I moved to Lesbos in 2001. This was practically 80 years after my grandmother had arrived from Ayvalik on this similar island as a nine-year-old refugee. She had stayed there for 2 years earlier than transferring to Piraeus. My grandmother was among the many practically 1.5 million Greeks pressured to flee Asia Minor within the Twenties.
By 2001, the historical past of Lesbos as a spot of refuge had been virtually forgotten by the general public, and but the island continued to function a brief cease for folks crossing the Japanese Mediterranean, in search of safety in Europe.
In 2015, Lesbos discovered itself on the coronary heart of an enormous refugee story as soon as once more. Wars and instability pushed tens of millions to flee throughout the ocean. Virtually half of these making an attempt to achieve Greek territory arrived on the island.
Lesbos residents discovered themselves on the centre of a humanitarian response that gained international recognition. It was a time when the world started to speak in regards to the solidarity proven by Greeks in direction of refugees and migrants, even because the nation was mired in an financial disaster.
Once I consider the solidarity that flourished throughout these days, I see outstretched fingers alongside the shores of Lesbos. Numerous transferring tales emerged of locals serving to with no matter they may, carrying meals, garments, and blankets from their houses to feed and costume the newcomers.
As newly arrived folks crammed the roads of the island, strolling in direction of registration factors, not a day glided by with out the locals giving a elevate to a pregnant girl, a baby, or an individual with a incapacity we encountered on the way in which to work. The seems to be of gratitude, the grins, the tears, and the infinite thank-yous had been unforgettable. Solidarity turned a badge of honour, and triumphant tales of humanity and hope crammed the media.
The island was remodeled – its streets and squares crammed with locals and newcomers mingling, a scene of human connection and shared humanity.
Someday, a refugee household knocked on my door asking to scrub their fingers and have somewhat water. That they had been on the street for days, sleeping within the park, ready for a ship to proceed their journey. I opened my door and 16 folks got here inside – amongst them, eight babies, a new child, and a paraplegic woman. My small lounge crammed up; they sat on chairs, the couch, even on the ground. Earlier than I might convey them water, the kids had already fallen asleep, and the adults, exhausted, closed their eyes, their our bodies giving in to the load of their fatigue.
Quietly, I left the room, leaving them to relaxation. The following morning, they stated their goodbyes and boarded the ferry. They left behind a “Thanks” be aware with a hand-drawn flower and 16 names.
Once I consider these days, my thoughts fills with pictures: Individuals within the rain, folks within the chilly, folks celebrating, and others mourning their lifeless. That summer season, we attended burial after burial for many who hadn’t survived the damaging sea journey.
A Palestinian volunteer as soon as advised me, “There’s nothing worse than dying in a overseas land and being buried with out your family members.” When their family members weren’t there, we had been. The strangers weren’t strangers to us; they turned our folks.
In October 2015, a picket boat carrying greater than 300 folks sank off the western coast of Lesbos. Because the tragedy unfolded, acts of humanity shone by way of. Locals and volunteers alike, fishermen included, rushed to assist, pulling folks from the ocean and providing no matter consolation they may. Our bodies washed ashore within the days that adopted, and the morgue crammed up.
A neighborhood girl held the physique of a lifeless little one in her arms. It was somewhat woman whose physique had been discovered on the seaside in entrance of her home. She wrapped her in a sheet and held her as she would her little one – as anybody would maintain any little one.
But, even because the island’s shores turned a logo of solidarity, the shifting tides of European border insurance policies had been already starting to reshape the truth for these arriving.
Just a few months later, Europe’s border insurance policies modified, trapping asylum seekers on the island. The EU-Turkiye deal mandated that asylum seekers stay on the island the place they landed whereas authorities assess whether or not they could possibly be returned to Turkiye, deemed a “protected third nation”.
The deal demonstrated that the European Union was able to deviate from the fundamental rules of the rule of regulation and that border procedures and the safe-third-country idea had been harmful for the lives of refugees and migrants. It represented a frontal assault on worldwide refugee and human rights protections, additional instrumentalising folks’s struggling.
Sadly, these insurance policies have intensified since, and had been finally institutionalised on the state degree, particularly with the amendments of the Widespread European Asylum System (CEAS), adopted in Could 2024. The reform marked a radical shift within the EU rulebook for the more severe, institutionalising discriminatory remedy of refugees, regimes of derogation, the revocation of primary rights and authorized protections, and the imposition of prolonged and mass detention.
Again on Lesbos, I watched the grins of individuals fade, together with their hopes, crushed inside and across the Moria camp, which had emerged in 2013 as a considerably smaller facility, by no means meant to accommodate the hundreds who later stayed there. The psychological well being of the refugee and migrant inhabitants plummeted, with a big rise in suicide makes an attempt.
Because the variety of folks elevated, the appalling situations, shortages, overcrowding, and excessive uncertainty created a determined every day actuality, one which bred frustration, anger, and generally violence. It was then that the authorities and media started to alter the narrative. Not had been refugees and migrants portrayed as determined souls arriving within the nation and struggling in camps. They had been now framed as a menace to the nation.
Solidarity turned a part of the issue. It turned a public insult, a mockery. Though NGOs and volunteers had been referred to as upon to supply meals and companies, and fill the infinite gaps in humanitarian help, they had been concurrently accused by authorities of corruption and criminality. Widespread sense, humanity, and solidarity – the material of social cohesion – turned targets. Society grew divided.
Xenophobic insurance policies prompted xenophobic headlines, rescuers had been persecuted, and more and more racist voices dominated public discourse, threatening the reminiscence of this island the place humanity as soon as thrived.
The occasions of 2015 had been portrayed as an enormous catastrophe that ought to by no means occur once more. The miracle of solidarity, which introduced international consideration, assets, and options to an immense humanitarian disaster, was slandered. Insurance policies of deterrence, pushbacks, refugee camps-turned-prisons, and the criminalisation of solidarity and civil society had been offered as the one options. The polarisation deepened, escalating violence towards asylum seekers, refugees, and solidarity employees.
The Moria camp – a spot that may solely be described as a graveyard for human rights – turned a ticking time bomb for the island’s residents. At its peak, it devolved into an enormous settlement of tents and shacks, with no entry to potable water, hygiene, or primary requirements.
One afternoon in October 2016, I discovered myself in Moria, ready for our interpreter so we might inform a household about their asylum interview date. As time handed, darkish clouds gathered. Round me, folks carried their belongings, kids performed within the filth with no matter they may discover, and younger males hauled cardboard and plastic to defend themselves from the approaching rain.
Standing there within the midst of all of it, I watched a battle for survival in situations none of us would settle for to endure for even an hour. But, every now and then, somebody would method me – providing water, tea, or a chunk of cardboard to sit down on so I “wouldn’t have to face”. The grins of refugees made me really feel so protected and so cared for, their humanity steadfast regardless of all the pieces.
Because the clouds thickened, I moved to assist a girl safe her tent with stones. I bent down so as to add just a few myself and noticed that the tent was crammed with babies. How might so many kids match into such a tiny tent? I admired her braveness and willpower to guard them. I smiled at her, and there, in the midst of nowhere, standing earlier than a tent that the rain might wash away at any second, she took my hand and invited me to share their meal.
How might such extremes match right into a single second? The squalor, the inhumanity of the situations, and but, the hospitality, the necessity for each other, and the power they gave even within the harshest of circumstances. How might one second seize each want and dignity, desperation and generosity – the stones they used to anchor their tents additionally anchoring our shared humanity?
Again on the town, the place the voices towards refugees and migrants had been rising louder, I went to the grocery store. As I used to be standing in line, the lady in entrance of me turned to me and complained, “We’re overrun with foreigners. They’re in all places. What’s going to occur with them?” She gestured in direction of a younger African girl on the checkout counter.
The opposite clients nodded grimly. I thought of the right way to reply as I watched the younger refugee girl place her few objects on the counter. She then realised she didn’t find the money for and began to place again the few apples in her basket.
I seemed on the girl in entrance of me watching the scene unfold. Fearing she would begin shouting, I held my breath. As a substitute, with a decisive movement, she picked up the apples. “I’ll pay for these, my woman,” she stated to the younger girl, who checked out her in confusion. “Take them, don’t go away them.”
The younger girl thanked her, hugged her, and left. And I heard the older girl mutter to herself, “What can they do? Who is aware of what they’ve been by way of? However what can we do, too?”
The op-ed is written on the event of the sequence of illustrations Kindness beyond boundaries, launched by UN Human Rights, Refugee Assist Aegean (RSA), the Greek Council for Refugees (GCR) and PICUM (Platform for Worldwide Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants), an initiative in direction of constructing a counter-narrative to the criminalisation of solidarity.
The views expressed on this article are the writer’s personal and don’t essentially mirror Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
