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The Sintiki Serres camp is a concentration camp, a prison where people are held on the basis of their origin for indefinite periods of time under the control of the forces of repression, specifically guarded by permanently stationed riot police forces. It is a camp outside Serres, in a ravine near the border with Bulgaria and therefore outside the space and relationships of the local community.
The detainees live in containers in one of the coldest parts of the country, lacking things such as sheets, toilets, clothes, food, hygiene products, and without medical coverage, under the "law" of each guard. The administration denies them any medical care and does not prescribe even for the most everyday issues such as skin rashes that people suffer from due to poor hygiene conditions. Further isolating them is the condition of interpretation, which is vital for the detainees. Specifically, although seven employees have been officially appointed, most of them are nowhere to be found, and when they do show up, they are forbidden from speaking to the detainees. We have even been informed that they are not even familiar with the native languages of the migrants in Sintiki.
The entire camp staff, from the cleaners to the interpreters and guards, are forbidden from talking to them, treating them inhumanely, and swearing at them. This whole isolation regime triggers many psychological problems, for which, as can be understood, there is no care, with many suffering from depression and attempting suicide.
The camp consists of an open and a closed structure, in which men of mainly Egyptian origin are held, but also Bangladeshi men who literally have no clothes to wear and walk around in rags or women's clothes, such as dresses, and suffer from the cold.
In mid-August, people from the camp were taken to hospital due to malnutrition. On August 18, some of the detainees attempted the obvious, namely to escape. However, they did not succeed and were arrested. Later that day, the cops entered one detainee's cell and beat him up. His fellow detainees defended him and began a sit-in protest, which the director tried to appease by offering 50 pairs of slippers.
As a result, on August 19, 266 detainees began a hunger strike with demands related to the appalling living conditions and delayed asylum procedures. Their demands were not met.
On November 12, people in the camp revolted, cut the wires on the fence, and tried to escape. The riot police arrive immediately, throwing flash grenades and, according to Serres media, chemicals. The cops say that no one escaped and that two guards were slightly injured. It is indicative that of the few reports that were published, all were based exclusively on police press releases, without, of course, mentioning anything about the conditions of detention or the health of the detainees. The next day, 30 detainees were tried without the option of their own defense and ended up being sentenced to 3 years and 450 euros each, while one of them was sentenced to 3 years and 7 months without parole. After the trial of the 30 migrants and their sentencing, they were separated and sent to various prisons throughout Greece. In retaliation for this escape attempt, the administration stationed riot police outside the gate, who guard the camp day and night.
The people in this place live in constant insecurity, living day to day, month to month. Our bosses now have legal weapons to squeeze us for 13 hours a day, and whenever we take to the streets, they send the cops to beat us up. We have to roll the dice every time we get on a train and take a deep breath every time we open our electricity bill. For some of us, however, the attack does not stop there.
The Greek state, which actively supports and participates in the genocide in Palestine, on the opposite shore of the Mediterranean, is making a systematic effort to turn the entire sea into a graveyard and a hunting ground for every port cop. At every level, the state and parastatal apparatus, at borders, in police stations, in courts, in camps, in prisons (and elsewhere), uses legal and bureaucratic means, and/or brutal, systematic violence and confinement, operates to separate, devalue, and exterminate migrants socially and physically to a degree that denies them their humanity, as admitted by the cop who shouted "dog" at the detainee in Sintiki. Those of us who are affected by these mechanisms are, for the state and the bosses, a labor force to be exploited even more intensively when it suits them, and to be imprisoned, deported, or exterminated when it does not. This system, in all its interconnection with generalized grim normality, is called institutional racism, and it is nothing more than the most acute and intense form of war waged against all of us in the lower strata of society. Institutional racism is an essential weapon for the state to divide us, discipline us, and get rid of us, allowing capitalism to massively devalue human lives and relationships and make a profit.
The recent Voridis-Plevris law, as well as the ministerial decision by Chrysochoidis on police forces occupying Roma settlements, reinforce the reality of institutional racism, just as conditions of impoverishment, criminal terror, and military engagement. Staying in the country without asylum, that is, the very existence of people, is punished with criminal imprisonment, while the legal scope for administrative detention—i.e., imprisonment—without any offense in the state's concentration camps is increasing. The case of those detained in Sintiki is an application of this upgrade, while reminding us of something that is widely known: no matter how miserable the law is, the state always wants reality to be five levels more barbaric.
The Sintiki camp is an example of the state's misery, as it appears to be one of the most isolated camps, while its function as a concentration camp is complete. We believe that the barbarity that is exhausted in this particular camp highlights the rottenness of society and the state as a whole and reflects the greatness of racial racism. No matter how isolated they want to keep immigrants from the urban fabric and locked up in prison, we must support them and bring their struggles to the forefront. This applies both to those who are trying to survive in the appalling conditions of the camp and to the 30 prisoners who were punished for the obvious act of escaping from this hellhole. The migrants in the Sintiki camp are demanding what is self-evident: decent living conditions, medicine, doctors, travel documents, and their freedom. Let us not close our eyes to the torture and misery imposed by the state and fascism. Let us not accept slavery and dehumanization as a way of life.
IN THE HELL OF THE CAMPS, REVOLT IS THE ONLY SOLUTION.
FREE 30 OF SINTIKI
WE WANT MIGRANTS IN EVERY NEIGHBORHOOD, CONCENTRATION CAMPS NEVER AND NOWHERE
Mahallas
Open Anti-racist Assembly West Thessaloniki

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