March 29 2016

Voices from the Idomeini refugee camp on the Greek border with Macedonia

Open borders now! We want a dignified life!
Enough of fighting alone! We need the support of European workers!
Where are their organizations?

Greek territory, meters from the border with Macedonia, there is Idomeini refugee camp. Here and around 14,000 of them support a harsh climate with intense cold, rain, lack of food. They are outdoors, sleeping in tents in the middle of nowhere. So they have been left after the decision of Macedonia, of all Balkan countries, Austria, Hungary and across the EU of actually closing the borders to all refugees, preventing their entry into the "old continent" and starting to deport them.
They have been long in this situation, some for more than a month. Because Macedonia had closed the border in December, first restricting certain nationalities (leaving out Moroccans and Algerians), then restricting the number of people passing per day (to 20, 50 or 100), then closing several consecutive days and only opening a few days to let a couple of dozens; then closing its borders to anyone other than those with Syrian or Iraqi passport, and finally 20 days ago completely closed them for everyone.
Fed up with these subhuman conditions, without a horizon where they could rebuild their lives destroyed by the imperialist powers and their lackeys, refugees began plans for struggling through hunger strikes, roadblocks and railway blocking, marches and even came to set themselves on fire. Many refugees are now occupying public squares and ports and marching through the streets of the two main Greek cities, Athens and Thessaloniki, with the slogan "We will not leave until they open the borders."
Amid these protests carried out from the camps of refugees stranded at the border, we talked with several companions.

Haltingly, in expressions of despair, waving their arms in the air, they said they fled the counterrevolutionary war in Syria, where their houses were destroyed by barrel bombs of Bashar and their neighbors killed by Putin's Russian bombing. They had to leave home and leave their land not because they wanted to, but because they could no longer live under such slaughter and destruction. But even they claimed that before the war, Syria, with very low wages, with few job opportunities, with increasing cost of living and no possibility of freedom of expression due to a terrible totalitarian dictatorship had become a very difficult place for living.
Some of them had spent some months in Turkey, trying to rebuild their lives there. But that was impossible for them. Refugees have no job security. If you are lucky enough to find work, the Turkish employers may not pay them and would fire them at any time; they make them work long hours for very low pay. And as if that were not enough, they also suffer the abuses of the Turkish state, where police can arrest and detain as deemed necessary, they are not entitled to their defense, have no right to a lawyer ... have no rights. According to them, in Turkey they are not even considered human beings and are treated worse than animals.

Leaving all that behind, hoping to be able to rebuild their lives in the "old continent", many of them having relatives in Germany, France or other countries waiting for them, arrived in Greece only to find that the borders to exit the Hellenic country and cross to Macedonia on their way, were closed before them.
Before this they began to camp on the border with the dream that it be reopened. But gradually the "interim" camp was becoming permanent. Every day, more and more people were coming. They pitched their tents, always sharing the same goal of being able to continue their journey.
But in turn also came NGOs, provided with funds from the EU and the Syriza Greek government to prevent them from unifying among themselves and going their way, and making them accept that the borders remain closed and stay in their tents, saying that "there you are safe and at least have food. " As more and more refugees raise their voices calling for the European working class to come in solidarity with them, more and more NGOs try to cover the voice of refugees with just a piece of bread.

But despite this, refugees have remained in their fight plan. The fact is their situation is hopeless. The funds they had to solve their journey to reach Germany are over. And only they have a few belongings that fit in their backpacks and their hope of someday being able to cross. In their own words: "All we can do is sleep and eat. No job, no home, nothing. Is this a life? What about children? Where education is for them to have a future? Where are human rights and respect for life that the EU says is all over Europe?" they say.

They do not cease to thank the solidarity they have received from the Greek people. But are fully aware that it is a country with a high percentage of unemployment, where it would be virtually impossible to get a job, and even if they do, with the miserable salary that would be paid could not keep them or their family.
Therefore they know that their only solution is to continue its way to Germany. And they ask all who have sympathized with them, both young and Greek workers as German, Spanish and Italian ones, among other nationalities who have come from various parts of Europe and the world, to fight with them and support them to cross the border.
This desperate call that by tens of thousands of refugees expose how labor and struggle organizations, speaking on behalf of the revolution and self-proclaimed to be the champions of solidarity with refugees, have left them completely alone, at the mercy of NGOs, which all they do is profiting from the misery of tens of thousands of outcasts, who have been trapped in a limbo of uncertainty, cold, hunger and disease.
The role the leaderships of the European working class have fulfilled, first of all the union bureaucracy, the Stalinists and the renegades of Trotskyism and several social imperialist parties has been to leave them isolated. These currents have become the speaker of dirty Islamophobic campaigns that European imperialist states made against refugees, accusing them of "terrorists" after the auto-attacks in France, Belgium or Turkey, as well as the supposed "sexual assault" in Germany.
Refugees are the heart of the European working class! From their countries, imperialism plunders 80% of oil in the world! The exploited in the Maghreb and the Middle East are the rightful owners of these resources but are lying as outcasts in tents in the middle of nowhere, while the imperialist parasites enjoy life in their mansions and yachts.
Refugees are just fighting against these imperialist parasites who with their lackeys massacre and destroy the Maghreb and the Middle East, super-exploit the European working class and have launched an attack of "austerity measures" with which they seek to wrest all its labor conquests.
It is necessary to unify the workers' ranks throughout Europe! The imperialist bourgeoisie seeks to impose European workers the same living conditions of refugees and exploited from the Maghreb and the Middle East.

We must not let them do that anymore!
European general strike now!
Down with the union bureaucracy!
Let refugees be recognized as members of honor in unions and labor organizations!
Papers for all! Equal pay for equal work! Open the borders!
Out Frontex, NATO and all the repressive forces of the European states!
Let's deport the bloodsucking bankers and imperialist parasites!
Down with Maastricht!

Correspondent