as the local law forbids NGOs from helping people with no legal status. So Lorenz is stepping up and supporting them. Today he and some other helpers prepared food bags, including fruits, vegetables, canned beans, tuna, nuts and bread that were greatly appreciated. There was a group of other individual volunteers helping in the same way at the busstation, so we decided to join forces.
Together we made use of the new UNHCR program which pays bus tickets back to other Turkish cities, at least for those that still possess Turkish papers. The main problem we are faced with is those that had not only their money and clothes but also their documents taken away from them by the Greeks. Every single person who had managed to cross the border at least once tells this story, in pain.
With some replacement document issued by the Red Crescent, many Syrians still can buy a bus ticket. But there are numerous cases of people who have neither. Official foreign IDs don’t count for Turkish bus companies or the Police. The latter is also not willing to help people to get new papers. Luckily, Hayata Detest (Support for Life) - a Turkish NGO - arrived in the evening and offered to take over these very complicated cases of people without any papers but willing to take a bus back to their previous homes. Their future remains uncertain nevertheless.
An Armenian man, politically persecuted in his home country, didn’t want to go back to the Turkish city he had lived in before. He was suffering under the oftentimes strong anti-Armenian discrimination in Turkey. But wether through UNHCR or with papers, there is just one way to go: the city they had stayed in before being promised the chance of crossing the border.
Early in the day, our Arabic translator Mustafa arrived, making it a day with only little language barriers. Being from Syria and living in Istanbul, he was very convinced that even though some people had nothing to go back to in their respective Turkish cities, it would be better to go there instead of staying in Istanbul. The city is filled with foreigners struggling on the streets, it’s hard for them to find jobs and most importantly a home they can afford, as it is the most expensive city of the country. He was able to convince some people to give up the idea and return to other cities with better chances tof survival, which of course isn’t a real solution, but the best advice we have for the people at the moment. It is a very similar situation as with people going to the Greek border, trying their luck to cross into Europe: as much as we are convinced that these people should be allowed save passage and protection in Europe, we must warn them of the suffering that will await them on EU territory and that it most likely will all be for nothing and only worsen their situation.
