SOLIDARITY WITH THE DETAINEE MOHAMED A. – ΟN HUNGER STRIKE SINCE 13/12
STOP HIS DEPORTATION
STOP ALL DEPORTATIONS
Since October 2016, Mohamed A. has been in custody at the police department of Lesvos as a “candidate” for deportation, as all of his requests for political asylum have been rejected. He is requesting political asylum because, shortly after returning to Egypt –after the uprising of 2012- he decided to release footage showing assassinations of Morsi’s supporters by the military regime of Sisi. His internet trace was detected and since then he has been persecuted under threat of being executed as soon as he returns to Egypt. As a consequence, he left the country and has been in Greece since April 2015.
Mohamed has been on hunger strike since December 13, demanding the annulment of the decision that calls for his deportation and that he be granted political asylum. He is being hospitalised in Vostaneio Hospital in Mytilene, in poor physical and psychological condition. On 13/1, the cops were “reassuring” him with regard to his case, informing him that they are going to take him to Athens in the coming days; he consents and is “temporarily taken back” to the police department of Lesvos. This is how his deportation is set in motion since, instead of taking him to Athens, they announce to him that he is going to be deported to Turkey, in accordance with the procedures laid down by the EU-Turkey agreement. Following pressure by those in solidarity as well as lawyers, he is transferred back to the hospital, which results in his deportation being postponed, even though a total of 10 people are deported a day later.
The relationship between the governments of Greece and Egypt cannot be questioned in any way. Taking under consideration the joint military exercises (as part of the Egypt-Libya-Cyprus-Israel-Greece complex) as well as the common aspirations regarding the gas deposits of Cyprus, “how ” can Egypt be considered an “unsafe” country in order to justify the granting of political asylum?
The institution of the asylum is an instrument for managing populations, regardless of the fact that it is projected as the highest -and always government sponsored- humanitarian sensibility. And, of course, as long as state interests and the “wealth-producing wells in the backyard of the Mediterranean” are in the way, we can only view the asylum as one more aspect of transnational interrelations and needs.
For a world without borders or nations
March solidarity = Friday 20/1 = Victoria square = 19.00
Assembly in solidarity with Mohamed A. (Athens)
