By Johanna Mitscherlich
With all eyes on the agreement between Greece and Turkey, and with the border to Macedonia basically closing off the Balkan-route, 46,000 people are holding out under difficult conditions on mainland Greece. The majority is living in run-down camps in more than 30 different accommodation sites dispersed in remote areas. They do not have sufficient access to sanitation facilities, quality food, safety or information about their options to seek asylum in Greece, apply for relocation or family reunification. The refugees, an increasing number being women and children, are in dire need for assistance, in constant fear and uncertainty when they can reunite with their families in Western Europe. The EU relocation scheme had called for completing at least 20,000 relocations by mid-May. To this date, only 876 people have been relocated. In a country which has been hit hard by the economic crisis, the capacity and readiness to strengthen its protection system is limited. Of the more than 5,000 experts requested to support the European Asylum Support Office in Greece, so far only around 300 have arrived. CARE is supporting refugees in Athens and the North with cash vouchers, so they can cover some of their most pressing needs. So far, CARE and its partner organization Solidarity Now have reached around 2,000 refugees and their Greek hosts. In the coming months, CARE is planning to support refugees in Greece with cash assistance, hygiene kits, water and sanitation facilities. CARE will provide free internet and telephone charging services in some of the camps and work with the refugee communities to raise awareness for better hygiene.
“We fought against terrorists. Now people treat us like we are the terrorists”
(Photo: CARE/Johanna Mitscherlich)
In February, Sherine and her family’s home in Aleppo was hit by a bomb. Her husband sold the mobile phone shop and the car he owned to pay for their journey to Europe. A few days later, they fled with their four and six year old sons Ismail and Syed to Turkey. When they arrived at the border in Idomeni, it had already been closed for a few days. After waiting there for 35 days they gave up and moved to another informal camp at the port of Piraeus, where around 2,500 people are currently living in overcrowded tents, with insufficient sanitary facilities and a complete lack of privacy. Gate E1 has become their new home. “This is not a place where anyone would want to stay longer than one day. It is not suitable for children. There is no safety, no school, and few toilets for hundreds of people. At least we can receive food here, but it is purely pasta with almost nothing else and my children are getting sicker by the day. We were fighting against terrorists. I was so naïve to think that Europe would welcome us with open arms just because of that. But when we arrived I realised that people think that we are the terrorists. I am only a mother who wants her children to go to school and live in safety. I want to invite the politicians who make such laws into our tent and stay with us for just one day. I wonder whether they will then feel like me, stripped of their dignity, their humanity, their future.” Until now, Sherine and her family have not applied for relocation. They did not know where to register and what options they have.
“When I heard that the border closed I got sick”
(Photo: CARE/Johanna Mitscherlich)
Tahani, 38, fled from Damascus with two of her four children, her 16 year old daughter and six year old son. Her husband fled with his second wife and her two other children to Nürnberg. “He wanted to pay a smuggler so we could also come. But no one ever showed up.” Tahani sold all of her belongings and jewellery to come up with another 4,500 USD to get herself and her children into safety to Germany. “For the past years all I could think about is that there are places where there is no war, places, where people do not kill each other, where my children can go to school. This was the only thing that kept me going. So when I heard that Europe closed its borders I got sick. We had come so far and I had spent all of my money.” In Greece they are living in a camp close to Athens. With the cash voucher she has received from CARE she will buy food for her family as well as insect repellent and plastic sheets to protect their tent from the rain and mud.
“After two days in Idomeni you are not the same person anymore”
(Photo: CARE/Johanna Mitscherlich)
Xenia works as a graphic designer and studies architecture. But for the past months, she has also been a volunteer in Idomeni Camp, working alongside refugees like Fadwa. “When I first met Fadwa, it was love at first sight. She is such a beautiful and strong woman.” Fadwa, who used to work as a teacher in Aleppo, was living in Idomeni with three young children. Her six year old daughter has hepatitis. “At some point I could not stand seeing this little, skinny girl who looked like a ghost and whose situation was obviously deteriorating”. I asked my parents whether Fadwa and her children can live in their spare apartment.” Her parents are now not only hosting Fadwa’s family, but also two others, making it nine children and five adults in total. Fadwa’s husband and two other children are in Germany. He has a heart condition and urgently needed to get treatment. “Fadwa hardly eats or laughs. She is always anxious and misses her husband and children so much. She is so afraid that he will die and she will never see him again.” Like many of the refugees in Greece she would be eligible for family reunification, but the process is long and difficult. Refugees have to call via skype, but many of them have only limited internet access or nothing at all. The “opening hours” for this process by the Greek asylum services is extremely limited: only on Thursday morning between 9 and 10. “Fadwa and her family have all their papers, everything. Still they have to sit around and wait and hear every day how the war in their home country continues. It breaks my heart to see how she suffers.” Sometimes Fadwa receives messages from people who are still in Idomeni, telling her she should come back quickly, that the border would open again. She does not believe that this will really happen, but still offers Xenia to go back to the camp. “She is afraid that they are bothering us, they never ask for anything. But I cannot let them go back to Idomeni. For a woman this is not a safe space and we hear of many cases of survival sex and rapes. This place changes you. You become desperate and tired. After just two days you are not the same person anymore.”
“I tried to be reunited with my children, but I failed”
(Photo: CARE/Johanna Mitscherlich)
Maize, 38, fled with her 16 year old daughter and her seven year old son from Golan. “We were constantly under fire. Once, we could not leave our house for over a week and did not have anything to eat. We were too scared to go outside and buy bread.” Two of her sons and her husband had already fled to Sweden a few months ago. “My husband was in prison for two years in Syria. Men were coming to our house almost every day, asking for him and harassing my daughter and myself.” When he was released he and her two older sons left the country, so they would not have to join the army. In September 2015 she travelled to Turkey to reach Europe legally, through the process of family reunification. When she received a negative answer she decided to give the rest of her money to smugglers to take them to Sweden. “I am a teacher. My son has never seen a school from the inside and my daughter has been out of school for three years. I want a better life for them, whatever that costs.” But when they arrived in Idomeni, the border was already closed. They stayed for six weeks but finally gave up hope and left. They are now living in a camp close to Athens. They have been trying to apply for family reunification once more. However, the service only operates for one hour per week and refugees have to call via skype. “Our camp doesn’t have WIFI and I cannot afford to have phone credit all the time. Thousands of people are trying to dial in to reach this one service; I don’t know how we are supposed to ever reach them.”
Sadiqa: “I could not hear anything for almost two years”
(Photo: CARE/Johanna Mitscherlich)
Sadiqa was born deaf and mute. When her house in Aleppo was hit by a bomb over two years ago in the middle of the night, she and her family had to run out as fast as they could. One thing that she could not take in the rush was her hearing aid. “We were hiding in different areas in the city for two years.” She could not hear when the fighting came closer. They arrived shortly before the EU-Turkey-deal. “Thank God”, says her husband, a tailor. “If my wife was trapped with her condition in one of these centres on the islands, I don’t know what would have happened to us.” When they arrived in Idomeni and realised that the border was closed they found shelter in Cherso, one of the camps run by the Greek government. “It was so difficult. My son and daughter are only five and six and they were afraid all the time. Everything was full of mud and water.”
Then they met Mr Aris. He came from Thessaloniki and invited refugees over to his two-bedroom apartment where he lives with his wife and two children. He initially offered to let them stay for one or two days, in order to take a proper bath and recover. They got along so well however that Mr Aris was loathe to see them go back to the camp, and so asked them to stay longer. They do not speak the same language, but Sadiqa and her family are used to communicating with sign language and with “hearts and eyes”, as she calls it. For the past weeks, they have been sleeping in his living room. “We applied for relocation to Germany. We really like it here in Greece and everyone is very kind, but people like Mr. Aris don’t really have much themselves. I worry about the future every single second. I want to work and I want my children to go to school.” A few days ago, Mr. Aris had a surprise for Sadiqa. He had asked all of his friends to contribute some money and then they bought Sadiqa a new hearing aid. “The first words I heard I did not understand and I thought that I had forgotten my mother language. But then I realised that it was of course Greek being spoken!”, she jokes. With the cash voucher they received they want to surprise Mr. Aris and his family when they come back from celebrating Greek Easter with their family. “Finally we can contribute at least a little bit and buy some food ourselves.”
“We were used to waiving people good bye and wishing them a good journey”
(Photo: CARE/Johanna Mitscherlich)
Alexandra Zavvos, 26, grew up in Brussels and has been working for CARE’s partner organisation Solidarity Now for the past two and a half years. “Our work has changed a lot over the past months. At some point, 10,000 people passed the border every day. We were used to waving people good bye and wishing them a good journey. Now we need to support people who have been stranded here, not a transit population. Hardly any of the refugees knows where and how to register for relocation or family reunification. Everything is uncertain and the biggest challenge in this crisis is the lack of information. The Greek people are incredibly hospitable and generous. But many of them have very few means due to the economic crisis and around one fifth of the Greek populations themselves live under the poverty line.” The Solidarity Centres from CARE’s partner organisation act as “one-stop-shop”, where organisations with different expertise offer legal, social and medical assistance to refugees and migrants.