Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 15th of March 2019
Case name: 2019_03_15-AEG496
Situation: Alarm Phone alerted to a racist attack on a group of travellers in a hotel they had been placed in by the IOM.
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Aegean Sea

Summary of the Case: On Friday 15th of March at 5.33pm CET our shift team was alerted by a contact person to a group of travellers who had been attacked by local racists in a hotel in the town Vilia, close to Athens. We got in contact with the group, who told us that they had arrived some hours earlier to the hotel, where everything had been calm. After a while they had all gone to their rooms, when the hotel was suddenly attacked by a mob throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails. They broke in to the room of one man and attacked him with a fire extinguisher in front of his two daughters. They further told us that there had been two police officers present when the attack happened, but that they had not made any effort to intervene. The travellers also sent us pictures and videos showing broken glass. At 5.50pm we called the Greek police and passed on the information we had. We also posted about the attack on social media, and got in touch with groups based in Greece, who did further research about the attack. According to the newspaper Elefteria Syndakton, they received information from the police that “among the gathered were the mayor of Mandra - Idylia Yianna Kriekoukou and other members of the municipal authority.”
Although we as Alarm Phone are mainly involved in cases of distress at sea, we chose to intervene in this case, which clearly shows that just because people successfully have made the journey across the sea, their struggle for freedom of movement and basic rights is far from over.