No one is illegal
One of the good things I believe I have gained from being politically conscious (and hopefully active) is that I can see things around me that previously escaped my attention. Like, two nights ago I was out with the two Marias, Anna and Dimitris (whom to my surprise I had greatly missed) and we were taking a walk along the port. At some point I saw a boat of the Italian coastguard leaving with its lights turned off and I realized how many times this must have happened in the past and I didn't even notice. You see, the Polizia Frontiera is probably part of the Frontex, that is a special unit of EU army that is supposed to "protect" the european borders, aka guard the borders from immigrants. In other words, when they find immigrants that try to cross the borders from Turkey to Greece (and that's why they end up in Mytilene) in plastic boats -or anything that floats for that matter- they catch them and either hold them here or send them back to Turkey. And by "catch" I mean hold them as if they are criminals, in horrid inhuman conditions, until they decide to either send them somewhere else. In any case, these people are just treated horribly and the government is even thinking of making concentration camps for them, which of course calls "temporary shelters". Apart from that, we continued our walk up to the "lighthouse" thingy and I saw a pierced plastic boat on the rocks which means that either some immigrants made it all the way to the port (which I doubt) or most likely they were caught and their boat was thrown there. Immigration here is becoming one major issue with one side claiming we should prevent more immigrants from coming into the country because omg they are the cause of all evils and the other side (with which I agree more) saying that most of them are politically persecuted or economic immigrants, like many Europeans were when they left to America. But of course that is the side least heard. Anyways, to finish this rant I hope to participate in the No Border camping that is scheduled to take place here in Lesvos at the end of August. There will be many activisms for immigrants and hopefully we'll do something useful or raise awareness about this issue and try not to let racism and xenophobia spread the way it does now =(
To sum up with this rant, all I wanted to say is that I feel like I see more of the world around me and sadly not all of it is rainbows and butterflies.