https://www.opendemocracy.net/can-europe-make-it/zrinka-bralo/christmas-on-lesvos-man-made-disaster
Christmas on Lesvos – a man-made disaster
ZRINKA BRALO 28 January 2016
This former detention centre outside the port of Mytilini is possibly
the only detention facility in the world that people are trying to get into.
Refugees arrive in boats on European shores. Ben White/ CAFOD. Flickr.
Some rights reserved.
After three weeks on the Greek island, I am struggling to make sense of
what I witnessed. I saw lives being saved by extraordinary volunteers
from all over the world as overcrowded rubber dinghies docked on Lesvos
beaches. But, not everyone could be saved. In the three weeks that I was
there, 36 people drowned trying to cross the Aegean Sea, seven of them
children. I witnessed the ghostly remains of their boats washed up on
the beaches of Lesvos the next day.
One cold night, a baby died in an unheated tent in one of the camps on
Lesvos. I felt the kind of sorrow and anger I had not felt since the
siege of Sarajevo, when it seemed that my life had no value to European
governments which simply stood by and watched as genocide took place in
my country. I also felt something I did not feel in Sarajevo, something
I developed living in the privileged world – guilt.
During my time on the island, I personally witnessed around two thousand
people come off rubber boats. All kinds of people – men, women,
children, the frail, the young, and the old. They came from Syria,
Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and many other places. I was mostly trying not
to get in the way of rescuers who were being much more useful.
I helped the new arrivals get their fake life jackets off, change into
dry clothes, or I wrapped them up in emergency blankets. Sometimes I
just sat with them until they snapped out of silence or stopped crying.
Then they went off to the registration camp on UNHCR buses.
It was not that difficult to get carried away by the feeling of being
useful and trying to do something small to help. Despite their shock,
once they land and recover refugees are thankful and happy to be free.
They start making phone calls, smoke and even take selfies with us.
Then there are sad days, when things go wrong, and people, including
children, die. The absurdity and seriousness of this entire situation
comes crashing down on us—nothing that we do is good enough.
The local volunteers, citizens of Lesvos, some of them welcoming boats
since 1998 (obviously not on this scale) are there too, with hot tea and
dry socks, and not a camera in sight. No branding, no hi-vis jackets
either. On January 1, they brought traditional cake and drink and as
there were no boats arriving, we shared a moment of blessing at the
beach — the first piece of cake was for God, the second piece of cake
was for refugees, and the third piece of cake was for the volunteers. Ai
Weiwei joined our little moment on the beach, and in his very
understated way, provided a celebrity selfie moment for some of us. It
was rather nice, albeit surreal.
More than 500,000 people landed on Lesvos in 2015. In the summer,
desperate new arrivals were sleeping on sidewalks and in parks. The
local economy has been devastated by the drop in tourism, and yet I have
not heard one person complain about any of this. In fact, the only
complaint I heard was from a cab driver about the ‘voluntourists’ who
were rude and impatient and taking inappropriate photos of refugees
without consent.
One Syrian volunteer who has been on several islands for six months told
me that he ‘would kiss the dirt on Greek people’s shoes for the welcome
they give to refugees’. The petition to nominate the Aegean Islands for
the Nobel Peace Prize is gaining momentum, and despite the debatable
politics of this award, the citizens of Lesvos and other islands have,
at least in my experience, earned it 500,000 times over.
Then there is the part of the experience that we don’t see on the news:
what happens to people after they get off the boat. Most of those
landing on Lesvos end up in Moria registration camp. This former
detention centre on a hill, in the forest, just outside the port of
Mytilini, is possibly the only detention facility in the world that
people are trying to get into.
I arrived at Moria camp on my second night, with 700 meals that we
cooked that day in Pikpa camp. The meals are distributed to the families
who were able to get in to spend a night in the heated rooms of the
former immigration prison. On average, each room had eight bunk beds,
but around 30 to 40 people were taken to each room for the night. On a
bitterly cold night, fathers and young men were asked to stay on the
outside, in small tents or just under the stars, to make room for women
and children. A few times families left and opted for the cold night on
the outside, as the rooms, although cleaned by volunteers during the
day, were overcrowded and had a lingering stench of bleached public toilet.
During the time I volunteered in Moria Family Compound, the whole
operation was managed by independent volunteers, good people who tried
to do their best in a completely chaotic and disorganised setting. I
have seen news reports that more than eighty NGOs operate on Lesvos and
many provide services in the Moria camp. But that does not make the
situation any less chaotic. The registration rules and numbers of people
are changing every day, so without central coordination of information,
resources and people, it is impossible to keep up with what is going on.
On several occasions in the family compound, I saw the people I had
helped off the boat in the morning. By the evening, their earlier
excitement and relief had been transformed into desperation. The Moria
camp is not a prison, refugees and migrants are free to come and go as
they please. But in reality, they do not have a choice, as they need to
register in order to continue their journey through Greece legally, so
they stick around until that happens.
Inability to answer people’s questions about what is happening with
registration or where to get the next meal or dry clothes was tough.
Even after a week in the camp, it was still not clear to me how the more
vulnerable people, especially women, were identified, and by whom. I
heard that some agencies were providing better accommodation for the
vulnerable, but how they would access these services was unclear. I also
saw several people who were not well, and who could do with additional
care, but they did not want to seek assistance, they just wanted to
continue their journey, fearful that some border down the road might be
closed before they get to it.
I was also there when the registration backlog meant that some people,
including families with children, were stuck for three to five days in
this hellish, cold and chaotic place. This is when I saw children
sleeping under the stars, and people burning fires in front of unheated
tents. On three nights it was raining like hell, and the volunteers
running up and down the compound were completely wet. By the time they
came up from their rooms to the distribution floor, refugees were soaked
and the clothes we were giving them were also soaking wet by the time
they got back to their rooms. Within an hour we ran out of clothes and
shoes and had to send people back to their rooms – wet and empty handed.
As there was no coordination system in place, it was impossible to track
stock and properly replenish what was needed on the daily basis.
WhatsApp groups helped to match goods in the warehouses and camp sites,
and we were able to organise delivery, but again this depended on
volunteers’ ability to use technology and be connected, as well as
having the information about what is available in storage and what was
needed in the compound. Frequently, volunteers would buy shoes or
whatever else was needed a day before.
It is easy to be tempted here to think about what needs to be done to
organise stock or volunteers, introduce coordination and better systems,
get more shoes, more rain ponchos, more clean baby bottles, more tents
or more interpreters.
It is also very easy to be angry about the lack of coordination amongst
big NGOs and/or the Greek officials, local and national. There are many
smart, experienced, committed and professional people amongst NGO staff,
government officials and volunteers, and they are all trying hard to do
their very best, on the beaches, in camps, in warehouses. Some small
improvements are made almost every day. Especially on the beach where
there is a greater sense of community and action is more straightforward.
The issue here is not how to better coordinate and organise the rescue,
registration and/or emergency relief for one or few nights in various
camps. As important as that is, the issue here is that this, above all,
should not be happening – no refugee, migrant, volunteer, NGO staff
member or resident should be left to cope with this level of emergency
and need in this way.
I couldn’t stop imagining how different the response would be if this
movement of people was the result of a natural disaster. But this is a
man-made disaster. And it is made worse by men building barbed wire
fences to keep the disaster victims out.
The fact that ill-prepared volunteers are meeting the need for basic
services during this unprecedented refugee crisis should, and does,
provoke outrage. I feel outraged, not only about European governments’
lack of action and the institutional and political failure to protect
desperate and innocent people, but from the fact that our political
leadership in Europe is actually proactively spending billions to build
razor fences and prevent refugees’ safe passage.
What we are witnessing is not just incompetence and a lack of
leadership, but an active effort to make an already desperate situation
worse.
If we could let go of our fears and obsessions with borders, solutions
to what is happening in Greece and across Europe would be simple and
within the reach of all EU citizens. Ending the war in Syria or in any
other place may be complicated and it may take time. But responding to
the exodus can easily be done with few organised interventions.
The solution would require our rich countries to agree to a serious
resettlement programme that is humane, fair and responds to the scale of
the need on the ground, and is not driven by the perception of
xenophobic sentiment back at home.
Once an adequate resettlement scheme is in place, the rest is just a
question of logistics. At the moment, for the sake of us few privileged
EU citizens who can move freely, those fleeing for their lives are
policed and prevented from seeking sanctuary by our respective and
joined up border patrols.
What’s more, our governments across the EU have turned our airline and
ferry companies into border police too – so if they bring any non-EU
nationals into the EU country, they are fined €3,000. This is a fairly
new invention (2001) and it is one of the main reasons why people in
need have to risk their lives to smuggle themselves into Europe.
The main beneficiaries of this policy at present are organised
criminals. Sadly, they seem to be the best organised players in this
saga too. On average, they make €50,000 per boat. There were days when
40 boats landed on Lesvos so do your maths.
It should not be beyond the power, humanity, pragmatism and intelligence
of rich European governments and European citizens to re-think the
Schengen Agreement. Surely, when laws are no longer in service of
humanity and progress, but instead destroy lives and create suffering,
the right thing to do is to change them.
Human lives must have value beyond the borders of nation-states. In the
aftermath of the Holocaust, we as a species agreed that the right to
seek protection from persecution is a fundamental human right. Let’s say
never again. And mean it.
These are some big words, but what needs doing is rather small. Yes, we
can continue making donations to charities providing emergency relief in
the region and in Greece, yes we can continue giving our old shoes and
coats to those who need it more. Yes, we can continue to volunteer on
Lesvos, in Calais and at home to help refugees.
But we must do one more thing—we must demand change from those in power
to deliver. As citizens we can go and see our members of parliament and
our members of European Parliament as well as our respective heads of
state and our local authority leaders and urge them to take action.
Ask them to increase resettlement numbers for refugees, which also
includes refugees in Turkey, Greece and Calais. The British offer to
welcome 4,000 people per year is a shamefully inadequate response to the
reality of the situation.
Ask them for safe passage, to lift carriers’ liability restrictions in
order to facilitate safe passage by air and sea. This is the best way to
end organised crime that thrives as a result of these restrictions.
Clearly these restrictions are not working and we can no longer be in
denial about it.
Ask them to involve civil society in resettlement efforts through
community sponsorship visa schemes and organised welcome groups. So many
of us are ready and willing to do more to welcome refugees, our
government should be working for us to help protect more people.
Ask them to step up peace negotiations and peacekeeping efforts globally
through intensive diplomatic interventions.
Ask them to stop pandering to minority extreme xenophobic elements in
our societies and take leadership in meaningful integration and welcome
(if in doubt, look up what Angela Merkel and Justin Trudeau are doing in
Germany and Canada).
This will not be easy, as many of our politicians tend to worry more
about very small, but very loud xenophobes and their media outlets. But
it is not impossible either.
We have a duty and privilege to be the best citizens that we can be, and
by taking this simple civic action, we can deliver massive change. What
I learned in Lesvos, is that I may have gone there out of an urge not be
a bystander, but the not being a bystander starts now, after I came back
— not to share my story, but my call for action.
I am asking for one simple thing — let’s make the safe passage happen—
where it needs to happen first — in our parliaments. And while we are
doing our best to be on the right side of history, let us remember that
democracy is only as good as we make it.
About the author
Zrinka Bralo is CEO of Migrants Organise - self-help, organising
platform for migrants and refugees acting for justice. Zrinka is a
refugee from Sarajevo, where she worked with leading war correspondents
as a journalist during the siege in the 90s. She is a founder of Women
on the Move Awards that celebrates achievements of migrant and refugee
women and Executive Chair of the National Refugee Welcome Board set up
in September 2015 to organise and coordinate the civil society response
to refugee crisis. Zrinka Bralo, @ZrileB, zrinka@mrcf.org.uk
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