On July 5, 2023, the Greek government evicted a Kurdish refugee camp in Lavrio, Greece. The camp had existed for many decades, serving as an important center of organizing in southeastern Europe. Turkeys war on Kurdish people, the Greek governments war on autonomous spaces, and the European Unions war on migrants all intersected in this operation. In the following analysis, Beja Protner shows the connections between the various forms of systematic oppression involved here. For more information about these issues, you could consult Rise Up 4 Rojava and the Emergency Committee For Rojava.

On July 5, 2023, between 3 and 6 am, Greek state forces raided and violently evicted the self-organized Kurdish refugee camp in Lavrio, Greece. Located about 60 kilometers from Athens, the camp had been home to political refugees from Turkey and Kurdistan for decades. Without notice, more than 250 police officers, riot police (MAT), and heavily armed special police forces (EKAM) sent by the Ministry of Asylum and Migration evicted the residents of the campless than 60 people, a third of whom were young children. The refugees were forcefully transferred to the Oinofyta Refugee Camp, located in an abandoned factory in a deserted area far from any kind of urban settlement.

The eviction, which Greek officials called a humanitarian intervention, looked to the Kurdish and left-wing political refugees from Turkey and Kurdistan more like the sort of dawn raids that had forced many of them to flee from their homelands and seek refuge in Greece in the first place. The Greek forces broke the gate of the camp, stormed into peoples homes, pointed laser-sighted rifles at the peopleincluding families and childrenand dragged them outside.

Even in Turkey [the state forces] dont use that much technology in house raids, commented Welat, a young political refugee from North Kurdistan (Turkey), who had lived in the Lavrio camp for five years after escaping persecution in Turkey. As Leyla, who had lived in the camp with her husband and three small children recounted, the residents were given only half an hour to collect their essential belongings before police forces occupied the camp and forbade entry. Some of those who resisted the eviction were violently restrained with their hands handcuffed behind their backs. Leyla tried to calm down her daughter by telling her it was toy guns being pointed at them. But the child knew what they were, from back in Turkey, Leyla said. My children have seen many things that they never d...

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• On July 23, the Russian Ministry of Defense recorded no cases of hostilities and ceasefire violations in Idlib region in the past 24 hours;
• On July 23, SAA artillery shelled positions of Turkish-backed forces in Kafr Amma;
• On July 22, HTS reportedly arrested 59 people during a security campaign in the western and northern countryside of Idlib province;
• On July 22, the Kurdish Asayish forces arrested an ISIS leader in the eastern countryside of Deir ez-Zor.

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