FROM THEORY TO PRAΧΙS…
WHEN “HUMANITARIAN” ORGANIZATIONS THROW REFUGEE FAMILIES TO THE STREETS
- is a woman from Afghanistan with two children, 1.5 and 5 years old. In recent months, she has found temporary refuge in an apartment of the non-governmental organization PRAXIS, while she is waiting for the decision on her asylum claim. A while ago, S. was informed by the NGO PRAXIS that she has to leave the apartment. On Wednesday 16/9, in an unacceptable move, the NGO PRAXIS proceeded to change the lock so that the family could not leave and re-enter the house. The next day, an employee of the NGO PRAXIS came to carry out the eviction and aggressively threatened to call the police when people protested against this. The eviction was temporarily prevented by the intervention of people in solidarity.
On Monday 21/9, we carried out an intervention at the offices of PRAXIS with a request to find a solution to the housing issue of S. and her family. On the same day, PRAXIS employees reappeared at the apartment and called the police, while people in solidarity are still present protesting against this development.
The NGO PRAXIS, which states that its goal is “to fight the social and economic exclusion of socially vulnerable groups and to defend their individual and social rights” literally throws a refugee with two small children to the street with absolutely no concern regarding their future situation. In stark contrast to its stated goals and in full alignment with the state’s anti-immigration policy, it burdens the excluded individuals themselves to find solutions to structural problems.
S., like many other migrants and refugees, has nowhere else to go. The so-called “open hospitality centers”, places with unlivable conditions and deeply racist, are currently being turned into closed prisons, a process that has been accelerated under the pretext of the pandemic. The government, which is imposing a racist lockdown to thousands on the basis of unsubstantiated public health arguments, has at the same time launched a massive operation of evicting 11,000 recognized refugees and asylum seekers from “structures”, that is camps, hotels and apartments.
The “absurdity” of the state mechanism, however, does not stop here. For refugees who are forced into homelessness, it reserves repression from the RIOT police and forced transfer to detention centers, as we have seen many times in Victoria Square recently. Housing programs for asylum seekers and recognized refugees, such as ESTIA and HELIOS, advertised as the epitome of humanity, are just a bureaucratic and ineffective business that directly or indirectly excludes most eligible individuals. It is no coincidence that S. and her children, who meet all the conditions for housing through the ESTIA program, have been waiting for 7 months for a response to their request.
We believe that a socially just solution to the housing problem of S. and thousands of other displaced persons CAN be found. There is no lack of houses and money for that, there is lack of political will from the states that allocate their resources according to the interests of the war and the “humanitarian” industry and other businesses. With moves like these, the NGO PRAXIS takes a clear stand in the total legal, social and military-police war that refugees and migrants are facing. In this war they will find us against them.
We demand from Praxis and other NGOs, the government and the UNHCR to stop the practice of evictions. We call on workers and all the people in solidarity to oppose inhumane and racist evictions, as well as the whole system of incarceration and devaluation of migrants.
JOINT STRUGGLES OF LOCALS AND MIGRANTS
HOUSING, HEALTHCARE, PAPERS AND FREEDOM FOR ALL