Daily Mirror - 04.03.2020

mirror.co.uk WEDNESDAY 04.03.2020 DAILY MIRROR^9

DM1ST

We fled the Taliban

...now the police

in Greece are

attacking us

Turkey’s promise last week that Europe’s

borders would be open, the wait goes on.

His sons Ati, four, and Mohammad,

two, are in poor health and exhausted.

Davood says: “We left Afghanistan for

our safety a year ago. We left because my

two brothers were killed by the Taliban.

“For a month we walked through Iran

then Turkey. Imagine that with two kids.

Their whole lives have been horrible.

“All the money we have, after giving

our savings to the smugglers, is the cost

of a ferry ticket to Athens. But they won’t

allow us to go there. They won’t give us

the stamp on our asylum forms.”

Davood adds: “We all came today

because we had been told they were

letting people on the ferries. Instead we

are being herded by police.

“We came here to escape the Taliban,

now the Greek police are coming at us.”

Davood, a farmer in his home village

near Herat, and Tawos, 30, left Afghani-

stan to work and get their lads into

school, without the daily threat

of terror attacks and torture.

As they herded migrants

through the harbour, the

officers shouted in

English: “Move, move

• no papers to Athens.”
  Greece’s government is

forcibly repelling migrants trying to get

in, and they are doing their utmost to

deter families from staying.

The angry scenes in Mytilini were

played out in front of British Border

Force ship HMC Valiant, in Lesbos to

help with the European effort to stem

the flow of illegal immigration.

It comes after vigilante

attacks by locals who are

fed up of bearing the

brunt of this crisis.

Charity workers say

they have been

attacked. Stones have

been thrown at cars

going to and from the

camp, which covers a

hillside far beyond an offi-

cial zone overseen by the

UN. It is claimed there have also

been arson attacks on facilities associ-

ated with the migrants.

Hundreds of people have arrived on

islands here in recent days after Turkey’s

President Tayyip Erdogan announced

his country was opening its borders.

His ploy was to put pressure on other

nations to accept some of the roughly

3.7 million refugees in Turkish camps.

[email protected]

@parrytom

BY tom parry

Special Correspondent in Lesbos

PiCtureS by phil harris

buyout Scunthorpe plant

China deal for

British Steel

by next week

A CHINESE takeover of
British Steel saving 3,
jobs in Scunthorpe should
complete next Monday.
Buyer Jingye said the
deal will unlock £1.2billion
investment to modernise
the North Lincolnshire
town’s steelworks.
But despite most jobs
being saved, some 400 face
the axe on the same day.
It comes 10 months
after British Steel collapsed
and was kept afloat by
state support.
Jingye is taking on the
Scunthorpe plant, Teesside
Beam Mill and a mill in
Skinningrove, North Yorks.
The agreement does not
yet include British Steel’s
plant in Hayange, France.
Jingye chief Li Huiming
said he looks forward to
beginning “a new chapter
in British steelmaking”.

B Y graham hiscott
Head of Business

alert King George Dock

10 ‘migrants’

discovered

in container

A CHILD and two women
were among 10 suspected
illegal African migrants
found yesterday in a ship-
ping container in Hull.
They were discovered at
King George Dock after UK
Border Force officers
alerted police at 11.30am.
Two women and a man
were taken to hospital but
none were thought to be in
a serious condition.
A Home Office spokes-
man said: “All 10 presented
themselves as Eritrean
nationals and had arrived
from Zeebrugge.”
The adults faced Home
Office questioning and the
child was due to be handed
to social services.
All will be treated under
immigration rules.
Last October the bodies
of 39 Vietnamese nationals
were found in a refriger-
ated lorry in Grays, Essex.

BY jeremy armstrong

CLASPING their two young sons as

the Greek police surge towards

them, refugees Davood and Tawos

Sharifi curse their dreadful fate.

Trapped on the island of Lesbos that

has become their prison, the family who

fled the Taliban watch as the promise of

freedom escapes their grasp in a charge

of riot shields and rubber batons.

In the pretty harbour of Mytilini, the

island’s capital, refugees from war-torn

nations such as Syria and Afghanistan

are being rounded up to ensure they do

not get any further into Europe.

Ripped off by people-smugglers in

Turkey who charged them £3,000 for an

illegal three-hour journey across the

Aegean Sea in an inflatable dinghy, they

have now been tricked again.

As the stand-off simmers, officers

force hundreds of refugees on to buses

to be taken back to a camp where

around 30,000 people live in squalor,

unable to move forward or go back.

Davood, 50, says he has been waiting

seven months to get his family to the

Greek mainland. Conned into believing

Dad’s pain as he bids

to get his sons safe

family

agony

Davood and

Tawos with

their sons

in Lesbos

british ship

Migrants walking

past HMC Valiant

cold Migrant

at the Turkey-

Greece border

My two

children...

their whole

lives have

been

horrible

Davoo D taLkS about

famiLy’S Long ordeaL