[Reader-list] Asylum Seekers, Hunger Strikes in Greece

[OISHIK SIRCAR]

These hunger strikers are the martyrs of Greece

Asylum seekers willing to die in the face of expulsion after shame and
exploitation bear witness to a higher truth than life


   - Costas Douzinas <http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/costas-douzinas>
   - guardian.co.uk <http://www.guardian.co.uk/>, Monday 28 February 2011
   17.25 GMT
   - Article history<http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/feb/28/hunger-strikers-greece-asylum-seekers#history-link-box>


As the world follows the north African revolutions with bated breath, a less
public north African revolt and tragedy is taking place in Athens and
Thessaloniki. Three hundred non-documented
migrants<http://hungerstrike300.espivblogs.net/category/>,
mostly from the Maghreb, have entered the 35th day of a hunger strike. Many
have been taken to hospital in pre-comatose condition and are reaching a
state of non-reversible organ failure and subsequent death.

These are people who have lived and worked in Greece for up to seven years.
They picked olives and oranges, they looked after the old and the sick, they
worked on building sites and orchards for a fraction of the minimum wage.
After years of exploitation and humiliation, they are now told they are no
longer wanted because of the economic crisis. They must go back voluntarily
or be deported. Immigrants are the double victims of boom and bust in
Greece. Now they are deemed to be surplus to requirements, to be disposed of
like refuse.

What do the hunger strikers want? To make Greeks notice their meagre
existence, to ask for basic labour protections and minimum living
conditions. They ask at least for the recognition that they live and work in
Greece but are treated worse than convicts on chain gangs. They are saying:
"We the invisible, uncounted and undocumented are next to you, we worked for
pennies and are part of who you are and what your government is doing to
you." They are people punished not for what they have done (criminality or
illegality) but for who they are. They are*homines sacri* – legally
nonexistent and therefore non-persons, meaning they can be treated in the
most cruel way by the state, employers, landlords and the xenophobic
minority.

The Greek government rejects their demands but claims that it fully respects
human rights. Rights belong to humans, we are told, on account of their
humanity and not of narrower memberships such as nation, state or group.
This is a comforting thought. But the treatment of the *sans papiers* shows
these claims to be ideological half-truths. In theory, human rights are
given to all humans, in practice only to citizens. This is further confirmed
by the treatment of asylum seekers. In January, the European court of human
rights held that sending refugees back to Greece amounted to torture and
inhuman and degrading treatment because of the appalling conditions of
detention in immigration camps.

Greece virtually never gives political asylum to refugees. Other European
states, including Britain, will no longer return asylum seekers to Greece.
The Greek government has been condemned as a violator of the basic dignity
of the wretched of the Earth. This is a sad conclusion for a country last
condemned for systemic torture in the 60s during thedictatorship of the
colonels<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_military_junta_of_1967%E2%80%931974>.
Many of the governing party members, including the prime minister, George
Papandreou, found refuge during that dark period in foreign countries.

The hunger strikers are martyrs in a double sense. In Greek, martyr means
both witness and sacrificial victim. They bear witness to higher truths than
life, they state that life is worth living if it is worth dying for. In this
sense, the strikers are exercising what philosophers from Rousseau to
Derrida consider as the essence of freedom: acting against biological and
social determinations in the name of a higher truth. Sacrifice means*sacrum
facere*, making the ordinary sacred. It bridges everyday life with what
transcends it. The truth the hunger strikers defend at the personal level is
dignity – what makes each person unique in our common humanity. Individual
identity is built through the reciprocal recognition others give to self and
self to others. I feel good to the extent that my intimate and remote
friends consider me such. The absence of basic rights of work and life for
the *sans papiers* leads to absence of all recognition making them less than
human.

What is justice? We are surrounded by injustice but we don't often know
wherein justice lies. In Greece, justice has miscarried in the IMF
measures<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/apr/16/greece-imf-bailout-reaction>
and
the Athens ghettos, in the unemployed and the salary cuts for the low-paid
and pensioners, in the treatment of the refugees and the wall built to keep
the poor out and the Greeks
in<http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jan/07/asylum-greece-border-fence>
.

Protesting against the worst injustice and abuse, asking to be seen, heard
and acknowledged in a minimal way, even if they need to go to death for
that, is the greatest service the *sans papiers* offer to Greece. By
resisting their dehumanisation, they become free and fight for the honour of
Greeks against the iniquities of their government. They also remind the
millions of *sans papiers* around Europe that after Tahrir Square they can
also take their fate in their hands and resist the racist policies of
European governments.

• Hara Kouki helped in the development of this article
Intellectuals and academics from all over the world have written in
solidarity. It is important that many more write now. Their website where
you can send messages of support is at

http://hungerstrike300.espivblogs.net/category/γλώσσες/english/


More info available at:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/feb/07/greece-protest-democracy-government?INTCMP=SRCH
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/31/europe-depends-shared-humanity-culture
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2010/jan/01/goodby-noughties-radical-change?INTCMP=SRCH
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jul/24/open-left-ideas?INTCMP=SRCH
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2009/may/21/hay-festival-equality-freedom

-- 
OISHIK SIRCAR

oishiksircar at gmail.com
oishik.sircar at utoronto.ca