Mytilene | Story no1Walking together

I come from a country that fascism dominates. I am from Iran and was living with my family near the borders with Azerbaijan. I am Turkish- Azeri and when about 15 years ago the Guards of the Revolution arrested my father and brother due to their political values, I had to move to Teheran. Overall, I have been arrested and imprisoned five times, four of these they put me in solitary confinement, with my first imprisonment at the age of 18. I have been tortured and beaten extensively, bearing up until now the signs of torture in my body, yet I still continue.

In the last years in Iran I was a human rights activist and actively participated in actions mainly assisting immigrants from Iraq and Afghanistan, though I was also in solidarity with other repressed minorities. We delivered food, we helped people find employment and we tried to give them a voice and to attract media attention in order to talk about their plight. Meantime we not solely faced the control and repression of the state but also attacks from fascist elements of the society. The state itself of course wanted to punish me and as such they arrested me many times with three of those being put under the torture practice of virtual execution. The last time I stayed in prison for two years, but upon my release I continued to be politically active and got rearrested and convicted to 19 years this time. As such I could no longer survive in Iran and having become a very dangerous country for me, thus, I decided to leave, escaped prison and started my journey.

I first went to Turkey where I stayed for 8 months, got networked by meeting people and started to work with human rights organisation, mainly in organisations that dealt with Syrian refugees. The situation in Turkey is extremely difficult, there are millions of refugees and I eventually realised that racism and discrimination are not characteristics solely of Iran and that in Turkey also the situation is inhumane.

When I eventually left from Turkey to come to Greece, in September 2016, I had the impression and expectation that in Europe human rights are respected, that there are values at place which will make the treatment of refugees different. I characteristically remember that when I passed by boat -together with 45 other refuges- in Lesbos there was a sense of coming to a safe and peaceful place. We all had an intense and sweet internal feeling of relief. Yet, this feeling did not last for more than two hours. Because when we eventually reached the camp in Moria and we came across the conditions there, all the expectations and dreams we had were shuttered. The authorities treated us like animals without any provision for accommodation. We were all very tired and psychologically exhausted so when we reached Moria, they requested from us, without informing us about our rights, to sign that we seek asylum in Greece otherwise they will deport us back to Turkey.

They interrogated us all like we were criminals and then they closed us all in a tent, almost 100 people in the same space and prohibited us to go out for 28 days, we were thus prisoners, because Moria is a prison. We also waited in line to eat with 3000 people, though nowadays Moria is triple this number. The police mistreated us; they swore at us, they beat us with their clubs because we wouldn’t stand silent in the queue for the food, very inhumane situations. It is obvious that in Moria all human rights are systematically infringed, there is no following of international protection guidelines for refugees, and it is hell. Also asylum processes progress extremely slow, there is endless waiting time, interviews upon interviews and after many months you are informed on the decision. As such myself like many others have done, I attempted suicide and I slit my wrists to get noticed. That period was the worse in my life. Then in this hell of Moria, a very heavy winter came and within a month 10 people died of cold in the camp. I saw with my very own eyes a woman and her young daughter dead, burned by fire in their own tent. Also, it was a very common phenomenon for the authorities to categorise and divide refugees according to nationality, religion, vulnerability status etc. So, they are trying to tell us that in some sort of way the bombs, rapes, imprisonments and tortures that happen in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan differ. In reality they are mocking us right in front of our very eyes but it seems that this is the best way to administer refugees, the well-known “divide and conquer”. As such, a lot of conflicts between nationalities break out that actually benefit the authorities. Consequently, the main result of these politics of separation is that there is no space left for all refugees to unite together, self-organise and fight for their rights together. For example there is now a struggle in Sappho square at the centre of Lesbos, from a particular group of refugees that is not supported by other refugees as they are obliged every day to stand in front of the asylum office in case there is a decision, or any kind of response to their asylum claim.

So Moria is at the same time a hell and a prison. To put it better, refugees are forced to self-imprisonment in Moria, to self-entrapment amidst despair, because nobody informs them when exactly the asylum process moves forward. Instead they have them there waiting, knowing that if they miss their turn they will have to wait from the beginning again, and this way they have them trapped inside Moria’s hell. This is how states of despair and resignation are shaped, losing hope for fighting in their daily lives. Characteristically we have organised demonstrations in Moria, but very few people joined us. There is an underlying assumption that the Arabs are against the Afghans, the Africans against the Asians, the Syrians against the Kurds and so on and so on. This is very sad.

Within such a social reality I started a hunger strike a few days ago, in solidarity to the hunger strike that some young Afghani girls commenced. At 1st of November 2017, four young women started a hunger strike and after 6 days I followed them purely out of solidarity. However recently in the summer I made another hunger strike, so my body is not very strong. Yet I decided to unite with them because they are 4 girls aged between 15 and 21 years old. My conscience did not allow me not to support them, not to help them. So I started a hunger strike too. These young women are two weeks in Moria but nobody has given them the slightest of attention. They are young women, some of them minors and nobody is taking care of them. So they decided to put their health at risk for other people to acknowledge that they exist, to give voice to their simple demand to have asylum services take notice. To acquire the necessary papers and tickets so they can continue with their boat journey to Athens. At the beginning the strike started in Moria but then with a demonstration protest rally we marched to the central square of Mytilene, Sappho square. This was very important because it gave visibility to our struggle. The police came to throw us out and a lot of refugees got afraid and went back to Moria. But a few of us remained in the central square. My opinion was that the hunger strike had to be done in the middle of the central square, at the centre of the city, otherwise nothing would change. And so it happened, but most importantly a relationship of trust between us has been established, we became like a family. This hunger strike had a great effect on me. It is a very difficult story but it teaches me to control my anger, how to remain calm. The key point in hunger strike is not to despair, not to collapse. This is my own role in this hunger strike, to control the situations, to encourage emotionally those at hunger strike. We continually have meetings and assemblies with other people in solidarity, we give interviews, and we meet with various other institutions, doctors, lawyers, the police. It requires thus great inner strength in trying to cope and stay lucid to continue the struggle. I do have to note here though that the women who started the hunger strike are unique examples of power and struggle, they have a tremendous bond between them, they are extremely resilient in the sense that even in the hardest times they support each other and never quit. Their strength is not just physical; it is emotional, mental, spiritual and foremostly collective. They work as a collective body. I have learned so much from them, they constantly energise me, and they are a source and force of life, they inspire me.

For example sometimes between them they joke that they are the female Che Guevara’s. But in reality what these young Afghani women do, is incomparably far greater because they are just 15 and 16 year old with very diverse historical, social and political standing. They are situated in a set of conditions with no apparent hope and yet they continue fighting. Another example, the other day they were having a small celebration when they reached 20th day of hunger strike and had lost 7 kilos. So they were celebrating by saying that they have become thin and beautiful like a Barbie doll. They were entertaining their weakness by transforming universal figures-dolls to become toys in their struggle. Seeing all this passion, I feel very little in front of their power and I certainly have a lot more to learn by their struggle. The struggle of these women resembles in some way a box that gets squeezed from all sides, from the police, from immigration authorities, from patriarchy, from racism. At this point the box can sustain the pressure no longer and it erupts on all sides. Independently of how this struggle will turn out, my conclusion is that the next revolution is the one of women.