From Moria to the prison camps: Mariam just wants her daughter to “play in a playground”

Just over a year ago, on September 8 and 9, 2020, the most famous refugee camp in Greece, that of Moria, succumbed to the flames. Mariam, an Afghan woman who came to Lesbos with her family two years ago, remembers that tragic day.

“We fled from the flames to the mountains and we spent ten days living on the streets, without food or water “, he relates. Now, after a year living in the Kara Tepe camp, where “conditions have not improved,” she awaits a possible transfer to the new Samos camp, inaugurated last Saturday by European and Greek authorities.

Mariam, nearly nine months pregnant, her husband and two-year-old daughter do not know what will become of them. In all this time, they have not been granted any authorization to leave the field -beyond the days in the open after the Moria fire-. “My daughter has never seen a park, we have never been able to take her to play one,” explains this Afghan with concern.

Mariam has been in Lesbos for two years with her husband and two-year-old daughter;  until one ago they lived in the field of Moria.

Mariam has been in Lesbos for two years with her husband and two-year-old daughter; until one ago they lived in the field of Moria.

MSF

His mental health, he assures, hangs by a thread. His daughter knows nothing but violence that has persecuted her in her short life, since they left Afghanistan until now, with the uncertainty of whether they will be relocated to that new Greek camp that Doctors Without Borders (MSF) describes as a prison.

The two-year-old, Mariam laments, is becoming more aggressive: “He does not want to play, or laugh, or talk“The fights in the refugee camp, the tear gas, the fires, the uncertainty… all this is a serious blow to the psychological health of this family. Not knowing if they will accept or deny their asylum application does not help either.

That of Mariam and her family is just one example of how the situation for asylum seekers at the gates of Europe is far from improving. If anything, it has only gotten worse since the Moria field burned last September.

“My daughter has never seen a park, she has never played in one,” explains Mariam

“The night of the fire I realized one thing: Europe lacks humanity”. This is how tough Ali is, a Syrian torture survivor who fled a prison in a country at war to end up, as he claims, in another in a “supposedly free” country.

After a year and a half on Lesbos, Ali has realized how “embarrassing it is for Europe” that the refugees live situations that remind him of besieged Syria. “If it weren’t for the war, because they tortured me and I was exposed to bombardments with chemical weapons, I would never have left my countryAnd even less to live like this ”, ditches this Syrian who, as a result of the torture, has a clot in his brain that worsens every day.

Dreams of the future

Mariam left her country fleeing Taliban violence, in search of a better future for her family and, above all, for her daughter. Although his hell seems to be far from over, his dream is simple: “My husband and I want to work, pay rent, send our children to school and live a normal life ”.

Photograph of refugees upon arrival on the Greek island of Samos.

Photograph of refugees upon arrival on the Greek island of Samos.

Guillaume Binet / MYOP

MSF

However, the welcome that all those people who, like her or Ali, are receiving from Europe makes it difficult to imagine that “normal” future. According to MSF, almost ten thousand people are being held at the five Reception and Identification Centers on the Greek islands of Lesbos, Chios, Samos, Kos and Leros.

In his latest report, published in early summer, Create the crisis on the borders of Europe, warn that the Union’s migration policies “endanger health, the well-being and safety of the people trapped on the islands ”.

The NGOs working on the ground coincide: the refugees “go from one prison to another”

Now, in addition, they remember that a year after Moria burned surrounded by promises so that something like this would not happen again, these have been “on paper.” The NGO insists that “European and Greek leaders continue denying the most basic dignity to asylum seekers and to migrants seeking safety in Europe ”.

On the contrary, progress is being made in the construction of camps, like the one in Samos, “more similar to prisons.” One of the report’s authors, Reem Mussa, states that “for more than five years, the EU policy of containing people and processing their asylum applications in the hotspots of the Greek islands has created an unprecedented crisis and enormous human suffering”.

Doctors Without Borders warns that children staying in Samos (in the image) will play in a prison yard.

Doctors Without Borders warns that children staying in Samos (in the image) will play in a prison yard.

MSF

This MSF humanitarian adviser on migration recalls that they are not unforeseen consequences. Rather, they derive from a European model, that of the Reception and Identification Centers, designed both to process asylum applications and, rather, to “deter others who dare to seek safety in Europe.”

And that is precisely what, according to the NGO, the inauguration of the new center in Samos intends. For MSF, this is but one example of the “escalation of European migration policies designed to deter and punish”That they have been denouncing since this humanitarian crisis began in 2015.

Stephen Cornish, general director of the organization assures that “looks more like a prison for refugees that right now they are in Samos ”what a safe place. “This is the new European migration strategy: criminalize, humiliate and punish refugees and asylum seekers,” ditch.

The Greek Minister of Migration, Notis Mitarakis, assures that “the new controlled and closed center offers much better living conditions”

Cornish further denounces that, although the current conditions for the refugees are not good, “move them behind layers and layers of barbed wire and forcing children to play in a yard that looks like a prison is no improvement. “

The new field of Samos is situated more away from urban centersIt is more than the previous one and it is the first of the five that are intended to be built in Greece, with reinforced surveillance and isolated from the local population.

The new Samos refugee camp will house three thousand people.

The new Samos refugee camp will house three thousand people.

MSF

According to what the Greek Migration Minister, Notis Mitarakis, told the public television ERT last Saturday, “the new controlled and closed center offers much better living conditions. It is outside the urban fabric and security measures have been increased to protect beneficiaries and workers, but also local communities. “

However, both MSF and other NGOs working on the ground agree: “They go from one prison to another”. And Cornish adds: “No one would expect a welcome like this from a European country.”

The director general of Doctors Without Borders regrets that taxpayers’ money is used to “criminalize refugees”

So far, the EU has invested 276 million euros in the replacement of the reception centers in the Aegean. Next year, the islands of Kos and Leros will also host enclosed fields with walls and barbed wire. The intention of the Union is, in addition, to build another two in Chios and Lesbos, although construction has not yet begun.

While the Greek authorities congratulate themselves for “the return to normality” on this first island, the general director of Doctors Without Borders regrets that taxpayers’ money is used for “criminalize refugees”.

“It is time for the public to see what their leaders are doing with their taxes,” says Cornish. And remember that, to do justice to the European spirit, we should “start offering a more humane and dignifying Europe”For those fleeing horror.

Reference-www.elespanol.com

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