I thank Doctors Without Borders from the bottom of my heart for their openness and competence.
I am very grateful that you exist!
You don't make many friends on the islands if, in addition to the necessary disaster relief, you keep raising the issue of human rights and our responsibility in this regard.
For the past 8 months, I have been appalled at how little NGOs have said about the terrible conditions in the camps, how they are put under pressure with arbitrary measures, and how they are almost beginning to accept this situation as a necessary reality.
No, it is neither necessary nor acceptable in any way.
In response to the question by NR. MP Steffi Krisper about "incidents, sexual assaults, confrontations", the police major in charge replied that he was hardly aware of anything.
Does he not want to know anything, is he not allowed to know anything, does he not care?
Our later meeting with psychologists, midwives and medical doctors on site confirmed all our descriptions by the experts.
Where people are housed in such cruel conditions, crammed together, problems arise. Unfortunately, UNHCR is not particularly impressed by the situation and their representative speaks more like a politician than someone who represents people and their basic rights.
In these camps people are broken into "mental wrecks".
Single mums who have been raped in their home country or on the run, dragging their children around exhausted on their arms all day, because there is not a single place to sit in the camp, are left completely alone!
Young people who have lost their families through, or on their flight, crying into their dirty pillows at night in despair, developing massive sleeping disorders, they are left alone!
Desperate parents who live together with their children and all their belongings on 9m2, whose children have not seen a school for years, who are "locked up" here for months despite asylum, because 1 weekly exit for 3 hours is locking them up, they are left alone!
I saw policemen kicking children and I hear on Chios that policemen do whatever they want. They pass on numbers of women who have to prostitute themselves because they have asylum and all resources have been cut off, and they take the only energy drink available from the tents and say, laughing spitefully, "you can complain to the police".
There is no ombudsman for the people seeking protection, they are left alone!
And of course, besides all the baggage, there are also super strong and sincere people, but even they are intimidated, burnt out and bullied when they speak out.
Our recent guests have experienced the nervousness and dismay of these people first hand.
After 8 months on Lesbos, I tend to call these camps "torture camps".
A young man I met yesterday on the ferry to Athens after receiving his asylum decision cries when he tells me what two years in Lesbos have done to him and how much he has been waiting to finally escape this hell.
He is aware that he will have nightmares for a long time and that it will take time for these humiliations and pains to heal.
We must not remain silent under any circumstances, no matter what the consequences, because being complicit is much worse than anything else.
https://orf.at/stories/3216775/
(Doctors without Borders report)
