It has been a very busy week since my last update which left
me at a cliff-hanger ending, waging a legal battle with papers and pens
and basic information about the asylum procedure and charging through
the front gates of Moria. Spoiler alert: I still haven't made it into
Moria! I tried for a few days, arriving at the front gate relatively
proper, sporting a collared shirt and a list of names & contact
details of my Morian friends ('clients') that I kept in an old brief
case found in the CK team warehouse. I told the guards I was there to
provide counseling services to people who had requested them, as is
their right under the Asylums Procedures Directive. I brought that
directive with me in case there was any confusion. They told me to come
back later, to talk to a chief of police who wasn't there, to arrange a
meeting with Anthi Karangeli of the interior ministry (the so-called
dragon lady who runs Moria) without any information about how to get in
touch with her other than come back and talk to the next guard after the
shift change. In many ways they told me to go away over and over again.
I
went back to the gate with actual lawyers and even one supreme court
lawyer from Lesbos and found that the situation at the gate was
identical even for non-undercover-musicians. It's crazy. At the legal
coordination meeting for advocacy groups working on the island, we heard
similar stories, but most frightening was another fact which came to
light in our discussion. There is no protocol, no set of procedures
which the Greek Asylum Service is following and applying uniformly to
everyone in the camp. Even if we could get into the camp to give advice,
we don't know what we're preparing people for and the evidence we've
seen so far in the form of rejection letters issued on the basis of
inadmissability suggests some form of blanket expulsion that does not
examine the merits of the cases in question. And so we wait. The pope
came and went, everybody was fed for a couple days and the place got
cleaned up a bit but now it's degrading back to its previous state of
hunger, violence and disorder.
My legal ambitions being somewhat
stonewalled, I've gone back to bringing music and company, making daily
visits to the fence at Moria and inside another camp up the road called
Kara Tepe. Kara Tepe is an open camp, meaning the approximately 1000
people there (mostly women, children, families and generally vulnerable
people) can come and go as they please. I have an agreement with the man
who runs this camp and refers to its inhabitants as "My People" to be
able to go inside with my guitar on the grounds that I don't do anything
other than play music and make his "visitors" happy. Stavros is an
incredibly intimidating ex-military, ex-sercret service type, always
wearing dark sunglasses that complement his après-safari look. Whenever I
see him, he is holding court in the shade like a lion. And even though
he doesn't ever appear to be doing anything, the toilets are always
clean, food gets delivered door-to-door to every house, and the people
are generally happy with some sense of independence. The only time I
caught him in a moment of weakness was as he was being pummeled with
pebbles by a group of laughing children. He took off his glasses and
looked me in the eyes and said that somebody needs to run these kids
around until they are exhausted.
I still have notebooks and pens
and copies of the UNHCR's asylum interview preparation self-help kit
tucked away in my guitar case but for the most part, they stay there.
The lawyers I've been working with don't have time to follow up with
anyone or know what to tell them and I'm afraid of giving people false
hope. It's really sad to go over someone's story and tell them that even
though ISIS burnt his home and his office to the ground and told his
neighbours that they were going to find him and his family wherever they
are and kill them all, even though he fears for his life in Turkey
because it's so easily accessible to his persecutors, he will probably
be sent back there because he failed to properly document his case. In
his own words, he's not an economic migrant but a frightened human being
seeking shelter. At the moment it feels like that shelter is not mine
to give. Stavros told me that only Greek lawyers are welcome at Kara
Tepe and that all of the foreign lawyers who want to help the refugees
need to go back to their own countries and change the laws so that they
can start accepting refugees there. His nationalist rhetoric stood as an
affront to the zeitgeist of "No Borders, No Nations" which inspires
volunteers to action but is nonetheless a very pragmatic outlet for
their goodwill. There are 42000 refugees stranded in Greece and they
don't want to be here. The answer was and remains: tear down your
fences!
One bit of really great news that is spiraling
around the volunteer grapeline is that everyone who has been in Moria
for 25 days will be allowed to come and go as of Monday. I have no idea
how this is going to happen in practice and nobody inside has received
any kind of news about it. I read it on a pretty minor looking news site
and can't find it anywhere else, but according to the new director of
UNHCR on Lesbos it's true. The down-side and possible counter-rumour is
that Kara Tepe is expected to receive an extra 2000 guests and if that
happens, I can't imagine the toilets staying clean there (among other
problems which would carry over from putting way too many people in a
tiny space). Also, the No Borders Kitchen which was home to about 300
Pakistani men got bull-dozed this week and everyone was bused off to
Moria. And the Better Days For Moria camp in the olive grove across the
street has been completely dismantled, and that would have been a good
alternative location. In fact, I really don't know where people are
going to be housed if they leave Moria. But focusing on the good news
side of things, if and when my friends in Moria are allowed to walk out
the front door we're going to the beach and we're all looking forward to
it and talking about it as if it's really going to happen. We never
mentioned it, but they all arrived on a boat that came through
Borderline's abandoned-cheese-factory-turned-welcome-centre on my
first day on the island and I know which beach they landed on and how
beautiful it is. My biggest wish is to take them back there so they can
start their time in Europe over again, preferably with ice cream and a
BBQ with non-food-ration-sized portions and no-lineup. I'm not really
sure where to take them after the freedom party but these days little
victories are worth alot and that would be a really great one.
