USA TODAY International Edition
GREEK ISLE ON FRONT LINE OF MIGRANT CRISIS
Tiny island of Kos is the scene of hostility and hope for a constant flood of refugees
It was past 10 p. m. as an angry crowd of refugees gathered outside the police station on this tiny Greek island off the Turkish coast, chanting, “We want peace.” Five helmeted policemen stood before the crowd, one holding a canister of tear gas.
Many in the crowd had been waiting for more than a week to obtain a temporary permit to remain in the country, and they were upset that there is no refugee camp or other government assistance for them; they sleep on the streets if they can’t afford to pay for a hotel room or rent a tent. Some locals who don’t want them here have attacked them.
The refugees don’t want to be here, either. They want to move on to Germany or another European country where they are welcome and cared for. Some worry about using up their life savings before they are allowed to leave Greece. Others are still grieving the loss of family members who died back home or along the way.
“The crossing from the sea was the most dangerous part of our journey,” said Mahdi Khademi, 16, an Afghan refugee who traveled 15 days with an older brother to escape Taliban attacks in his hometown of Herat. “We were eight hours in the sea and the engine stopped working midway.”
Kos is on the front lines of Europe’s worst migrant crisis since World War II. Every morning, dozens of tiny boats land onshore filled with people from the Middle East and Africa who are fleeing war or seeking a better economic life. It’s a scene that has been repeated daily for weeks here and on other Mediterranean islands that have become the most popular entry points to the continent.
On the night of the protest, members of Kos Solidarity, a volunteer group that aids the migrants, stood between the police and recent arrivals to calm things down. But around midnight, the riot police pushed refugees away from the station while residents threw eggs at the volunteers.
Giorgos Chartofilis, a skinny physics teacher who belongs to Kos Solidarity, said his group alone gives out food to as many as 2,000 people. “There have been times that it was only three of us and we had a line of 1,000 people,” he said.
As Chartofilis and other volunteers served food, a local resident who draws tourists’ portraits for a living yelled at them, “Yes, feed them so they’ll have more strength to protest at night.”
The hostility reflects the strains that the huge influx of migrants is creating for Greece at a time when it is grappling with economic distress and financial sacrifices demanded by European creditors as the price for new loans needed to avert bankruptcy.
In 2014, 43,500 people arrived in Greece. Through mid- August this year, more than 160,000 had landed on Greek shores, or nearly two- thirds of the 250,000 mi- grants who have crossed into Europe so far this year, according to the International Organization for Migration. About 2,300 died trying to make the perilous journey, the Swiss- based group said.
Greece’s government has said it can’t provide for the thousands of migrants that arrive daily. It has pleaded with the European Union for emergency support to deal with the influx.
As they wait for aid, migrants sleep in the shadow of the Medieval- era Neratzai Castle, a major tourist destination here, where hundreds of locals and visitors bring them water bottles, food and toys, proof that not everyone on the island is anti- migrant.
On the beach in Kos, some migrants have rented tents for $ 16 a night. Others sleep on the sand.
Syrian refugee Abu Fidel, 27, happily showed his ferry ticket to the port of Piraeus near Athens. He received his six- month permit to stay in Greece and will continue his journey north with his cousins and nephews. He plans to pass through the Balkans, Hungary and Austria before reaching Germany, where the government promised this week to host 800,000 migrants.
Three months ago, Fidel’s wife and his only child died when an airstrike bombed their house in Aleppo, which has been the scene of mass destruction during Syria’s long civil war. For 12 days, he waited in Kos for his papers. “There’s nowhere to shower, nowhere to sleep,” he said, as his cousin prepared to wash his clothes in the sea.
On his phone, he saved videos of migrant scuffles with the police. He showed a photo of himself on the ground after an officer struck him with a baton while he tried to remove a small child from the fight. He still has a lump on his head. Scrolling through the pictures on his phone, he came to photos of his wife and son. He kissed the screen.
“We just wish that the war would stop, and we could go back to our country,” he said.
“There have been times that it was only three of us ( volunteers) and we had a line of 1,000 people.” Giorgos Chartofilis, of Kos Solidarity