Greek island struggles under burden of EU migrant deal

Record ID: 941714

  • Title: Greek island struggles under burden of EU migrant deal
  • Date: 6th December 2017
  • Summary: LESBOS, GREECE (RECENT) (REUTERS) TEARS SLIDING DOWN CHEEKS OF MIGRANT MOTHER FROM AFGHANISTAN WHO LOST HER 10-YEAR-OLD SON DURING SEA CROSSING FROM TURKEY THE PREVIOUS WEEK THE BOY'S FATHER, ALSO FROM AFGHANISTAN, BLINKING HIS EYES WHICH ARE RED FROM CRYING PARENTS WHO LOST THEIR SON SITTING ON FLOOR OF THEIR NEW HOME AT THE ISLAND'S SMALL 'PIKPA' REFUGEE CAMP/ MOTHER, WH
  • Embargoed: 20th December 2017 14:45
  • Keywords: EU-Turkey deal Greek migrant crisis Lesbos island Moria village camp conditions migrant deaths
  • Location: LESBOS, GREECE
  • City: LESBOS, GREECE
  • Country: Greece
  • Topics: Asylum/Immigration/Refugees,Government/Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA0017AS1WSN
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: EDITORS PLEASE NOTE: SOME FACES HAVE BEEN OBSCURED TO PROTECT IDENTITIES
    Sameer Soleymani, a 10-year-old Afghan boy, was dreaming of Switzerland when the rubber boat he and 65 others had crammed onto ran into trouble off Greece. Panic erupted on board. Moments later, he was pulled out unconscious.
    A week after Sameer was pronounced dead, his heartbroken mother choked back her tears as she related how she begged the others on board to help her son to no avail. Now she says, it is as if " a great stone is pressing down" on her chest. She says she and her husband are suffering, trapped on the island of Lesbos with no idea how they can get off it.
    Refugee and migrant arrivals to Greece have risen sharply 20 months after the EU and Turkey agreed to seal the main gateway to Europe through Greece to stop the tide of Syrians and others fleeing west.
    While the deal has been hailed a success by its European architects, the recent rise in arrivals has exposed its shortcomings.
    On Lesbos, over 8,500 asylum-seekers are stranded in facilities meant for fewer than 3,000. The wait for asylum or deportation fuels unrest.
    So full is Moria, a former military base turned into a "hotspot," a supposedly temporary reception centre for arriving migrants, that hundreds of people have spilled over into a neighbouring olive grove. They sleep between trees whose trunks are blackened by fires they have set to keep warm.
    Half-eaten packets of barely-cooked rationed food litter the muddy slopes on which their summer tents are pitched. There are no showers or toilets, and children play amongst the garbage.
    23-year-old Syrian Anas Bakour who shares a tent with two other men says that animals have a better life than he does.
    Bashar Wakah, another Syrian whose wife is nine months pregnant, likened his life to Rudyard Kipling's classic, "The Jungle Book."
    "My wife is going to give birth in this forest so I feel like my son is going to be like Mowgli," he said, likening him to the boy raised by wolves.
    Aria Danika, a field coordinator for Doctors Without Borders (MSF) on Lesbos, said her agency was concerned that EU policymakers "will do whatever it takes to preserve the EU-Turkey deal at the expense of human lives."
    Islanders too are growing angry and the mood has soured. In a village a couple of miles from the camp, locals complain of rising crime - from petty theft of farm animals and oranges, to break-ins.
    The island's mayor, Spyros Galinos, has called for protests and strikes against the EU policies he says have turned the island into a prison with "terrible" conditions.
    After night falls, the dangers of the camp grow. Women say they are scared to leave their tents after dusk.
    22-year-old Shahed Naji, an Iraqi woman who arrived in Moria five months ago says that women in the camp expect to be attacked "at any moment."
    The government tried to decongest the island by moving a few hundred people to the mainland but says the EU-Turkey accord forbids asylum-seekers from leaving the islands until their claims are processed, something that can take months.
    About 4,000 people, mostly Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans, arrived in Greece in October, double the figure compared to the previous year. Some 3,100 people arrived in November, up from 1,990 last year.
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