[Battlemesh] Call for Refugee Camps

Dave Taht dave.taht at gmail.com
Sun Apr 24 15:48:34 UTC 2016


Gofundme has been doing an incredible job of crowdfunding efforts like
this, has over the fortress tried that?

On Sun, Apr 24, 2016 at 7:13 AM,  <berat at autistici.org> wrote:
> Hi everybody,
>
> I want to make a call for the extraordinary situation of refugees who are
> waiting on the borders of Europe. As you know, thousands and thousands of
> people ran away from a war, they have lost their homes, their families,
> loved ones, they have lost their past and the only thing remains is the hope
> for having a future. Finding a safe place to raise their children and live a
> dignified life.
>
> But unfortunately the borders of Europe are closed and hundreds of thousands
> of refugees are blocked in makeshift refugee camps in Greece and Turkey for
> months(if not for more than one year) without knowing what will happen.
> Conditions in refugee camps are worst in every aspect; social, health,
> hygiene, food, and minimum living conditions that would be guaranteed by the
> basic human rights.
>
> Especially now in Idomeni(which is a small village on the border of
> Macedonia) there is a huge refugee camp with more than 10 thousand
> inhabitants who are seeking for an opportunity to reach other European
> countries. There are different humanitarian groups(also associations like
> Doctors Without Borders, UNCHR) from all over the Europe who brings
> materials/goods, help and solidarity.
>
> An Italian group called "Over The Fortress"[0][1] also organizes continuous
> voluntary groups for Idomeni. They basically monitor, do reports and support
> information/basic necessities to the camp. They ultimately reported the high
> necessity of Internet connection and electricity in the camp. One of the
> main reasons, the only way to do an asylum application is a Skype call with
> Athens, which is difficult in a place with very limited resources. Even
> though it is considered as a "cruel and senseless procedure."[2] by the
> activists (and ofcourse they're right) and it should be changed as petition
> demands[2], at the moment this is the only way to stay in Greece. Because
> the agreement between Turkey and UE aims to return them back to Turkey,
> which is definitely not the desire of refugees. On the other hand, ofcourse
> these people need to comunicate with the world outside the camp because many
> of them have parents/familiers in some other parts of the world.
>
> So, Over The Fortress brought a generator for eletricity, for light and
> materials for wifi. They made a contract with a Greece ISP which provides
> montlhy 500 Gigabit for 200€[3]. It will be active for 4 months and they
> launched a campaign to sustain the project[4]. But in an ultimate mail that
> arrived, they informed us that the volume of data acquired in the first
> instance is running out of and need to be increased. Sharing this campaign
> with your social networks could be helpful. It can be a temporary solution
> and at this point, contribute of wireless communities can be very important.
>
> The aim of this mail is informing and asking a contribute from wireless mesh
> network communuties about this situation. While we were discussing with the
> Ninux community, they suggested to write to ML Battlemesh, as this problem
> is not temporary and need to be considered in a larger scale. Idomeni is
> just an example and eventhough tomorrow borders had been open, this fluss of
> people would still need many kinds of support and the Internet is an
> important one. They also informed me that some communities like Freifunk,
> already had supported refugees in similar situations, so they have
> experience, which would be very precious to share with us. In the specific
> of Idomeni, contribute/support of Greece community would be very essential.
>
> I've never been in Idomeni(I myself am extra-comunitario in Italy, for some
> reasons i can't go) but to have more technical information from the camp,
> you can contact with Over The Fortress, as i know Disaster Tech Lab[5] has
> been there and tomorrow one of my friends from CMN Pisa will go to Idomeni
> with a group, for a week. In return, he can make a report about the ultimate
> situation. Unfortunately i can't neither participate to Battlemesh to
> discuss it face to face. I hope this mail can be a starting point to discuss
> what can communities do about this situation.
>
>
> Thanks for reading.
>
> Berat
>
>
> [0]
> http://www.meltingpot.org/spip.php?page=lang&lang=en#pagination_elenco_articoli
> [1]
> http://www.meltingpot.org/overthefortress-a-handover-to-the-border-of-fortress-Europe.html
> [2] https://secure.avaaz.org/en/petition/stop_skype_asylum_procedure
> [3]
> http://www.meltingpot.org/Sostieni-il-progetto-No-Border-Wi-Fi-della-campagna.html
> [only in italian]
> [4]
> https://www.produzionidalbasso.com/project/solidarity-campaign-overthefortress-support-migrants-journey-with-us/
> [5] http://disastertechlab.org/
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> http://ml.ninux.org/mailman/listinfo/battlemesh



-- 
Dave Täht
Let's go make home routers and wifi faster! With better software!
http://blog.cerowrt.org


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