Despite blanket denials from Greek authorities, “pushbacks” in the Aegean Sea and Greece’ Evros border region are a horrifying reality. For years, the Legal Centre Lesvos has collected hundreds of testimonies of survivors of border violence. Together with Fitilia, over the next year we will publish a series of these anonymized* accounts, with the intention to show that behind every statistic, there is a person risking their life to reach Europe. While these stories highlight the brutality and violence of Greek and European border policies, they are also stories of resisting border regimes. They are a call to action – a stark reminder of the urgent need to continue the fight to dismantle the borders that surround us and with it the violence of Fortress Europe.
*All identifying details, including names and exact dates have been removed, however, the stories published remain true to the survivors’ own accounts, and all have consented to the publishing of their testimonies.
He Kept Screaming The Only English Sentence He Knew
One cold night in spring, around 1 am we left Çanakkale for the shore. We were 26, maybe 28 people. The youngest of us was a baby of maybe one year and the oldest was a sixty year old grandma. I think we were about ten women, ten children and five or six men. I was traveling with my seventeen year old brother. [read more]