"No one deserves to spend the winter in a tent because their hopes for safety and for a better life led them to Europe"
This week, 28 Isobox containers were delivered to Lesvos for installation in Moria, where they will provide housing to some 200 to 300 asylum seekers currently living in tents. Moria was built to house about 2000 people, and currently hosts more than three times that amount--some in Isoboxes and other semi-permanent structures, many more in all forms of tents, some elevated on pallets to protect against flooding during rains, some backed up into the walls of other Isoboxes, some planted directly onto the ground, both inside and outside of Moria's perimeter fence.
It has now been a month since the launch of the #OpenTheIslands campaign, calling on Greek authorities to move asylum seekers from congested camps on Greece's frontline Aegean islands. Greek authorities have resisted the call, fearful of creating a pull factor and encouraging further unsafe crossings from Turkey into the islands as people are moved to the mainland, and also of removing people from the islands and thus from the jurisdiction of the EU-Turkey deal, which was crafted to expedite decisions for the asylum petitions of those arriving to the islands via irregular means.
A few days ago, it seems a deal was struck between Athens and Ankara, allowing expedited removals to take place not only from the islands, but also from the Greek mainland. On the heels of this agreement, it seems Greek authorities have become more willing to open the islands -- provided that doing so will no longer mean that asylum seekers are removed from the reach of the EU-Turkey deal.
To the asylum seekers stuck in Lesvos, the precise terms of the EU-Turkey deal represent a minor concern. Survival -- against the biting cold, against the constant fear of assault, against drug dealers and human traffickers preying on the most desperate -- ranks far above. To the human smuggling industry that continues to profit by sending people across Aegean waters on unsafe rafts, legal niceties are just as small a concern.
The enormity of the ongoing global migration crisis is far above the capacity of any one actor, any one municipality, even any one state, to resolve on their own. We appreciate the difficulty of policy elaboration in a body as large, complex, and politically diverse as the European Union.
Yet, we cannot but sympathise with the thousands of asylum seekers who pay the price of this enormity, of this complexity, of this imbroglio, with their misery, their dignity, and their lives. As a society bound by certain basic principles -- the right to dignity and the right to life -- we owe ourselves, we owe arriving asylum seekers, we owe humanity better. Whether islands remain closed or open, whether asylum applications are rejected or approved -- no one deserves to spend the winter in a tent because their hopes for safety and for a better life led them to Europe.
And yet thousands do. Authorities may or may not #OpenTheIslands. But if this story moves you, please support any of the many humanitarian organisations working against all odds in this crisis.
Thank you
Posted on Facebook by 'Together for better days'