LESBOS, Greece — The immigration
center here, a cluster of prefabricated buildings surrounded by rows of
chain-link and barbed-wire fences, was full again on a recent evening, leaving
hundreds of families, some with infants, to find a place among the piles of
garbage outside.
The toilets were clogged and the
temperatures still well above 90 degrees. Flies and mosquitoes were everywhere.
“Look, her eyes are sick,” said
Ibrahim Nawrozi, a desperate 27-year-old Afghan mechanic, holding up his
10-month-old daughter for inspection. “We are in this garbage three days. We
can’t stay here another day.”
Since the beginning of the year,
the number of refugees and migrants arriving here and on other Greek islands
has surged to full-scale humanitarian-crisis levels. Arrivals by sea have
surpassed 107,000 through July, according to United Nations figures, eclipsing
even the numbers of people reaching Italy. Most of those who arrive on the
shores of Lesbos, a popular tourist destination just off the coast of Turkey in
the Aegean Sea, are fleeing the wars in Syria and Afghanistan and hoping to
head deeper into Western Europe.
In June, 15,254 migrants and
refugees arrived on Lesbos, according to the Greek Coast Guard, compared with
921 the same month last year.
But only squalor awaits them
here. They arrive in a country that is deep in its own crisis, with an
unemployment rate over 25 percent, banks not fully open and its government all
but broke.
There are volunteers, both
tourists and Greeks, scraping together what assistance they can, offering
crackers, water and sometimes dry clothes. But what they muster does not come
close to the need. Some of the families outside the center had been unable to
get any food that day, elbowed out of the way by others, they said. Some who
had gotten food said it made them sick. Human rights groups have called the
conditions here and on other nearby islands appalling.
Spyros Galinos, the mayor of Lesbos, agrees that conditions
are “awful.” But he said the scale of the problem had been mind-boggling, with
1,500 people arriving on some days.
“We had 3,000 people outside the center the other day,” he
said.
The migrants and refugees land at all hours, packed into
inflatable boats that should hold 15, according to the manufacturer’s
instructions stamped clearly on the side of boats. But they usually hold 40,
sometimes more. They cross from Turkey, where they have paid smugglers about
$1,200 for a place on the boat, more if they want life jackets.
The distance is as little as three and a half miles in some
places. But the overloaded boats, taking in water because they sit so low in
the sea, can take hours to make the crossings. Passengers that arrive in the
night are often exhausted and freezing. Others arrive sunburned. Some end up
throwing everything they own overboard, even wheelchairs.
Still, the volunteers who watch for the boats from cliffs
say that many of the passengers fall to their knees with happiness when they
make it to the rocky beaches here.
It was that way for Rosh A., a 32-year-old Syrian teacher,
who asked not to be identified by her last name for fear of what might happen
to her family back home on the outskirts of Damascus. Rosh said she had made
the trip in less than 24 hours, flying to Beirut, Lebanon, and to Istanbul
before climbing into an inflatable boat with her two children and three
friends. In Damascus, she said, the bombs arrived regularly and basic services
were gone.
“I was dying there every day,” she said, as one of her
traveling companions used his smartphone to show a video of explosions and
fires erupting in the suburbs of the city. “Yes, it was frightening in that
boat, but when I got in it I had a future again.”
Once ashore, however, the group faced a 30-mile walk to
register with the authorities. The roads are filled day and night with refugees
and migrants trudging toward the port town of Mitilini. Some, like Mr.
Nawrozi’s wife, get so exhausted carrying their children that they abandon
their belongings along the road.
It is a measure of how few official services there are that
those who are rescued by the Coast Guard in the north of the island are brought
to Melinda McRostie, who, with her husband, runs a restaurant called the
Captain’s Table in the nearby town of Molyvos.
With donations solicited from a Facebook page, Ms. McRostie
has rented a space behind the rows of restaurants overlooking the port. On a
recent evening, as tourists chatted, ate grilled fish and tried ouzo out front,
33 young men from Afghanistan, many with blistered lips, were lining up for
turkey and cheese sandwiches in the back.
Afterward, they bedded down for the night on plastic
sheeting. By early morning, another group of 100 Syrians had arrived, one man
suffering from hypothermia.
“Me,” Ms. McRostie said, “I was dealing with it, like I know
anything about what to do. We were trying to get his wet clothes off and I
think now he was really embarrassed. This morning he wouldn’t look at me.”
For many residents of the island, the wave of migrants and
refugees could hardly come at a worse time of year. The tourist season is in
full swing, and restaurants and hotels here depend on the summer months to stay
in business. Even those who are volunteering to help the new arrivals are eager
to point out that tourists will find the island unchanged. That is true to a
large degree. But in the north, the beaches are littered with deflated boats
and piles of abandoned life jackets and inflatable tubes.
About 60 percent of the arrivals are from Syria. The next
largest group, making up about 20 percent, are Afghans. But there are also
arrivals from Somalia, Congo, Eritrea and Pakistan, among others.
Few stay on the island for very long. The authorities have
stepped up the processing of papers so that most can take a ferry — at their
own expense — to the mainland within three or four days. From there, most say
they will make their way out of Greece, through Macedonia,
Serbia and Hungary to Austria and beyond. Many hope to go to Germany, Sweden,
Denmark or Norway.
The authorities have set up two encampments, but they are
not managed in any way. There is nobody to settle disputes or answer questions
about the constantly changing system of processing papers. Police officers can
arrive at any time to hand out papers, but they do not even have a bullhorn, so
people often fear that they have not heard their names being called.
Rosh and her children have their papers, for instance, as do
two of her traveling companions. But the sixth member of the group has not
received his papers and they have no idea why, or any means of finding out. So,
they wait, settled in the stifling heat by a tree that they joke is their
air-conditioner.
“You know,” Rosh said, “I never even had to worry about
money a day in my life before.”
At the registration center, a police major, Kostas
Papazoglou, said that the staff was overwhelmed, but that there were no
reinforcements to be had.
The police, he said, were paying for food, but on a budget
of less than 6 euros, or about $6.60, per person per day. There was no money
for clearing the garbage from the area or tending to the toilets.
“Ten days ago, there were 2,000 people here,” he said. “And
the Syrians had closed the road in protest, a fight had broken out up top in
the encampment and there was a fire. We had 10 officers here trying to deal
with all of that.”
Anastasia Christodoulopoulou, Greece’s minister of migration
policy, said she hoped to start receiving more funds from the European Union soon.
The country, she said, did not have the resources to do much on its own, with
so many Greeks struggling themselves.
“I mean, there is a humanitarian crisis here, with 1.5
million unemployed, with three million poor, with homeless people, and we are
not able to cover their basic needs,” she said. “And in this situation, we are
called to also cover the needs of people who are even weaker.”
But some on Lesbos say Greeks must summon the means to help
despite their own suffering. The Rev. Stratis Dimou, a Greek Orthodox priest
who has provided a way station for hundreds of immigrants walking the 30 miles
from the north of the island to south, said there were perhaps 100 Greek
families in his town, which was once prosperous from construction work, who now
depend on charity to survive.
Yet, Father Dimou said, additional efforts must still be
made to help the new arrivals. “These people are just trying to take care of
themselves,” he said. “They are just trying to survive.”
He said that one day a woman had become separated from her
husband, so he took her in his car to search for him.
“When we found him,” Father Dimou said, “he came over to my
car. He bowed and he kissed me, and at that moment I realized there are no
borders.”
Written by SUZANNE
DALEY; Photographs by SERGEY PONOMAREVAUG. 4, 2015
Original article: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/05/world/europe/lesbos-greece-migrant-refugee-crisis.html?_r=0
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