Trapped in Greece, refugees are desperate to get out
They are being barred from continuing their odyssey through Europe
Guylo is a musician, looking for a place of peace to play his guitar. Fares wants to study. Mohammad is waiting for news of his wife and child after becoming separated from them en route.
All are refugees trapped in Greece after being barred from continuing their odyssey through Europe — and are desperate to get out. “We are looking for [smuggler] networks, do you know someone?” asks Guylo, 37, who fled fighting in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
“I will do anything to get somewhere where I can be at peace, do my business, play my music,” he says, adding that Paris would be his first choice.
In recent weeks, thousands of refugees have been blocked in Greece following a decision by several European nations to only allow transit through their borders to refugees from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. Last week, over 2,000 mainly African refugees were taken to Athens from the Greek border with Macedonia to the north, and lodged in a former Olympic taekwondo hall in the south of the capital.
Conditions are poor in the facility that authorities say can nominally accommodate 300 people in an emergency.
“We sleep on the floor, there are no mattresses, there is no hot water,” says Mohammad, a 36-year-old Palestinian who became separated from his wife and child on the Macedonia border.
The refugees receive three meals a day from humanitarian agencies, but they sleep on a concrete floor, sanitation is basic and brawls are common. “We are scared here, we can’t take any more,” says Guylo.
Greece, in economic crisis for the past five years, says it plans to repatriate what it calls ‘economic migrants’ as it lacks the capacity to accommodate them.
State agency ANA on Friday reported that many refugees are returning to the island of Lesbos — the main point of entry into Europe from Turkey — hoping to get falsely re-registered as Syrian, Iraqi or Afghan and have a better chance of crossing the border.