Turkey reopens access Wikipedia 3 years block block - Turkey reopens access to Wikipedia after blocking it for almost three years!
Turkish law allows the Executive to veto websites that it considers a threat to national security.
The veto in Turkey to the digital encyclopedia Wikipedia has the hours counted after the official publication this Wednesday of a ruling by the Constitutional Court that considers the blockade threatens freedom of expression.
The official State bulletin published today the judgment of the Court, issued on December 26, which considers the prohibition a violation of the rights guaranteed by the Magna Carta.
Turkey reopens access Wikipedia 3 years block block
The authorities are expected to allow access to the website in the next few hours in compliance with the ruling of the high court.
The Turkish Telecommunications Authority imposed an access block to Wikipedia in April 2017 after unsuccessfully demanding that the encyclopedia eliminate speculation about the Turkish government's supposed support for the jihadist militia Islamic State in Syria.
Wikipedia refused to intervene in the content of the articles, which are prepared through a process of debate among a huge number of often anonymous citizen contributors.
Turkish law allows the Executive to block web pages that he considers a threat to national security and a judgment from an Ankara court then backed the decision.
But the Wikimedia Foundation, the parent of the free electronic encyclopedia, appealed the decision in the Turkish courts and the Constitutional ruling proved it right.
Moria: the horrific refugee camp that hides Europe
Garbage, fights, overcrowding, rapes, suicide attempts and hours of queues to eat: this is hell in Lesbos, Greece.
Drizzle in the bush and begin to cool. Four people sleep in a tent for two, and six others do so in a tiny roofed cabin. The first look for a blanket to prevent the water from straining. Many complain, protest the conditions. Spread the outrage and raise the tone. Safi, no.
"I will never go back to Somalia," he says. "This is better than being there. If I can spend ten years here, I will be fine. I don't want to hear the sound of bullets or car bombs again. I want to live."
An explosive cocktail
He has only been on Greek soil for a few days, but his eyes have already seen what there is: railings, fences, piled garbage bags, daily fights, sexual assaults, suicide attempts and three-hour queues to receive a plate of food. Welcome to Moria.
Located on the island of Lesbos, the countryside, military facilities prepared to house 3,000 soldiers on a temporary basis, now houses about 18,000. It is so crowded that it extends along two adjacent slopes outside the enclosure. And arrivals do not stop.
The seriousness of the situation has led the new Greek government, a conservative sign, to announce its closure. The solution? Build several Internment Centers for Foreigners (CIE), one of them in Lesbos, which will replace the poor facilities used now. The objective of the Executive is to restrict the movements of those seeking asylum, which until today can move around the island without too much trouble.
"Moria is worse than ever, I come in 'shock'," says Philippa Kempson, who works with her husband Eric in the British NGO Hope Project. They have been in Lesbos for more than four years.
The arrival of refugees marks the day to day of this region, a small island washed by the Aegean Sea with some tourist development where some 80,000 people live. About 35,000 do so in its capital Mytiline, with its white houses, its bars, its fashionable pubs and its nautical port.
Refugees, volunteers, locals and tourists make up an ecosystem of contrasts. There is tension in the environment. If the field of Moria and its surroundings were a population center, it would be the second most important municipality on an island.
In 2019 alone Lesbos has received more than 27,000 new asylum seekers - throughout Spain, with an area 300 times greater, 32,000 were registered - according to UN data, which reflect how the flow of pateras skyrocketed from summer to levels They haven't seen each other since 2016.
Background Geopolitics
"We came in a boat, it was scary ... I'm afraid of the water. It was a two-hour trip, along with 35 or 40 other people. Right now we don't know where our father is, we lost his trail in Turkey and we don't know anything about him, "he says.
Afi is Somali, a minority within the countryside. The opposite of Zainab Mohammadi, 19, born in Afghanistan as 80% of the "neighbors" of Moria. He arrived eleven days ago from the Turkish coast, by boat. Since then he sleeps in the open with other members of his family, waiting to get a tent. Blankets placed on the floor delimit their space. They are off the field, on the slopes of the mountain, like thousands of others.
The story sounds to him. He witnesses every night. His name is Edgar Garriga, he is 29 years old and from Tarragona (Spain). Computer engineer, lifeguard and boat master. He collaborates with the NGO Refugee Rescue, which tracks the coast every day in search of boats to be guided to land so that they do not get stuck, like the ones that took Zainab and Safi there. Ultimately, they are responsible for rescuing those who fall into the water.
Not far from its headquarters, in the north of the island, is the so-called "vest cemetery", a kind of landfill with thousands of these garments accumulated next to boats and boats destroyed, clothes and remains. Erected in an icon of the humanitarian crisis, even Google Maps indicates the exact point where it is located despite the absence of official indications. Away from any population center, only goats and some curious transit the place.
In the sea we see how Turkish coastguards enter Greek territorial waters, retain the vessels of the refugees and return them to Turkey. It is an illegal act, but they feel unpunished by the treaty signed with the EU, "Garriga denounces.
Although Safi and most of his colleagues are not aware, geopolitics has a lot to do with this crisis. The agreement between Brussels and Ankara entered into force in 2016. The Ottoman country comes with hundreds of thousands of Syrians displaced by the war, according to official statistics, but also many Afghans and Iraqis, among other nationalities. The EU provides funds to Turkey to help receive this quota, in exchange for not passing into its territory. The NGOs agree to denounce that the Turkish authorities regulate the migratory flow at their convenience, as a pressure mechanism.
"Moria is like this because it is a way of sending a message: don't come, stay away," laments the leader of another NGO on condition of anonymity.
"There are always fights"
"Concentration camp", "dangerous" and "insecure" are three of the most repeated qualifications by volunteers and refugees when defining Moria. "There are always fights. Always," he repeats as a litany Mahmoud, a 10-year-old Palestinian boy.
Moria, controlled by the Greek authorities and where journalists are rarely allowed, has a perimeter bounded by railings and barbed wire. It also has a prison for those who are going to be deported after rejecting their asylum request. But its image of "fort" vanishes when it goes around a corner, since on one of its sides there are several holes in the fences that allow anyone who wants to enter and exit without going through the only official and controlled gate . The transfer through these openings is constant, occurs even in daylight.
Adjacent is the so-called "olive grove", a hillside where thousands of people crowd. It is estimated that more people live outside the premises. The conditions of one and the other do not differ much, except for the existence of roofed parts and common bathrooms in the case of the "lucky ones" with a hole in Moria, facing the weather and the portable showers of those who sleep outside. The degree of overcrowding is so high that, in addition to the "olive grove", there are dozens of small settlements in the immediate vicinity of the site. Safi is just one more "tenant" in the latter.
Saturation has its consequences in the distribution of food, with waits of up to three and four hours to receive a dish. "When I go to the line to get food, it is always very long and there are fights because there is not enough for everyone. Besides, the food is not good, even the doctors say it ... Living here is very difficult," he says Ahmad Fajim, 30-year-old Afghan, before running off to arrive on time to get a ration, something he doesn't always get.
Children who hurt themselves
Within the camp, the health of Safi and the rest of the refugees is directly in the hands of NGOs, which have a kind of small hospital inside where dozens of people wait to be treated. Outside, just opposite, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) caters primarily to women and children. In the most serious cases, an ambulance from the Greek health system arrives and takes the patient to the hospital, where the means are scarce and there are not always interpreters.
"There are many people with panic attacks, most of the health problems we see are psychological. The rest would be solved by eating and sleeping well," explains a British volunteer doctor in the center. "Every afternoon we see four or five young boys with cuts in their arms, many people come with suicidal tendencies," says another collaborator from the same NGO.
The MSF coordinator in Lesbos, Marco Sandrone notes: "The numbers are incredibly high, we see many cases of suicide attempts, even in our pediatric clinic, where we receive more and more children who want to harm themselves." In their opinion, they present "traumas" related to what they experienced in their country of origin and during the trip to Europe, but the conditions of Moria and their unhealthiness aggravate the situation.
The lack of security also translates into sexual aggressions, both inside and around the countryside. There are no official figures but it is an open secret. So much so that the NGO has already denounced it publicly.
The arduous bureaucratic process
Refugee status is a recognized figure in International Law. To receive asylum it is a condition "sine qua non" to be persecuted or that the applicant's life is in danger. In Lesbos, around 40% of applications are rejected. And the "no" means deportation.
The process to achieve refugee status starts just touching Greek soil, but saturation and bureaucracy make the newcomer take months to receive his asylum seeker card. This is the case of Safi, who during that period will not receive the help of 90 euros a month that the EU delivers to each of them - through UNHCR. The beginnings are hard.
The key to the procedure is an interview in which the applicant is asked the reasons that led him to leave his country and documentation is requested to prove it, after which a decision is made. Currently, appointments for this interview are being granted for almost two years (by 2022), as reported by the NGO Legal Center Lesbos.
For most, the best scenario is to achieve refugee status within two to three years. And then? It begins to have a period of six months, after which the right of accommodation and monthly allowance is lost with the expectation that the person will find work and earn their own income, something extremely difficult in Greece, with one of the most unemployment rates EU registrations (today around 17%). In addition, the documentation obtained gives the right to reside in Greece but not to do so in the rest of the EU.
"In Athens, what is causing this situation is already being seen, with many people living in the street, desperate. They are trapped, first in Turkey, then on the island of Lesbos and later in Greece (in the peninsular part)," he protests. Lorraine Leete, the head of the Legal Center Lesbos.
Awaiting the interview is Javad Emami, 24, born in Afghanistan. Painter by profession, collaborates with an NGO as a drawing teacher. He lives where he teaches, literally: he has a small cot under a kind of stage that presides over the space. The place is set with hundreds of pictures made by refugees that crudely reflect the situation: ships that run aground, gates, prisons, tears.
This is his second attempt. The first took him as "illegal" to Norway, Germany and France, between 2015 and 2017, until he was deported to his home country. Now come back. "I already told my lawyer that I don't want to go back. There I have nothing."
Live in the stone age
Safi, the 32-year-old Somali who does not want to return, was a truck driver in his native country. He has just arrived five days ago in Moria and has already been the victim of a robbery with several of his friends, which leads them to seek shelter outside the "official" camp.
With the sky covered with clouds and raindrops beginning to fall, he recognizes that such a daunting situation was not expected. Even so, it makes a bad face: "If there is no food, I can be patient. If there is no water, I can be patient. If I do not have a roof, I can be patient. Even if I have to be in the open, with getting some blankets that's fine. Thanks to Greece, I'm free now. Living like in the Stone Age is not the problem. " And let out a laugh.