In 2019, sixteen-year-old Parwana Amiri and her family arrived on the Greek island of Lesvos. They fled Afghanistan hoping for a safe haven, but instead they encountered Fortress Europe. Constrained to live in the island’s notorious Moria refugee camp, Amiri started a journal, chronicling the experiences of people around her. This was published in 2020 as ‘Letters to the World from Moria’.
Amiri, who now lives in Ritsona, a camp north of Athens – where she continues to write her ‘letters’ – says it is important to draw attention to the situation of refugees. “Put yourself in our shoes! We are not safe in Moria,” she writes. “We didn’t escape from our homelands to stay hidden and trapped. We didn’t pass the borders and risk our lives to live in fear and danger.” Amiri has recently taken to the streets alongside other Ritsona residents to campaign for fairer and faster asylum processing.
EU countries have been struggling since 2015 to formulate a clear strategy for accommodating refugees, while the pandemic has brought new health and sanitation concerns for people living in camps. According to a report by the International Rescue Committee (IRC), more than 19,000 asylum-seekers wait for their claims to be processed in Greece alone. Most of them live in temporary reception centres, waiting for their cases to be heard.
“Theirs is a terrible reality and it shouldn’t be this way,” Amiri writes. “The reasons people escape their home are different according to their individual stories – their families, jobs and the situation in their villages / towns of origin. But the main factor is the internal and cross-border war – not just for us Afghans but for most refugees. When forced to leave and journeying this way, we are risking our lives in order to survive. Even after considering all dangers and the possibility of death, this is still the better choice amongst bad alternatives.”
Broken promises
Even though EU member states pledged in September to share responsibility for asylum-seekers, those who are actually willing to take their share is relatively low. For instance, while Germany has agreed to relocate over 1,500 vulnerable people from refugee camps in Greece, the Austrian government is sending “care packages” instead. As an Austrian citizen myself, it is shameful to live in a country that shows so little international solidarity to vulnerable people, children included.
Austria has long had fairly rigid asylum policies, blaming the infamous “pull” factors for any influx for as long as I can think. Despite public pushback, Austria’s coalition government continues its inhumane course on migrants and refugees. In fact, children who are born in Austria but whose parents’ asylum claims are rejected are deported to their parents’ home countries. In the last couple of weeks, we witnessed police violently ripping students out of their schools – during a pandemic – and sending them overseas.
Meanwhile, our screens are filled with horrific images from the overcrowded and underfunded camps in Greece. Temporary housing facilities are regularly burned down and winter storms wreak havoc. Not to speak of the personal atrocities that camp inhabitants face – from unhygienic living conditions to rats gnawing on children’s toes. As Amiri describes: “Put yourself in our shoes! Can you live in a place that you cannot walk alone even when you just want to go to the toilet? Can you live in a place, where there are hundreds of unaccompanied minors that no one can stop from attempting suicide. That no one can stop from drinking.”
