PARWANA AMIRI ARRIVED on the Greek island of Lesbos from Afghanistan in 2019. She lived there for a year with her family in what was then Europe’s biggest migrant settlement, Moria.
The squalid conditions facing Moria’s asylum seekers drew global attention when a fire devastated the sprawling camp last September, triggering the chaotic displacement of over 13,000 people.
A backlog in asylum applications, combined with continued arrivals and few deportations, led to massive overcrowding in Moria and other camps on the eastern Aegean islands. Amiri chronicled her time in Moria, as well as the stories of the people around her in a journal that would later be published as a book.
“In this situation the first thing that comes to my mind to tell you is, we didn’t come here to Europe for money, and we did not come to be European citizens. It was just to breathe a day in peace,” she writes in Letters to the World from Moria.
My pen won’t break until we end this story of inequality and discrimination among humankind. My words will always break the borders you built.”
Speaking to TheJournal from Ritsona refugee camp outside of Athens where she lives with her parents and four siblings, Amiri said she wrote her first letter to ask everyone “to put themselves in our shoes and to see how we live”.
“When I was in Moria, I didn’t have a voice. I noticed that it is necessary for people outside to know what is happening for us, and to not let our condition be hidden. There’s information about the realities of the camp that people outside don’t know.”
Amiri has continued writing letters from Ritsona, advocacy work she says is important given many people she knows “are threatened for sharing details of the conditions in the camp”.
“People living in these conditions are not given the chance to raise their voices but are also afraid to do so.”
Approving Turkey as an unsafe country for #Refugeesgr has forced many families to pass the borders and enter the center of Europe.
— Parwana Amiri پروانه اميري (@parwana_amiri) September 13, 2021
In today’s demonstration, refugees in #RitsonaCamp are asking for their asylum documents and fair system, mainly #Kurdish and #Afghan community. pic.twitter.com/SEosdJ5urS
Recent demonstrations in Ritsona have seen refugees calling for better conditions and a fairer asylum process, while others have taken place in solidarity with the people of Afghanistan living under Taliban rule.
“They want to show solidarity with the Afghan people, to tell them they are not alone and to be resistant. They want the international community to understand what’s going on in Afghanistan, and not recognise the Taliban as the official Afghan government.
“They’re in so much pain, they have families, they have relations there. Many of them have already lost them and are in mourning.”
According to figures from the UN refugee agency, 45% of arrivals to the Greek islands so far this year have been asylum seekers from Afghanistan.
Since the fire at Moria, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) said 96% of refugees it treats on Lesbos are depressed and 93% suffer from acute anxiety.
“The IRC has been providing mental health support to refugees in Lesbos since 2018, and in that time we have witnessed continuously shocking levels of PTSD, depression and anxiety among clients,” IRC psychologist on Lesvos Dukas Protogiros said in a recent IRC report.
He said it should be unthinkable that this situation has been going on for years, “and that people have been left to languish in such degrading and dangerous conditions in Europe still today, and it is shocking that more has not been done to mitigate the mental health crisis that we have been seeing harm people across the Greek islands”.
Other humanitarian groups working on the islands say the limbo situation many asylum seekers are in as their claims are processed, as well as the precarious living conditions, have accelerated the deterioration of their health and mental health.
Kara Tepe/Mavrovouni became the main camp on Lesbos for refugees and asylum seekers after the fire. The group of Irish volunteers behind the 400Weclomes campaign described it as Moria 2.0 – a camp prone to regular flooding that has “a chronic absence of basic humanitarian infrastructure and supports”.
As well as raising awareness of the “dehumanising the conditions” in many camps, the 400welcomes group advocates for the evacuation of refugees at risk in Greece.
Ireland committed to resettling 50 people in family groups along with 36 unaccompanied from the Moria camp last October. Eleven families arrived in Ireland this month, eleven months later.
“I think it’s definitely fair to say that people feel forgotten and everyone’s just left in this limbo,” spokesperson for Ireland Must Act, Nele de Búrca, told The Journal from Thessaloniki in Greece.
“The asylum claims can take years to process. I get the sense from the people that I work with and speak with today that there isn’t much hope that the situation is going to improve.”
The Ireland Must Act campaign – a branch of Europe Must Act – advocates for the relocation of asylum seekers and refugees, and for fairer, more dignified migration policies.
Barrí Ó Casaide has worked in refugee camps in Greece since 2017 and is part of the 400Welcomes campaign. He said the imapct of Greece’s migration policies on the mental and physical health of people is “unbelievable”.
“Since the fire, I thought it would be a turning point, but it’s just got progressively worse and worse and worse.”
Greece has come under fire proposed legislation aimed at speeding up deportations. The Bill will boost the power of police to order deportations and detain undocumented migrants while strictly regulating the activities of NGOs and volunteer groups.
While announcing the European Commission’s Pact on Migration proposals last September, Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson pledged there would be “no more Morias”.
German Green MEP Damian Boeselager argues that the proposed pact is far from a fresh start, with the Member States disproportionately focused on security concerns and failing to offer safe and regular pathways for asylum-seekers to seek protection in the EU.
“In the meantime, EU funding has disproportionately served to construct closed facilities and strengthen external borders,” Boeselager in a recent opinion.
The EU and Member States’ actions and funding, therefore, send a strong signal: we will make it very hard for asylum-seekers to reach the EU’s external borders and those who do will be strictly controlled with their liberties severely restricted.
While the migration pact is still at an impasse, the Commission committed €276 million for the construction of five new camps on the Greek islands which have traditionally received most of the migrants coming by sea from neighbouring Turkey.
Earlier this week, Greek authorities moved asylum seekers to the first of the new EU-funded facilities on the island of Samos. The five facilities are being built to replace chaotic and often crime-ridden informal camps that popped up to house those displaced by the Moria fire.
Reports from the opening of the camp note that it’s organised into “neighbourhoods” each with separate “restaurants, sports facilities, playgrounds, shared kitchens and canteens”.
“Toilets, running water, air conditioners and wi-fi are all major improvements. There is a separate area designed for unaccompanied minors, guarded by Greek police and a private security company 24 hours a day,” Politico reported from the camp’s opening.
However, humanitarian groups and activists like Amiri say that the new ‘closed camps’ are more like “prisons” due to the “military-grade barbed wire fences” and advanced surveillance systems.
Serving as a pilot for the other so-called closed and controlled access facilities, the new Samos camp also includes a detention centre for migrants who break the rules, or whose asylum claims have been rejected and are to be deported.
“It’s like we’re treating people like criminals. They’re increasing the surveillance inside of these camps, they’re restricting access. It’s just more containment policies, and deterrence,” de Búrca of Ireland Must Act said.
Ó Casaide spoke to The Journal prior to the Samos camp opening this week, and argues these closed camps are less about the safety of those inside but more about deterring others from seeking refugee on Greece’s shores.
“It’s the same model, the conditions aren’t improved. If people’s physical and mental health gets so bad, that will deter others from coming to Greece. It is set up is just to break you.
“Those policies of deterrence are working. Many wouldn’t be aware of the intense suffering. There are children who are expressing the will to kill themselves rather than staying in those camps.”
This work is co-funded by Journal Media and a grant programme from the European Parliament. Any opinions or conclusions expressed in this work is the author’s own. The European Parliament has no involvement in nor responsibility for the editorial content published by the project. For more information, see here.
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