In early November, an email appeared in my inbox: a plea for volunteers in a refugee camp on Leros, Greece. It told of an underfunded, overcrowded, and understaffed camp. Thousands of refugees were arriving on the island daily. The message spoke of inhumane treatment by Greek officials. The refugees were forced to sleep in the streets, and they desperately called for help.
Although it came from a stranger, the message somehow resonated. One of numerous Greek islands on the front line of Europe’s refugee crisis, Leros is much less compared to a three-hour flight from my family’s residence in Munich. I felt guilty about my comfortable life amid safety and plenty. I have actually volunteered throughout my adult life—and I don’t romanticize the work—however traveling to a Greek refugee camp wasn’t food preparation in a local soup kitchen or teaching disadvantaged higher school students. Friends urged me not to go. however this felt imperative. The scale of the crisis confounded the senses, and yet felt intimate. Refugees in the millions were risking their lives for an uncertain future in Europe and at every step along the means local authorities and volunteer organizations had been overburdened for months. It took me much less compared to a day to make the decision to go.
The Dodecanese islands—a cluster of 12 major islands, including Rhodes and Patmos—are a lot closer to Turkey compared to to Greece. While Leros has actually the pastoral beauty we associate along with all Greek islands, it is not a choice tourist destination. along with its 8,000 inhabitants, the island is filled along with the casualties of an earlier housing boom, once loans were cheap and even the town baker felt entitled to a second home.
Leros is a microcosm of the refugee crisis.
Half-finished, crumbling properties, empty storefronts and bistros cover the island. Because of its strategic location and large natural harbors, Leros was occupied by Italy for more compared to 30 years, from 1912 to 1943—hence the profusion of dilapidated military structures all over the island. The largest of them were turned in to psychiatric wards in the 1950s to deal along with Greece’s most untreatable patients. The hospital’s startlingly inhuman conditions prompted the BBC to nickname Leros the “island of the damned.” Describing scenes of naked patients chained to trees, the London Observer in 1989 likened Leros to a “concentration camp.”
Leros is a microcosm of the refugee crisis. By the time I arrived there in December, the job had become “easier,” as it were. along with dropping temperatures making the crossing from Turkey ever more dangerous, we had an standard of only 400 refugees per day—sometimes 60, sometimes 800. Still, the camp population kept expanding, and life quickly became unbearable.
How do they get hold of to this forsaken island? A favorite staging area is Izmir, Turkey’s third-largest city and a hub of the trafficking industry. One Syrian refugee I’ll call Ahmed told me: “You need only mention you’re on the move and dozens of smugglers will certainly spring up offering to take you across. They are all Syrians.” From Izmir, the migrants are taken to smaller sized coastal towns where their dangerous journey to Greece begins. At that point, they have actually been wandering for numerous months.
Ahmed said that Leros was his 17th stop. Moving along with his younger brother, he had “adopted” a 13-year-old Moroccan boy along the way, that spoke only Arabic and was traveling without family or friends. The trip costs between $800 and $3,500, depending on how well you negotiate, how far you want to go, and whether you buy “bulk” or merely a single passage. That’s the nasty reality, unless you can easily claim bona fide refugee status by proving that you come from war zones like Afghanistan, Iraq, or Syria. If you are merely a “migrant,” you should be smuggled further through Europe.
Being a “migrant” will certainly cost you. If you are a Moroccan, Algerian, or Iranian, if you travel without any passport or along with forged papers, the price shoots up. You might be turned away at the European Union’s external borders, or if you get hold of in and are caught, you might be deported. The Greek border patrol in Leros can easily be fairly lenient, however once nonrefugees get hold of to mainland Greece and farther in to the EU, the system is much much less accommodating.
So at the camp, we kept reminding refugees of their rights under global law while warning migrants about the grievous complications ahead. Yet without fail, everybody insisted on moving forward.
The traffickers do not bring their charges directly to Leros, given the risk of prosecution and imprisonment. Entry without a visa is of course illegal, as well, however the sheer numbers make enforcement almost impossible. Usually, the refugees bound for Leros are deposited on Farmakonisi, a bare island along with a small military base where they should wait for days to be selected up by the Greek coast guard or a merchant marine vessel, the VOS Grace donated by Britain to aid the search-and-rescue missions in the Aegean Sea.
The inhumane conditions on Farmakonisi have actually provoked charges of human rights violations versus the Greek military. A refugee traveling along with his wife and young daughter told me how he and a group of 80 others were penned up on the barren island for 5 days. Soldiers were shooting in to the air to intimidate them. As opposed to feeding them, as called for by law, the soldiers were blithely selling them water and biscuits. Sleeping on the ground in the rain, he watched various other starving refugees consume snails.
They nicknamed the island “Biscuit Island.”
Once the refugees finally disembark on Leros, they are given blankets, toothbrushes, soap, and snacks. Then they go through the registration process, managed by Frontex. Frontex is the European border police, however they have actually no real power. So they are relegated to checking passports, fingerprinting, or interrogating those that have actually no passports and claim refugee status.
This process has actually become more rigorous following the reports that two of the Paris attackers had passed through Leros along with stolen passports last year. however a longtime volunteer, that asked not to be named, told me that depending on their own mood and nationality, officials try to register most individuals as Syrian refugees if they don’t have actually a passport. A longtime local swore he had seen the mastermind of the Paris massacre, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, on the island this summer.
Next to the makeshift processing area is a coffee shop, where the proprietor—that likewise doubles as the town oracle—prepares meals for the brand-new arrivals and loitering rubberneckers. One Friday night he hosted a boisterous party while a ship brought in 300 shivering refugees. A volunteer and I had come to take a young Iraqi mother and her three soaked children—one of whom was autistic—to a home outside the camp. It was an uncomfortable scene: here the boisterous carousing, there the miserable, dejected arrivals.
Under the very best of circumstances, registration is a chaotic process, and as volunteers, we were often in the way. Others merely used the stage for a little grandstanding. Volunteers normally operate under a strict code of conduct, which emphasizes discretion above all. Yet on Leros the code did not necessarily rule behavior. A high-visibility vest is all you need to acquire an air of officialdom and to inflate your very own importance. Coordinators told me of volunteers showing up looking for hardcore adventure—like pulling drowning individuals from the ocean. once informed that ships actually drop refugees off at the port, some volunteers up and left.
I met young European men that traveled to Leros merely “to see just what points were like”—a kind of disaster tourism. The type can easily be found all over Europe, operating under the assumption that hugs, teddy bears, and their mere presence are all a refugee needs. They need a lot more, like legal advice, medical care, safety, shelter, and work.
When the numbers dropped briefly a week prior to my arrival, I learned that the same person that had sent the impassioned email urging me to volunteer had decamped for Idomeni, near the Macedonian border. The place had become a brand-new focus of the refugee crisis, suddenly enjoying massive media attention.
Leros doesn’t get hold of much media coverage these days. The camp is in the focus of town, surrounded by the local higher school, a nursing home, the hospital, and empty restaurants. Bookended by a dilapidated former mental ward and a crumbling former naval building, the camp is made up of a cluster of small Ikea huts (which sleep about 15 each). There is a wall of port-a-potties, a handful trailers, and two large 100-person tents on a dirty, gravelly lot.
Everyone sleeps on mats or old wooden pallets. The former mental ward houses the waiting areas, a makeshift clinic, and the “boutique”—a chaotic place where refugees receive brand-new clothes. The old naval structure is the place where pallets upon pallets of donations land and groups of volunteers job 12-hour shifts.
Everything from diapers to blankets is kept there. Dirty underwear, party dresses, single shoes, moth-bitten sweaters, and open bags of candy are likewise among the donations. Mold covers the walls of both buildings, making sickly green and brown patterns from floor to ceiling. Large slabs of wall crumble off every time you move. Windows are broken and should be taped shut along with plastic.
Feral cats used to live there for ages, leaving behind the stench of urine and feces. Plywood boards on hinges substitute for doors. however within hours, the weird logic of this little universe begins to make perfect sense. You run from one end to the other, replenishing stocks and answering questions along with a five-word Arabic vocabulary. The most vital term is bukra—tomorrow.
An 84-year-old matriarch in a wheelchair made the treacherous journey along with her family because that was much better compared to staying put.
You pull a missing size-43 boot from under a pile of 100 various other shoes. Then you try to mix baby formula in the most hygienic means you can, given the conditions. Eight hundred refugees have actually to be squeezed in to a space fit for only 450.
Though the camp falls officially under the purview of the United Nations higher Commissioner for Refugees, it is actually managed everyday by hardworking volunteers. I counted eight nonprofit groups that don’t integrate smoothly, nor communicate effectively. So camp life is an accurate simile for the larger forces at work, along with kindness competing versus organizational self-interest.
That said, it is solely by the good grace of specific volunteers that these camps go on running. This is the bright spot in a crisis dominated by bureaucratic maneuvering in Brussels and barbed wire fences on the EU’s eastern borders. The camp is neither sanitary, nor comfortable, however it is vibrant.
The refugees are lucky because they have actually at last reached the EU, and for a brief moment, the road ahead appears full of promise. During my stay, there were two casualties, both the result of extreme hypothermia. Otherwise, most of the arrivals were in surprisingly robust health—newborns, children, and octogenarians alike.
An 84-year-old matriarch in a wheelchair, incontinent and immobile, made the treacherous journey along with her family because that was still much better compared to staying put. Even though most of the refugees, about four-fifths, are young men, there are always plenty of kids in the camp that appear to be remarkably calm. Like the Iraqi mother’s three children: a 4-year-old daughter, a 6-year-old mute autistic son, and a 10-year-old boy.
She worked as an English professor in Baghdad and told me she had tried for a year to get hold of a visa to Germany to join her husband there. She finally decided to take the smuggler route. On her means over in a rust bucket, she and her children were forced to throw Every little thing however the clothes on their backs overboard once the boat started sinking.
Her kids were shellshocked once they reached Leros. As I tucked them in, the eldest son began crying silently in to his pillow. The next day they were running around the camp, playing, smiling, and chattering away. We job in shifts however don’t get hold of out until well in to the night. We don’t want to. The camp has actually a magnetic pull. As quickly as you leave, you want to come right back. once we aren’t scurrying around for supplies, we play soccer, make music, play hopscotch, or draw along with the children. Volunteers and refugees go to nearby cafés together.
I have actually maintained close contact along with a few refugees, individuals to whom I have actually grown attached. On my very first day in the camp I was tasked along with helping to shovel stagnant urine-filled water from a second-floor room leaking in to the boutique. The very first person I encountered was a young man working without gloves or a mouth guard, wearing a nice pair of hiking boots while fighting the filthy water. Mistaking your man for a volunteer, I learned that he had fled Damascus along with his young wife and child earlier that week. He worked harder compared to all of us.
He had studied psychology in Damascus and called for to get hold of his family to a place as far as he could from Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s regime. He spoke perfect English and had a wry sense of humor. We have actually stayed in touch, and though he arrived safely in Germany 6 days after he left Leros, he is now struggling to move his family in to a safer, more hygienic facility. He is forbidden from working, and his wife and daughter are sick. Even though Germany is the brand-new promised land for most refugees, it is still the very first step in to a brand-new life that should be built from scratch.
Officials say that more compared to 1 million refugees have actually entered Europe this year. Unofficially the numbers are higher. The EU has actually come up along with a strategy to turn a handful of Greek islands in to “hot spots”—large permanent camps designed to contain up to 1,000 people. Leros is one of them. The brand-new location of this hot spot: the rather same former psychiatric hospital once dubbed a “concentration camp.”
Read more of Slate’s coverage of the European migrant crisis.
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