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Help for refugees in Molyvos hat Timothy Jay Smiths Beitrag geteilt.
12 Std. ·
Update on refugee status from one Greek village...
I have been really gratified by the outpouring of support from friends
and strangers who have donated money to provide emergency food aid to
the refugees who are flooding Greece--and especially our
home-away-from-home village, Molyvos on the island of Lesbos, only six
miles off the Turkish coast. But nothing says thanks as much as a hungry
child's expression when she or he realizes that they have just been
given something to eat, or water or juice to quench their thirst in the
hot sun.
This week started with a couple of light days, perhaps only forty or
fifty refugees arriving in Molyvos. Then yesterday, it was as if the
floodgates had opened. Across the island, reportedly some 3500 refugees
came ashore. Along the north coast, where Molyvos is situated, there
were an estimated 800. Michael and I saw two groups of 100 each
disembarking and heading towards our village.
The local authorities--which means the officials in the island's
capital, Mytilini, since there is no local government at the village
level -- are flailing for a solution. Mytilini's port is already
chockablock with refugees streaming in from their beachheads all over
the island. Trying to stem the tide and discourage others from coming,
they have stopped providing bus transportation, meaning
everyone--infirmed, young, old included--are forced to walk 70
kilometers (42 miles) on narrow roads in steep terrain, to finally reach
the port where they are registered. A couple of hundred a day are then
moved into a camp for 'processing' before being allowed to find their
way to Athens, leaving thousands of others waiting without food, water
or shade for several days.
Yesterday, I spent part of the day driving the route, handing out fruit,
water and sesame bars to the refugees who had decided to walk--mostly
young single men. Then back to the village, where the government ordered
the only makeshift camp to be dismantled and stopped the organized
feeding program. That meant another round of handing out food ad hoc.
Who had stayed behind were families, with scores of infant and very
young children. Meanwhile, they were herded into a bus parking lot
(though the buses remained off-limits to them), where they spent the
night in the cold, without shelter or toilets.
The refugees had a very different idea of what their welcome would be in
Europe; and at one point yesterday staged a sit-in to block traffic
coming into the village. It lasted a quarter of an hour, until they
realized, in this village at least, there is no one who has the
authority to change their situation. It's not that the Greek authorities
don't want to help, it's that they can't. The national situation is
already a catastrophe, and now another one is being foisted on them.
It's not going to let up. Another two hundred refugees arrived in
Molyvos today. One boatload was picked up by the Coast Guard and brought
into the harbor. We see the Coast Guard's cruiser speeding up and down
the channel that separates us from Turkey, doing a good job of rescuing
them, which can be counted in the number of rafts they have dragged back
with them. Many others have been scuttled by the refugees just offshore
to ensure that they won't be turned back.
We are hearing similar reports from other islands. A massive wave of
humanity has already made their way here, sometimes walking three weeks,
sometimes able to get to where they will board a raft by other
transportation. What is striking is that these are the middle classes of
the countries that are fleeing. Many of them are young professionals
with kids who had a future until their towns were bombed, in some cases
into oblivion.
Just imagine if Los Angeles had been flattened, and there are conflicts
and wars all the way to Costa Rica, the closest safe place -- and your
only way there is to walk. That's roughly the distance from Kabul to Athens.
The numbers of refugees are expected to continue to increase many-fold,
and so will the need to provide immediate food, water, and other relief.
If you still want to contribute to this one-shot fundraising effort I am
making, please feel free to do so. I will include instructions below.
Thanks so much to everyone who has or will donate. It's been great to
see such an outpouring of caring and humanity for something distant to
most of you. Here locally, the stumbling steps of the local government
aside, the response of the villagers has been extraordinary. Truly
extraordinary.
To make a donation:
Please send a check payable to me in US dollars, or Euros (drawn on
French banks only). Email me for my mailing address via Facebook or
smithtimothyjay@gmail.com. OR you can make a donation via my PayPal
account: kosmosfilms@gmail.com. If you are going to make a donation,
please let me know how much so I can pass the money along quickly.
I know some people might want to know if all the money really is making
it into direct relief. It is. I am accounting for every penny or centime
I receive. So far, I have passed on €1000 to the local volunteers, and
in addition set up three €500 lines of credit at local groceries so that
they can buy in bulk for better prices. These lines of credit will be
replenished as I get donations. All expenditures will have receipts,
which will be collected and given to me. Almost all funds to date have
been for food, etc. In a couple of cases, we have purchased gasoline to
drive women with very young children to Mytilini--which is something
volunteers have done courageously because they could be arrested for it.
Please share. Thank you everyone!
Friendsof Molyvos Help for refugees in Molyvos Melinda McRostie
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