Rooms were lying empty at the City Plaza hotel in Athens. Now it’s an autonomous hive where refugees are empoweredIn May 2016,after the EU-Turkey agreement designed to shut off mass immigration to Europe, a group of 120 migrants accompanied by volunteers stormed the well-known City Plaza hotel in Athens. The hotel was vacant, and its owners having gone bankrupt. Hundreds of rooms were lying empty while refugees suffered in camps far from the city.
The refugees set up shop there,and despite government threats to cleave off the water and electricity – own remained ever since. The hotel is a cacophony of noise. The sounds of small children shrieking waft through the reception area. Staccato bursts of Arabic, Urdu, and Persian and English fill the room. The walls are adorned with posters. A blue sign with “City Plaza” written downwards on either sign flanks a message: Solidarity,together, resistance, and unity,giving, getting, or life,equality. The words written underneath each other their first letters highlighted in pink spell out “struggle.
City Plaza is an oasis for refugees amid the chaos and misery in which so many find themselves in Greece Related: This refugee squat represents the best and worst of humanity | Molly Crabapple Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com