Letter from Lesbos: Thousands of people in refugee camps remain stuck in limbo
By Ashley Miznazi
As I flew into Lesbos on a plane riding choppy air currents over the narrow Mytilini Strait that separates Greece from Turkey, all I could see were countless olive trees and stretches of sparkling beach.
But the eye deceives, especially when you’re intent, as I was, to get a look at the grim realities of the refugee camps that roiled life on the fabled island in the wake of the humanitarian crises mostly in Syria and Afghanistan.
I traveled to Lesbos last August searching for answers about displaced refugees after the fire that burned the largest refugee camp in Europe, known as Moria in September 2020. Members of my extended Syrian family died at sea trying to escape the Syrian Civil War when I was in middle school, and I wanted to hear the stories of others who attempted similar journeys and survived.
Once I landed, I found a more sobering side of the island. More than 4,000 refugees live in a camp called Mavrovouni, located in the capital city. Known as “hell” to both residents and outsiders, Mavrovouni was suffering through a record heat wave with temperatures reaching up to 113 degrees when I was there. It was enough to start wildfires and for the government to advise people to stay indoors. Refugees living at Mavrovouni had no choice but to bear the heat with little to shelter them but fabric tents.
On my first day on Lesbos, I encountered a snag. I had been warned beforehand about the restrictions the government placed on journalists that can make it impossible for even media professionals in the area to enter the camp. And indeed, all I could manage was a look from outside, forbidding concrete walls guarded by armed police.
Then my luck changed. Walking the streets of Lesbos’ commercial district, I met Ahmed, a 21-year-old Syrian refugee who moved out of Mavrovouni in 2021 before I arrived. Ahmed, who asked for his last name to not be disclosed out of fear of deportation, said he left the temporary camp because he noticed unlivable conditions such as violence, overcrowding and access to medical care were not improving. Ahmed chose to forgo the €90 government stipend and instead work side jobs under the table to pay rent at a friend’s place.
“I was in the camp and the money was there,” Ahmed said, “But life was outside. What would you choose? Money or freedom?”
Ahmed and I talked on the patio of a coffee shop. He wore a checkered shirt with a polo hat, chained necklace and a fanny pack across his chest. We spoke to each other in short English and Arabic phrases with the help of Google translate. He laughed frequently during the conversation, in between talking about situations that were mentally troubling to him. It was surreal talking to somebody who grew up in Aleppo, the same city in Syria where my father lived for 20 years of his life. Since being on the island, the Greek government has rejected Ahmed’s applications for asylum four times. He is terrified of the Greek government deporting him to Turkey. Now, Ahmed waits. He dreams of reaching Germany to be with his brother, who received asylum to escape the Syrian Civil War, but he is unsure about what this fourth rejection means for him. He has spent the last two years without his family on the island.
Ahmed had also lived in the camp, Moria, before it was replaced by Mavrovouni. He said in 2020 he saw someone die at the hands of violence or neglect weekly within the walls of Moria. He also experienced the violence firsthand when other residents learned Ahmed brought a camera into the camp and wanted to take it and sell it. When Ahmed refused, he was physically attacked by a resident of the camp. Ahmed’s property was destroyed in the encounter.
“I was wet and bloody and went to the police and they did nothing,” Ahmed said. “I used to smile even when my heart ached a thousand times. Now every day I look up and say, when will I get out of this hell?”
Moria burned down in September 2020 when a resident inside set it off as a plea to reveal the European Union’s inhumane refugee camps to the world. After the fire that displaced over 12,000 people, the European Commission expressed willingness to find a solution.
“Moria is a stark reminder,” said EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in a published statement September 2020. “We need to find sustainable solutions on migration and we all have to step up.”
While news coverage of the situation in Lesbos has dwindled, the closing of Moria has put pressure on the refugees who reside on the island. Despite the EU Commission’s promise in 2020 to set up a task force to help develop living conditions in a “humane and effective way,” long-term plans remain unclear. Mavrovouni has been present in the area for more than a year since the fire, but the camp holds only the status of “temporary,” foregoing government promises that a permanent camp would be built by the summer of 2021.
Refugees I spoke with said they feel they will never be able to get out of what seems like an endless ordeal of poor living conditions impacting their physical and mental health.
“I have been racing all my life,” Ahmed said. “I don’t know the Greeks. They live in houses and we live in tents. Nobody feels anyone.”
Lesbos was thrust to the forefront of the refugee crisis in 2015 when more than 500,000 migrants escaping war, persecution and economic instability in the Middle East came from Turkey. Many of the migrants were from Syria and Afghanistan and boarded inflatable life rafts packed at double their capacity to travel through the Aegean sea. These rafts often capsized, causing more than 3,000 deaths that year.
The arrivals in Greece have diminished, partly because of the EU-Turkey deal regarding refugees made in 2016. After the deal, asylum-seekers that arrive in the Greek islands can no longer continue to the mainland or further into Europe, unless they receive asylum or an official transfer. In June, Turkey was declared “safe” for asylum seekers, allowing the Greek government to send more people back to Turkey without having to examine whether they deserved asylum. Refugees and advocates argue that pushing refugees back to Turkey violates EU law because each asylum case’s merits should be examined individually.
“I wanted to jump from the highest place when I was in Turkey,” Ahmed said because Turkish officials threatened to deport him back to Syria.
Marios Andriotis, a representative from the government funded agency United Nations High Commissioner of Refugees, said the influx of refugees on the island has had an effect on tourism dollars because of the misconception that the island is in a state of crisis. “Almost 800,000 people passed through Lesbos in 2015,” Andriotis said. “The local community stood by them. Local volunteers were providing food, distributing blankets, and saving people from the sea. It’s understandable that they’re tired of the five years.”
The local grassroots organizations trying to help the refugees on the island said the backlash from islanders affects their operations. Eric Kempson, a volunteer who was among the first to provide warehouse supplies and emotional support to refugees, thinks some islanders are more discriminatory than tired. Kempson said he has received the most harassment for his volunteering with refugees in the tourist towns up in the northern coast.
“There is a lot of hate in these tourist towns,” Kempson said. “I got death threats against me and my wife.”
Kempson said as a result of the threats, he made a decision to relocate his daughter to London in 2016, when she was 16 years old. He said his daughter had to live on the couches of friends’ houses, but it gave him peace of mind.
“They actually sent a message saying we are going to rape your daughter and slit her throat,” Kempson said.
Locals met the police with opposition when the government green-lighted funding for a new camp. Individuals blocked construction, threw stones and demanded that the migrants be another country’s burden. Some locals wrote a letter to the Deputy Minister of Migration and Asylum asking for the closure of the migrant facility, claiming the refugees were the reason for the theft of their livestock and backyard equipment. Members of far-right groups from several different European countries also traveled to Lesbos and hit cars of non-governmental organizations with metal poles and burned a refugee community center.
Parwana Amiri is a 17-year-old Afghan refugee who first arrived in Greece in 2017. She stayed at Camp Moria in Lesbos. On the island, she witnessed kids attempting suicide, women losing sleep to ward off attacks and riots that led to police brutality inside the camp. Outside the camp, migrants were also walking on eggshells.
Many migrants in Lesbos faced violence last year at the hands of locals and are afraid if they speak now, their asylum application will be rejected, said Amiri. She relocated with her mother and sister to a camp in Athens in 2020.
“People died because the priority in Europe is to control borders and not save lives,” Amiri said.
Amiri lives in a state of limbo, unsure when Greece will accept her asylum application. With asylum, the country allows for three years of residency and travel rights within the member states of the United Nations.
When I sat with Amiri at her current residence in Athens, it became clear within minutes that residents looked up to as a leader inside the camp. While we were filming an interview a security guard approached us and said recording was a violation of the camp’s regulations. Parwana insisted on finishing the conversation. She said it was important to speak up and express the realities of refugee life. Amiri’s experiences have had such a powerful effect on her that she’s taken it upon herself to chronicle not only her stories, but that of her neighbors in the camp through blogging. Her aim is to put these refugees’ perspective in front of a world that the refugees feel has forgotten all about them.
Amiri writes in her blog called Birds of an Immigrant, in hopes people acknowledge the dignity of refugees. “In this situation,” she posted in October 2019, “the first thing that comes to my mind to tell you is, we didn’t come here to Europe for money, and not for becoming a European citizen. It was just to breathe a day in peace.”
In my travels, I saw Lesbos’ stunning scenery juxtaposed with the harsh conditions of the refugee camps, creating a gilded image of the island. But just as the dirt roads cut through the landscape, the cracks of that gilded image showed through on closer inspection.
On the north side of the island, a 20-minute hike along a steep, twisting off-road path through the mountains leads to countless lifejackets that lay strewn on the hills. Whenever rescue committees find life jackets at sea or when they’re taken off refugees, they’re dumped in what is known as the “lifejacket graveyard.” Intertwined with the lifejackets, I saw kids’ shoes with Velcro straps, floaties, deflated life rafts and broken boats creating piles that tower over six feet into the air. It’s a stark reminder and memorial for the lives risked and lost at sea, but is hidden from view and marked on the map as a garbage patch.
In one of Amiri’s most recent letters, she addresses world politicians: “Can you understand what I am talking about? We are here, thousands of wounded people, asked to prove our vulnerability. Yet, no one really sees us, no one really listens to us, no one really tries to understand our wound, let alone heal it.”
