{"id":141646,"date":"2019-09-02T12:00:20","date_gmt":"2019-09-02T11:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=141646"},"modified":"2019-08-28T10:39:29","modified_gmt":"2019-08-28T09:39:29","slug":"exile-from-exarchia-an-anarchist-enclave-in-athens-opened-its-doors-to-refugees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2019\/09\/exile-from-exarchia-an-anarchist-enclave-in-athens-opened-its-doors-to-refugees\/","title":{"rendered":"Exile from Exarchia: An Anarchist Enclave in Athens Opened Its Doors to Refugees"},"content":{"rendered":"

Until the Authorities Had Enough<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>

A refugee child sits near camping tents at Syntagma Square on April 20 in Athens, Greece.
Nikos Pekiaridis\/SOPA Images\/LightRocket via Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

22 Aug 2019 – <\/em>When Alireza, a 26-year-old Iranian fleeing political troubles, arrived in Athens, Greece, in August 2018, he had nowhere to go. For the first three weeks, he slept in parks. During the daytime, he went to the refugee camps that have sprung up in Greece over the past decade and asked if they had accommodation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey said, \u2018No, we are full. We can\u2019t do anything. You can register\u2014please write your name. We will call you,\u2019 \u201d he recalls. \u201cNearly a year later they haven\u2019t called me yet. The refugee system is a complete joke.\u201d<\/p>\n

A few years earlier, Alireza might have rolled up his sleeping bag and joined the hundreds of thousands trekking north to western Europe. But by 2018, Greece\u2019s northern borders were closed<\/a>, and beyond that was a gamut of successive Balkan police forces. Asylum-seekers were said to be beaten brutally if caught<\/a>. Alireza tried to fly to Germany on a fake passport but was caught at the airport. \u201cThey detained me and sent me to a detention center for 76 days without any sunlight,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

In the detention center, his fingerprints were taken, a life-defining moment, because under European Union law<\/a>, asylum-seekers are required to apply for asylum in the first country they officially enter and will be returned there if they try to apply elsewhere. So he decided to apply for asylum in Greece, and was released while his claim was considered. But he was still homeless. Then he heard about Clandestina.<\/p>\n

When refugees started arriving on Greek shores in large numbers, the anarchists opened their\u00a0doors. <\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As the capital city on the edge of the Mediterranean, Athens became a refugee city almost by default. But the real sanctuary is the city-within-a-city, a neighborhood known as Exarchia. Its outlaw status dates back to 1973, when the ruling military junta brutally put down a student protest in the university located there, killing 40 civilians. The democratic regime that followed tried to avoid a repeat by banning police from campuses\u2014which made the surrounding area attractive to those suspicious of the state. In the following years, for the most part, police largely left it alone. It is run, instead, by anarchists (and, it is whispered, drug dealers and Mafia). To the visitor, however, it is surprisingly easy to wander into. Ignore the anarchist graffiti, and the odd crumbling ruin, and it could just be another scruffy neighborhood in downtown Athens where hipsters drink cheap beer and dine in trendy restaurants.<\/p>\n

When refugees started arriving on Greek shores in large numbers, the anarchists opened their doors. Clandestina, an empty government building that had already been home to squatters, was turned into refugee accommodation by a small anarchist group formed of Greeks, Danes, and refugees. It was six stories high, according to Alireza, and housed about 100 people, mostly Iranians and Afghans. There were rooms for families, and dorms for single men and women. The building was managed in an efficient, if gender-stereotypical, fashion\u2014the women took turns to cook communal meals, and the men did shifts on security. A nominated agent called NGOs to request supplies.<\/p>\n

Alireza\u2019s experience was not unusual. \u201cWhen someone first comes, they\u2019re basically left to go around the organizations and see where they can live, and often the answer is \u2018the squat,\u2019 \u201d says a European volunteer in Athens, who asked to remain anonymous. In 2017, Athens\u2019 mayor estimated that between 2,500 and 3,000 refugees and migrants were being housed in squats<\/a>. A UNICEF study put the number in Exarchia as 1,199.<\/a> In addition to Clandestina, other well-known squats included the former City Plaza Hotel<\/a>. The biggest squats house 250 to 300 people, generally Kurds, Syrians, Iraqis, Afghans, and Iranians, with smaller numbers from West Africa and Bangladesh. The conditions are hardly glamorous\u2014families are often forced to share rooms, and everyone has to share the toilets. But the homeless include families and pregnant women. \u201cMost of the time, the alternative to the squat is the street,\u201d the volunteer says.<\/p>\n

Greek authorities don\u2019t see it that way. In April 2019, evictions started. \u201cAbout 5 o\u2019clock in the morning, the police of Athens raided our squat while all of us were sleeping,\u201d says Alireza. When residents asked the police where they could stay instead, he says they replied, \u201cWe don\u2019t have any plan for you.\u201d<\/p>\n

The newly homeless residents decided to camp in Syntagma Square<\/a>, a grand plaza in Athens facing the Greek Parliament. The sight of children living in tents was embarrassing enough for Greece\u2019s left-wing government that after a few days of negotiation, the authorities offered them accommodation at Elaionas<\/a>, an inner-city refugee camp. \u201cElaionas camp isn\u2019t a good camp but it is called \u2018the best camp,\u2019 \u201d Aliraza notes wryly.<\/p>\n

In July, though, a center-right government won power, on a platform that explicitly included \u201ccleaning up\u201d Exarchia<\/a>. Activists say that two large squats were served eviction notices immediately after the election, and more evictions are planned for August<\/a>. Laws restricting policing have been overturned<\/a>. The government has also stopped issuing social security numbers to asylum-seekers<\/a>, meaning that new arrivals will not be able to find work or health care.<\/p>\n

Greek police have the right to ask anyone in public for his ID. But for many years, the absence of police from Exarchia meant undocumented people were relatively undisturbed. \u201cIt was the only place that you could be fairly guaranteed that no one\u2019s going to come and ask you for your papers,\u201d the European volunteer says.<\/p>\n

Now, police are entering Exarchia. \u201cThis one year, I was only checked four times about my papers, one time in the last government and three times under the new government,\u201d says Alireza. While his asylum process continues, he, at least, can produce them. Those without papers could end up in a detention center. The situation, says the European volunteer, is \u201cpretty scary.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for the former residents of Clandestina, they remain close. Some have managed to cross the borders into mainland Europe. Others remain in the camp at Elaionas. \u201cNow we have friends in the Netherlands, Germany, and France, and I believe we will be in touch until the end of our lives,\u201d says Alireza. \u201cBecause in most awful time of our lives, we were together.\u201d<\/p>\n

_____________________________________________<\/p>\n

Julia Rampen is the digital night editor of the<\/em> Liverpool Echo and a former journalist at the<\/em> New Statesman.<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 slate.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

22 Aug 2019 – When refugees started arriving on Greek shores in large numbers, the anarchists opened their doors. — Until the Authorities Had Enough<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":141647,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[120,354,401,267,487,866,504,651,291,91,109,287,103,821,107,985,380,249,292,70,126,118,172,75],"class_list":["post-141646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe","tag-conflict","tag-economics","tag-environment","tag-geopolitics","tag-human-rights","tag-indigenous-rights","tag-international-relations","tag-justice","tag-military","tag-nato","tag-politics","tag-power","tag-racism","tag-refugees","tag-religion","tag-social-justice","tag-solutions","tag-trump","tag-un","tag-usa","tag-violence","tag-war","tag-west","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141646\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/141647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}