After the suicide of Kurdish refugee Ibrahim Ergün in the Corinth detention camp, protests were organised in front of the Greek parliament against Athens’s anti-migration policies. The right-wing government was asked to close the detention camps.

Protests were organised in front of the Greek parliament on Syntagma Square in Athens. Activists were protesting the anti-migration policies of the right-wing government in Greece. The trigger for these protests was the death of Kurdish refugee Ibrahim Ergün, who committed suicide last Saturday in Corinth detention camp. The 24-year-old from the northern Kurdish province of Muş was interned in the camp for seventeen months. Before his arrest, he tried to get to Italy. Shortly before his suicide, an order to continue his detention was given at the hearing for his case. According to his brother Feyzi Ergün, he had expected to be released.

"That was murder"

The Turkish-Kurdish group of the Action Alliance Greece together with the Kurdistan Center in Athens had called for a march through downtown Athens and to the parliament. Many anti-fascist and anti-racist groups such as the Greek network KEERFA - movement united against racism and the fascist threat - joined the action.

Various speeches and messages were read in front of the parliament building. In a statement, the Kurdish association said that the policies of the EU and the Greek government of Kyriakos Mitsotakis and his party Nea Dimokratia against refugees and migrants are "racist and discriminatory. Hundreds of people fell victim to the state-accepted murders in the Evros river and in the Aegean Sea. Refugees who manage to cross the borders are mistreated and tortured in police stations and detention centers. Ibrahim Ergün ended his life in protest against this very policy."