By Eric Maddox on You Tube
Got three minutes to walk with me through Moria Refugee Camp's "Olive Grove"?
Imagine spending months in this place. I've met people who have spent well over a year.
Please be sure to share this when you've finished.
A walk around Moria Camp in the winter rain is an assault on the senses as tufts of toxic smoke float through the olive grove while you slip and slide in the mud and try to avoid contact with human excrement on the periphery of the camp and garbage throughout. Nobody wants to live like this. If you've seen what passes for toilets here then you instantly understand why someone would use an open field. If you note the lack of sanitation services here then you understand why people are living in their own garbage. If you feel the cold and the rain on your skin here, and if you see how inadequate the shelters are at providing protection from the damp and the cold, then you understand the environmental destruction wrought on the surrounding hillsides as people hack at trees for wood they can burn to keep warm. This is happening in Europe right now. In a space designed to temporarily accommodate 3,000 people, there are 21,000 people living in filth, and cold, in sickness, in fear, and with no assurances about when or how it will end. An Iraqi family is facing deportation to Turkey (and then very likely back to Iraq) as I write this. And right now about 900,000 Syrians are fleeing from Idlib province in the largest displacement of people in Syria since the war started. I've met one family who fled Idlib along the very path you will see in this video. Filmed on February 12th, 2020.