Three hundred migrant men and women have gone today on hunger strike at Athens Law University demanding for asylum status. The immigrants, mostly from North Africa, have put together the biggest mobilization ever recorded in Greece after a hunger strike that happened in state prisons a couple of years ago.

In a public call, they claim to be in this situation due to poverty, unemployment, wars and dictatorships, without any help from the West countries that are depriving them from living under human conditions. “The multinational companies and their political servants did not leave another choice for us than risking 10 times our lives to arrive in Europe’s door. We live without dignity, in the darkness of illegalness in order to benefit employers and state’s services from the harsh exploitation of our labor. We live from our sweat and with the dream, some day, to have equal rights with our Greek fellow workers”, the migrants have stated.

In recent months, Iranians, Afghans and Palestinians who demand refugee status have separately camped outside two Greek university buildings in similar actions to increase public awareness on their plight. Police are forbidden by law to enter university grounds without special permission.

According to the migrants that are now in hunger strike, in the last period, their life has become even more unbearable: “As salaries and pensions are cut and everything is getting more expensive, the migrants are presented as those to blame, as those whose fault is the abjection and harsh exploitation of Greek workers and small businessman”.

The propaganda of fascist and racist parties and groups is nowadays the official state discourse for issues of migration, with proposals that are currently being debated in the Parliament and being presented as governmental policies that will bring “a temporary stability”, namely the wall in Evros, floating detention centers and European army in the Aegean and massive deportations. Human Rights organisations have repeatedly criticised Greece for failing to support people fleeing conflict in Africa, the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent. Greece has now an accumulation of around 47,000 applicants for asylum, some of them have alleged to be waiting already for eight years. But most of these migrants are kept in crowded detention centres and police cells for months, until being released with an administrative order to leave the country. The Greek regime currently only approves 0.6% of all applications it receives. The European Court of Human Rights has also lately criticised Greece  for its mistreatment of Afghan asylum seekers and 6 EU countries (UK, Sweden, Norway, Germany, Finland and Denmark) have suspended the returns of refugees to the country until Greece can assure asylum seekers' their human rights and due process in asylum cases.

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