Greece puts up a wall as Turkey besieges Europe with refugees

This article was published by The Critic. 

Moria refugee camp is the largest in Greece. Its current population of about 20,000 stretches well beyond the organised camp into surrounding olive groves.

LESVOS, Greece – It is midnight on a solitary beach on the north shores of the island of Lesvos. A boatload of 42 asylum-seekers is bedding down on the grass in front of a seaside chapel to St. Demetrios. The rubber dinghy they arrived in from Turkey bobs in the shallows just yards away.

“Turkey told people ‘If you want to go, you can go to Europe’,” said Ayman Ahmadi, a Syrian who worked 16-hour days in a shoe factory for two years to pay for his crossing. “Before we saw that whoever wanted to go to Europe, the police would catch these people.”

Most of the group – who include 12 small children – are from Afghanistan, though there are also some from Syria, Uganda and Guinea. It was raining when they arrived just before dusk, and their clothes are soaked. The night air is damp and cold, but there is nowhere else to take them.

Islanders on Lesvos blockade camp and port as refugee arrivals spike

This article was published by Al Jazeera International.

 

A group of Afghan children plays on the north shores of Lesvos, shortly after they and their parents arrived in a rubber dinghy on March 1.

LESVOS, Greece - Refugees arriving on the island of Lesvos on Sunday told stories suggesting that the Turkish government had co-opted smugglers in its policy of ushering asylum-seekers west.

A group of 28 Syrians and people of several African nationalities sat on the beach near the Mytilene airport under the watchful eye of police, waiting to be taken for registration.

“I was in church with my wife, and the smugglers came to church and told us that if we wanted to go to Greece we could get on a boat for free. And we went with him to the beach and got on the boat,” a Congolese man told Al Jazeera without stating his name.

A man from Sierra Leone happened to be walking past the beach at the time. “I asked if I could go and they said ‘you can go’. I didn’t have to pay anything,” he said.