Author: newsweek.com | 22 November 2018
Sitting outside her family’s makeshift metal container with head in hands, 17-year-old Haya* is painfully aware that she is living in one of Europe’s worst refugee camps—even if she can’t see it.
Large white bandages cover both of her eyes, plunging the teenager into daily darkness as she struggles to recover from shrapnel wounds sustained in a bombardment at the Turkish-Syrian border, where she and her family had sought safety after fleeing war-torn Deir Ezzor.
“She’s bleeding from her eyes,” her mother says, standing watchfully over her daughter, whose real name has been withheld to protect her identity.
Haya and her family, who shared their story with Newsweek last month, are among thousands of refugees and migrants who have been forced to grapple with the desperate living conditions at Greece’s biggest refugee camp, Moria.
Based on the island of Lesbos, known locally as Lesvos, the overcrowded Moria refugee camp—as well as the unofficial overflow site set up outside its grounds known as the “Olive Grove,” where hundreds of refugees and migrants, including many families with small children, are living in makeshift tents—has been widely condemned over unsafe and dangerous conditions.
Yet, the United Nations’ refugee agency, the UNHCR, estimates that around 6,000 refugees and migrants are currently living there, nearly three times the number of people the camp was designed to hold. And despite many arriving at the camp with serious medical conditions, physical injuries and mental health issues, medical care is virtually non-existent. Read more>>>