Refugees and migrants wait before they attempt to enter Greece from Turkey on March 2 in Edirne, Turkey. BURAK KARA/GETTY IMAGES

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Since 2015, a few thousand of the 65,000 asylum seekers in Greece have found refuge in vacated buildings across Athens. These accommodations are commonly referred to as squats, and they offer a dignified alternative to overcrowded reception centers and refugee camps located far from public services and support networks. But police are now rapidly evicting refugee squats to allegedly crackdown on drug dealers.

The raids started in April under the country’s previous left-wing Syriza government. But they’ve witnessed a sharp uptick under the conservative New Democracy Party that came to power in July with a vow to impose “law and order” in Exarchia. Law enforcement agencies have evicted eight refugee squats in four separate raids over the past month. In all, nearly 1,000 asylum seekers have been driven out in these raids. And unlike the previous government, which left refugees to migrate to new squats, New Democracy is hauling evicted refugees back to prison-like camps and detention centers.

“Squats are necessary because the state doesn’t have a place to put everyone.” ~A.Z. A Lebanese Migrant

To be sure, drug gangs have carved out space in the central square of Exarchia, much to the dismay of the neighborhood’s residents. But migrants and activists say that none of the dealers lived in the evicted squats, all of which had a strict no-drug policy. Instead, they say, the evictions are part of a wider policy to accelerate the asylum process and deport rejected asylum seekers. New Democracy has said it aims to return 10,000 people back to Turkey by 2020, five times the number that Syriza deported in four and a half years.

 A police officer on the premises of the old Athens airport, during the evacuation of a refugee camp. –SOURCE PANAYOTIS TZAMAROS/GETTY

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“The new government is pushing this myth about how bad the squats were and how great the camps are,” says Ioanna Manousakki-Adamopoulou, a Ph.D. candidate at the University College London, who has lived in and focused her research on the squats in Exarchia.

The truth, she adds, is that the squats evolved into self-sustainable communities that Greek leftists and anarchists embraced. In two abandoned schools that sheltered hundreds of asylum seekers, activists and charities built small playgrounds for children, cooked meals and offered language lessons in classrooms. In other squats, activists repaired amenities and helped enroll refugee children in schools.

By contrast, aid workers in September warned of a looming catastrophe in refugee camps on the Aegean Islands: Attempted suicide rates among children were soaring, while hundreds of people were forced to share a single toilet and shower. The overcapacity, say rights groups, was largely responsible for an inadvertent fire that erupted in Moria camp on the island of Lesbos in September, which left a woman and a child dead.

 A view of the Prosfygika complex. Wedged between the Supreme Court of Greece and the Athens police headquarters, this is hardly the place you imagine you’d find Greek and immigrant squatters. –SOURCE LOUISA GOULIAMAKI/AFP/GETTY

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Soon after the fire was put out, riots erupted in the camp, prompting the government to begin relocating thousands of people to mainland Greece.

Refugee advocates welcomed the move, yet many suspect that the camps around Athens will soon become unbearably overcrowded. Only a few of the 26 camps on the mainland are legally registered, meaning there’s little oversight of how authorities treat refugees. The camps also can’t shelter everyone, especially with thousands of asylum seekers arriving in Greece after fleeing Turkey’s crackdown on Syrian refugees in recent months. And in March, the Syriza government ended U.N. housing accommodation and cash assistance for recognized refugees, according to a statement by the U.N. Refugee Agency. “Squats are necessary because the state doesn’t have a place to put everyone,” says a Lebanese migrant who requested he be identified by his initials, A.Z.

An English speaker, A.Z. often helped translate between Arab refugees and Greek volunteers in Exarchia. He too had lived in one of the abandoned schools in the area, but he moved out before it was evicted on Sept. 19. Most inhabitants were women and children, many of whom were enrolled in local Greek schools.

 Refugee children chant in front of riot police during a protest of refugees living in squats and solidarity groups over the detention by police of five migrant children. –SOURCE LOUISA GOULIAMAKI/AFP/GETTY

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One Syrian refugee named Mohammad, who didn’t disclose his last name for fear of reprisal from authorities, notes that the police were less aggressive under the previous government. “I used to tell the police I was Syrian and they wouldn’t ask me for legal papers, but now they’re after us,” he tells me. He’s still in Exarchia, but fears he too will be moved to a camp soon. He already has harrowing memories of Chios island when he arrived in Greece in 2017. Unable to bear the stench of garbage, the police harassment and the sight of barbed wire around the camp, he paid a smuggler $650 to take him to Athens. He eventually came to Exarchia, where he found a community of Arab refugees and anarchists who became his close friends. Most of the squats in Exarchia are run by popular committees, which meet frequently to establish rules, sort out disputes and discuss housing needs. “If Greece didn’t have anarchists, it would be terrible,” says Mohammad.

Iyad Akram, a 25-year-old from Gaza, had stayed in one of the camps on the mainland when he arrived in Athens last July. He remembers the police shouting racist remarks, while migrants often fought in the camp. Fed up, Akram moved to Exarchia nine days later.

The squat where he and Mohammad were staying was evicted in the early morning on Oct. 17. Those found without legal papers were hauled to detention centers, while everybody else was taken to camps. Akram and Mohammad left the camp yesterday and are now sleeping in a garden in Athens. The hopes they carried with them to Greece are already in tatters.

“I hate the camps,” Akram tells me, as he smokes a cigarette. “I didn’t leave Gaza to end up there.”

Source: https://www.ozy.com/fast-forward/greeces-latest-war-on-refugees-clearing-squats-in-an-athens-anarchist-hub/97219/

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(UNITED NATIONS) — The World Refugee Council called Thursday for up to $20 billion stolen by government leaders and now frozen in the United States, Britain and other countries to be reallocated by courts to help millions of displaced people forced to flee conflict, persecution and victimization.

The council also called for people responsible for the growing crisis of refugees and internally displaced people — including government leaders, military officers and opposition and rebel figures — to be held accountable, all the way to the International Criminal Court.

Chaired by former Canadian foreign minister Lloyd Axworthy, the 24-member council which was formed in May 2017 includes former heads of state and ministers, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Leymah Gbowee, and leading business, civil society and human rights officials.

The 218-page report it launched Thursday goes beyond what the United Nations has done, at a time when the number of people forcibly displaced from their homes is 68.5 million, the highest since World War II. Its release also comes as populist and nationalist political figures “are exploiting people’s anxieties, fears” about refugees, Axworthy said,

Tanzania’s former President Jakaya Kikwete, a council co-chair, said the current crisis is a consequence of some countries’ internal policies, authoritarianism, sectarianism, violence and conflicts, “but the other aspect is that the attitude towards refugees has changed.”

“In the past people have been welcoming, friendly,” he said. “Now people are … closing the doors for people who are … fleeing from danger. But they say, ‘no, no you can’t come’ … and refugees are being blamed as being the problem.”

Kikwete said “unscrupulous politicians” are using refugees to get votes “because when you tell your people they’re dangerous” they react, and the politicians become popular.

At the same time, the report said, “the humanitarian commitment of nations, once a norm, has given way to nativism. Xenophobia — fear and exclusion of the ‘outsider’ — has gathered force in America, Europe, Australia and elsewhere.”

The U.N. refugee agency, which relies on voluntary contributions, is seriously underfunded and its head, Filippo Grandi, called in his latest report on forced displacement for “a new and far more comprehensive approach” to the crisis “so that countries and communities aren’t left dealing with this alone.”

Axworthy told a news conference: “What we’ve really proposed is a way in which you have to get out of the box in which refugees are seen simply as ‘a humanitarian issue.’”

“There has to be a much stronger level of involvement,” he said, in matters of security, development, human rights, accountability and finance for the world’s 25.4 million refugees and 40 million internally displaced, along with 3.1 million asylum seekers.

Axworthy said the World Bank has estimated that there are between $15 billion and $20 billion “in purloined assets that various political leaders have stolen from their people.”

How much of that can be recovered, he said, depends on how many governments and countries are prepared to give their courts the right to reallocate the money. He pointed to Switzerland, which has done just that, as a model.

Fen Osler Hampson, the council’s executive director, said Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s regime has complained it doesn’t have access to $3 billion in bank accounts frozen in the United States. He said there are several hundred million dollars belonging to Syrian President Bashar Assad’s family frozen in London bank accounts. And in the case of South Sudan, he said, “the generals have several hundred millions that are frozen in bank accounts in Nairobi.”

“All it takes is political will to introduce that legislation” to give courts the right to reallocate that money, Hampson said.

The World Refugee Council’s argument is that refugees and internally displaced people, the majority of them women and children, are the most vulnerable in the world and should therefore have the primary claim on those assets, he said.

Other prospects for new money, Hampson said, are to leverage the vast resources of the private sector and create “refugee bonds,” similar to “green bonds” to tackle climate change.

Another proposal is a kind of cap-and-trade system where if a country isn’t willing to resettle refugees for political reasons it can make financial contributions to developing countries saddled with huge costs for hosting millions of refugees, Hampson said.

As for accountability, Axworthy said using the International Criminal Court to prosecute Myanmar’s military leaders for alleged crimes against humanity for the crackdown that led over 700,000 Rohingya Muslims to flee to Bangladesh would “take away the impunity” for those responsible for massive displacement.

The council also called for the drafting of a new protocol to the 1951 Refugee Convention requiring “collective responsibility for refugees.”

Contact us at editors@time.com.

Source: http://time.com/5512860/world-refugee-council-frozen-aid/

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Defense Secretary Jim Mattis is expected to sign an order sending the troops to the border, bolstering National Guard forces already there, an official said Thursday. The action comes as President Donald Trump has spent recent days calling attention to the caravan of Central Americans slowly making its way by foot into southern Mexico but still more than 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) from U.S. soil.

Trump, who made fear about immigrants a major theme of his 2016 election campaign, has been eager to make it a top issue heading into the Nov. 6 midterm elections, which will determine control of Congress. The president and senior White House officials have long believed the issue is key to turning out his base of supporters.

The additional troops would provide logistical and other support to the Border Patrol, said the U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a plan that had not been finalized and formally announced.

It’s not unusual for the National Guard to help with border security. Active-duty troops, however, are rarely deployed within the United States except for domestic emergencies like hurricanes or floods. Fears of militarizing the border were fanned by a May 1997 incident in which a Marine on a counter-narcotics mission shot to death an 18-year-old who was herding goats in Redford, Texas.

Troops being sent at Trump’s direction would not be on armed security missions. They would assist the Border Patrol by providing things such as vehicles, tents and equipment. There already are about 2,000 National Guard members there under a previous Pentagon arrangement.

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said in an interview with Fox News on Thursday that the Department of Homeland Security had asked the Department of Defense to “bolster” their capabilities with air support, vehicle barriers, engineering and other logistical assistance. National Guard troops can perform those same functions, so it was not immediately clear why active-duty forces were sought.

Asked if the troops would be armed, Nielsen said Mattis would decide the rules of engagement, but added: “We do not have any intention right now to shoot at people. They will be apprehended, however.”

Trump has used the caravan to bolster his election-season warnings that the U.S. is being infiltrated by immigrants “pouring across the border” illegally.

He has claimed, without any apparent basis in fact, that “Middle Easterners” were among the group. At rallies and on Twitter, Trump has tried to portray Democrats as pro-illegal immigration, even claiming, with no evidence, that Democrats organized the caravan.

He tweeted Thursday that “Democrat inspired laws make it tough for us to stop people at the border” and said he was using the military to respond to what he called a “National Emergency.”

Many migrants in the sprawling caravan — once estimated by the United Nations to number more than 7,000 — are hoping to make it to the United States. Most are Hondurans, seeking to escape poverty and violence, and include families with children.

The caravan swelled dramatically soon after crossing the Mexican border on Oct. 19, but sickness, fear and police harassment have whittled down its numbers.

Trump tweeted a direct message to the migrants Thursday, urging them to return home.

“To those in the Caravan, turnaround,” he wrote. “We are not letting people into the United States illegally. Go back to your Country and if you want, apply for citizenship like millions of others are doing!”

The migrants have largely been disconnected from news reports about them. When asked about Trump’s tweets, they have generally responded that he should stop attacking them and said they would keep heading north.

Candy Guillermo, a 37-year-old migrant in the caravan who had heard about the plan to deploy troops, was surprised she and the children in the group would be considered a threat.

“Trump should be more humanitarian,” she said. “We only want to give our kids a better future.”

Migrants who do reach the U.S. border can claim asylum under U.S. and international law. Those who clear an initial screening are often released until their cases are decided in immigration court, which can take several years.

But Nielsen warned: “This caravan cannot come to the United States. They will not be allowed in. They will not be allowed to stay.”

In 2017, the U.S. had 331,700 asylum claims, more than any country in the world, according to the U.N. Refugee Agency. That’s nearly double the asylum claims the U.S. fielded in 2015 and nearly quadruple the claims in 2013.

Trump ordered the deployment of the National Guard earlier this year to respond to an increase in illegal crossings. Those troops are under the control of state governors and are limited to support roles such as providing surveillance.

The planned deployment of active-duty troops is in response to a request from the Department of Homeland Security, which manages the Border Patrol. Earlier this year, Mattis authorized Pentagon funding for up to 4,000 National Guard troops on the border. So far, only a little over 2,000 have been used.

Federal law prohibits the use of active-duty service members for law enforcement inside the U.S. unless specifically authorized by Congress.

Trump hinted at the troop announcement at a rally in Wisconsin on Wednesday. “Wait’ll you see what happens over the next couple of weeks. You’re going to see a very secure border,” he said. “You just watch.”

Source: http://www.fox5dc.com/news/troops-headed-to-the-us-mexico-border

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