In Vienna, 150,000 demonstrators sent the message that we must put an end to the closed borders of racist Fortress Europe. Thousands of people, ignoring police threat, have defied the law that prohibits the transportation of refugees, and carried people in their cars across borders. Tens of thousands have demonstrated in London, sending their message of solidarity for the Calais refugees and demanding the opening of the Channel Tunnel in France to enable the free passage of refugees. In Turkey, people’s movements have supported the refugees who walked from port city of Izmir to the town of Erdine near Kastanies border for Greece, demonstrating against traffickers and demanding the opening of the borders for safe land passage—instead of forcing people into crossing through the Aegean Sea.

The people everywhere are rising up against the fences! Thousands are expressing their solidarity to the refugees coming to Greece, from the grandmothers in Lesvos who help mothers to feed and tend their children to the volunteers who offer their support to the refugees in the Aegean Islands, in the Sport Palace in Galatsi, in Elliniko, in Victoria Square in Athens, in Idomeni near the borders.

All of us who participate in the movements in Europe, in Turkey, in Kurdistan and in the solidarity movement from all over Greece, will meet in Alexandroupolis to send the message that Greece is not going to become Hungary. It is time to take down the fence of shame at Evros that murders refugees and immigrants.

All of us who fight against the third memorandum of the SYRIZA-ANEL government, against the savage cutbacks of our social security funds, against excessive taxation, against the selling-out of ports and airports, we are giving the best of our selves to support the antiracist and antifascist movement, and we are going to participate wholeheartedly in the pan-Hellenic demonstration in Alexandroupolis, on the 23rd of January 2016.

With coaches, trains and ships, we will arrive and send a strong message that we want Evros to become a river of peace, friendship and solidarity—not a barrier full of fences of hate.

Book now the participation of your trade union, your student society, and your community for the pan-Hellenic demonstration of the 23rd of January 2016.

9 REASONS TO TAKE DOWN THE EVROS FENCE AND OPEN THE BORDERS

1. The deadliest escape route for refugees and immigrants worldwide is in our region.

The Mediterranean Sea is home to the most incidents of drowning and missing persons. According to a study by the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, 15,000 refugees have lost their lives in the dark Mediterranean waters between 1998 and 2014.

When did the number of the deaths soar? Obviously after 2012 when the 12.5 km fence was erected at Evros under the command of PASOK ministers Hrisohoidis and Papoutsis and then by the coalition government of Samaras and Venizelos. The Evros fence hindered land passage for refugees from Syria, Iraq, Afganistan and even Africa by almost 95 percent. As a consequence, these people were forced to move in great numbers through the Aegean and the Libyan Sea.

According to the data given by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, the annual deaths tolls for the following years are: 2012—500 deaths; 2013—600 deaths; 2014—3,400 deaths; and as of 15 October this year, 3,108 deaths. This is an extremely expensive blood tax paid for crossing the border of racist Fortress Europe.

2. The Evros fence does not hinder traffickers.

It is an unbelievable lie that the Evros fence has made the lives of traffickers harder. On the contrary, it has forced refugees and immigrants, instead of using the safer land passage to Europe, to resort to the much more dangerous passage through the Aegean Sea. At the same time, the money paid by refugees to traffickers has increased. The closed borders have boosted the business of traffickers who are endangering the lives of desperate people. Traffickers are using more and more dangerous means of transportation, through rotten ships and trucks. Lives are lost in the rough seas in shipwrecks and people suffocate to death in trucks, like in the tragic incident of the 69 people who died on the international highway near Vienna.

3. The new policies of the EU combined with the Evros fence will cause more drownings.

We oppose the new racist policies of the European Summit of 15-16 October, which favor the deterrence of refugee entrance to European soil.

According to the UN High Commissioner Antonio Gutierrez, the fundamental reason for the large number of deaths in the Mediterranean Sea “is the deterrence policies against the entrance of the refugees taken by the governments in violation of the right to asylum”.

The EU agreement to finance Turkish President Recep Erdogan with €3 billion to cage refugees inside Turkey, only a week after the slaughter of 100 demonstrators from workers’ unions and leftwing parties in Ankara, is completely unacceptable. Three-year-old Aylan Kurdi was a child of Kurdish parents. Kurdish people are persecuted by Erdogan inside Turkey.

FRONTEX, with a dowry of €430 million, is preparing to increase enforcement of the deterrence of refugees entering EU countries and to implement their relocation to war zones through special charters, while at the same time organizing the mass deportation of refugees through “hotspots” or concentration camps on the Greek islands of Lesvos, Chios, Kos, Samos and Leros. They are ready to ostracize the solidarity organizations and replace them with hundreds of “blue helmet” guards from FRONTEX. They are building a new death zone on the islands, with the backing of FRONTEX patrols as an addition to the criminal fence policy at Evros.

The SYRIZA-ANEL government welcomes these policies as positive. The Minister of Foreign Affairs Nikos Kotzias made a provocative statement completely in agreement with extreme right rhetoric about the danger of mass entrance of “jihadists” along with refugees. At the same time, he invited Nikolaos Michaloliakos, the “führer” of neo-Nazi Golden Dawn, to the Council of Foreign Affairs.

4. The fence at Evros is a death trap for people persecuted by wars

Refugees and immigrants will not stop coming. They have no choice but to flee in order to save their lives, their families and their children, who are endangered by the imperialist bombings and the bullets of dictators. Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Kurdistan, and African and Asian countries are being devastated. Millions will seek safety through forced exodus, just as in 1922, millions took the road of exile from Turkey to settle in shelters in the “barren” neighborhoods around Athens and Piraeus. Then, the right called them “tourkosporoi” (born of Turkish seed) and the women “pastrikes” (whores). Today they are branded “illegal immigrants”.

The EU of austerity and memoranda finds billions for the racist guarding of borders and for deportations with express flights. It finds billions to kill with bombs but purportedly can’t find money for human reception of asylum seekers and immigrants. In the last three years, Greece has spent €3 million for the reception of refugees and €80 million for deportations.

5. The fence does not protect the living standards of European workers.

EU governments are screaming “there is no room for more”, citing the economic crisis and unemployment. At the same time, fascists are screaming hysterically about “invasion of illegal immigrants”, reminiscent of Hitler's campaigns against Jews in the interwar period.

The crisis is created by the industrialists themselves who have ceased to invest and are closing factories. Unemployment is not brought on by immigrants, but by government policies under the memoranda and cuts in social programs to repay the extortionate debt to the ECB and the IMF.

These are the same people who tell us that many pensioners do not fit in the social security system and therefore pensions must be cut, that many workers do not fit and therefore should be fired, that young scientists do not fit in the country and therefore should take the road of migration.

In a country to which, every year, 28 million tourists visit, why is there is no room for a few thousand refugees? The wealth produced by workers in Europe with their own sweat, if it were not exploited by a small minority for their own profit, could cover the needs of all. Immigrants have built with their blood the economic miracles in Germany, America, Australia—and many of them started from Greece. Yes, our grandparents were refugees, our fathers were immigrants. We will not become racists!

6. The fence at Evros and the closed borders do not prevent any “health bomb”.

Real health bombs are the cuts in health spending and welfare with closures of hospitals, clinics and intensive care units. Andreas Loverdos, who first introduced this racist vision, even targeted HIV-positive women in order to conceal disastrous policy in hospitals. Adonis Georgiadis continued such policies with the special admission fee he attempted to impose on hospitals.

7. The fence at Evros brutally violates the international right to asylum.

The mere existence of the fence is a scandal. How can those persecuted by wars exercise their right to claim protection and asylum when EU governments, from Evros to Calais, are lining up armies and coast guards and building fences? When Alexis Tsipras criticizes the fence at the border of Hungary, what difference does he see in it from the fence in Evros?

How is it possible to allow free movement of the capitalists and their capital, even when this destroys the lives of millions, while poor refugees are hampered by fierce repression?

8. Fences from Evros to Calais strengthen the fascists across Europe.

Governments that played the card of racism and Islamophobia, targeting immigrants and turning them into scapegoats, have paved the way for the rise of far-right and fascist parties. The Europe of closed borders is the greenhouse for the development of neo-Nazism, which defends chauvinism and the “superiority of Western Christian culture towards lower Asian and Arab peoples who embraced Islam”. Islamophobia is nothing but wartime anti-Semitism in the modern version. Adolf Hitler created the ultimate racist regime at the Holocaust of Jews, Roma, homosexuals, communists, the handicapped, as well as the carnage of World War II. We must end this prospect and eliminate the fences and concentration camps.

The neo-Nazi group Golden Dawn is trying to emerge from the isolation to which the anti-fascist movement threw them after the murder of Pavlos Fyssas, and attempting to build “committees of indignants against refugees”. The continued existence of the fence at Evros strengthens them and it must be demolished.

9. The fence is an obstacle to the friendship and solidarity of the workers of Greece, Turkey and Kurdistan.

In early September 2015, a great demonstration of thousands of refugees from Syria began in Izmir and marched to the border at Evros. They denounced traffickers and attempted to reach the border gate at Kastanies in order to ask the Greek authorities to open the passage and to allow them to pass safely. They were prevented by the Turkish police in agreement with the Greek police force. Elements of the Greek army at Evros had received orders to be ready for “deterrent intervention” in the same way that Hungary repelled refugees, provoking outrage worldwide.

On both shores of the Aegean, as well as throughout Europe, an unprecedented solidarity movement is developing and strengthening. It is shouting “refugees are welcome. Open the borders”.

We have more that unite us with the poor and workers in Turkey and Kurdistan than with “our” bankers, industrialists and ship owners, the looters who have stained their hands with blood, grabbing profits and markets with each NATO intervention, from Serbia to Iraq, Syria, Palestine and Afghanistan.

Declare your participation for the coaches and trains to travel for the Pan-Hellenic Mobilization on 23 and 24 of January.

Communication: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., ph. 6932 828964, 210 3232871

NAME-SURNAME: …………………………………………………………………………………………………….

UNION/ASSEMBLY/MOVEMENT: ……………………………………………………………………………..

FUNCTION: ………………………………………………… LOCATION: ………………………………………….

Tel: …………………………………………………………… e-mail: …………………………………………………

Deposit your contribution to the account:

National Bank of Greece, 187/470832-65, IBAN GR78 0110 1670 0000 7083 285,

SWIFT code of bank BIC ETHNGRAA

KEERFA - Movement UNITED AGAINST RACISM and the FASCIST THREAT