Thursday May 21st 2020, No Border Kitchen Lesvos Benefit, Volkseten Vegazulu, Take Away People’s kitchen, vegan food, no reservation necessary (or possible!). Falafel with salad n’ sides! Pick up food from 7pm till 8:30pm. See you on the Steve Bikoplein.
Today’s meal is a benefit for No Border Kitchen Lesvos. This is what they do:
A message from Lesvos to Amsterdam.
Lesvos, Greece. A beautiful Island. The Biggest Prison in Europe.
No Border Kitchen is a horizontal and self-organised collective with and for the people on the move on the Greek Island of Lesvos. Since 2015, we have been providing basic needs to the people that are left behind at the walls of Fortress Europe. We provide support mainly in two ways. We provide cooked food every day to about 300 people in the Mytillni area. This is mostly aimed at people that are either forced to stay in the streets or are living in squats, rented houses or somewhere slightly outside of the city. Then there is the food-boxes. A food-box contains dry food, oil and fresh vegetables and is meant to support people that are living in Mytillini and pay rent but get no state support. We want to provide these things to make it more accessible for people to live outside of the refugee camp, Moria. With the donations we have been receiving recently we have been able to upgrade the food-boxes with hygiene items and some other things that were to expansive before, like coffee, spices and better quality vegetables.
A silent war is being waged in the Aegean and the Central Med. A new cold war, with migrants as the nuclear weapons of the 21st century. Since November of last year, with the announcement of amendments to the Greek migration & asylum laws, we have been bracing for the start of 2020.
And so far, it has been not been great. Starting from February there has been an increase in xenophobic groups attacking migrants, activists and volunteers. After a period of increased threats and violence, the Covid-19 measures started. This put a temporary stop to the violence but made continuing our day to day activities rather difficult. However, we were able to find a way to continue our work. With the implementation of the amendment to the Greek migration & asylum laws we are entering a new era of racism and oppression against people on the move. They aim to deport a greater group of people with maximum efficiency. Already on the sea border the amount of illegal acts has also increased. Under cover of night, boats that try to reach Greece via sea have their engines disabled and are being set adrift towards Turkish waters by the Hellenic Coast Guard.
This will send a message to all the people that want to try to get to Europe.
The message is: “If you try to get here, you will be held in a camp isolated from the rest of the world with nothing and if you are not recognised as a ‘legitimate’ refugee we will send you right back where you came from”.
The idea that migrants are so radically different from us is false. National identities are made up. And they are made so that it appears as though we have more in common with millionaires or career politicians than with people who risk everything seeking the same thing most of the people in the world want: Safety.
No Border Kitchen Lesvos https://noborderkitchenlesvos.noblogs.org/
