The Washington Post - 24.02.2020

A10 eZ re the washington post.monday, february 24 , 2020

ovens are safety h azards, but they

make it possible to bake bread.

There is an Aldi supermarket on

the island where people can get

flour. There are also makeshift

stands inside the camp, where

people try to resell grocery items

they bought in bulk. But those

options are mostly for people

who have been here several

months, after a small monthly

stipend from the United Nations

has kicked in. And that stipend

does not cover all they would

need to eat in a month.

So, they still walk through the

camp gates before mealtimes to

wait.

one day last month, on a day

like many others, they walked

past a guard who was warning

that the lines would be long, and

then they made their way past

75 people who had just arrived by

boat that morning and were wait-

ing to be registered, past 100 peo-

ple waiting to lodge applications

for a transfer to the mainland,

past 20 people in line at the

asylum office, past 300 people

waiting for U.N.-distributed blan-

kets and toothbrushes.

Then they arrived at the food

line. It was only beginning to

form, 2½ hours before the first

meals would be served. Women,

who have their own line, huddled

near a fence, waiting for the gates

to open to a covered facility,

where they would wait some

more. Soon, thousands would be

there, people who are less likely

to get what would be served that

day. But for now, it was just

30 people, holding children,

wearing shower sandals or old

sneakers, talking to one another.

[email protected]

4.50 euros, or $4.90, daily per

migrant.

But he added that Elaitis has

been stretched to keep up with

the camp’s growth. The company

expanded from 21 employees to

44, he said. It went from two

delivery trucks to six. It created a

five-person overnight shift. It has

also subcontracted to two compa-

nies in Athens, which now pro-

duce about 40 percent of the food

and send it twice a week, frozen,

by boat, he said.

mavroudis defended the food’s

quality. But the people who eat it

say it has no flavor, that the colors

range from brown to light brown,

as if it were trying to make them

nostalgic for what they had in the

countries they fled.

“When you are desperate,

you’d eat e ven grass,” s aid Ahmad

Wait Anwary, 27, who had been a

security guard in Afghanistan.

“Unfortunately, this is the way it

is here.”

A wait — for everything

Greece has talked about clos-

ing the camps and building more

restrictive detention centers in

their place. But local authorities

have orchestrated protests. They

vehemently oppose the notion of

permanent centers, and they are

deeply skeptical that the govern-

ment can build anything large

enough to accommodate the asy-

lum seekers already in the camps.

Even if the plan goes forward,

it is unclear what will happen to

the overflow population.

The hillsides surrounding mo-

ria have been picked bare by

migrants foraging for additional

food. Some families have built

brick ovens inside their tents. The

dors are fulfilling their obliga-

tions.

“The cost of what they’re put-

ting together now is next to

nothing,” Balaskas said.

Greek prosecutors by rule do

not comment to the public or the

news media on potential cases.

Greece’s Defense ministry,

which is in charge of monitoring

the food at the camp, declined to

comment for this story, as did the

country’s migration ministry,

which has recently vowed to low-

er the number of arrivals by

strengthening border protection

and increasing deportations to

Turkey.

In an interview, Elaitis’s head

of sales, Kostas mavroudis, said

his company was living up to the

contract and spending about

bread and barely cooked rice, of

losing weight, of new mothers

eating so poorly that they stop

lactating. Although there has not

been widespread malnutrition, a

baby died of severe dehydration

in the fall.

Some local officials have start-

ed to question whether Greece is

failing to provide migrants the

level of food it has paid for.

Stratis Balaskas, a city council-

or who regularly visits moria,

said food quality has gone down

as camp occupancy has in-

creased. Last m onth, several local

officials, including Balaskas,

brought a day’s worth of camp

food to the island’s top prosecu-

tor and asked her to open an

investigation into whether the

government and the food ven-

problems of overpopulation

here.”

In line for food, trying to live

most days at moria, the food

lines have already grown long by

the time the main catering com-

pany’s food trucks arrive through

the camp gates. The company,

Elaitis, primarily did weddings

until a few years ago. Now the

Greek army pays Elaitis a daily

rate of 5.01 euros per person, an

amount that includes transporta-

tion and labor, to provide the

food.

During several days at the

camp last month, The Post moni-

tored what was served, much of

which was marked with nutri-

tional information. Athens-based

nutritionist Ioanna Hassapi, who

reviewed the food at The Post’s

request, said the meals most days

appeared to fall short of adult

and teenage caloric needs — and

those needs grow when people

are sleeping outdoors and are

chronically ill.

“If you eat this food, you won’t

recover as easily,” Hassapi said.

“It affects your immune system,

your growth.”

Every breakfast consists of a

packaged croissant. Every dinner

consists of a flatbread, a boiled

egg and a cigar-size spinach pas-

try — if you are far enough ahead

in line. only the lunch rotates:

sometimes lentils and rice, some-

times beans, sometimes rice with

meat. The food isn’t supposed to

run out; occasionally, it does. The

milk served to children resembles

whitish water. Some days, there

are tomatoes or cucumbers with

dinner, other days not.

migrants speak of getting stale

crowded as its intended capacity,
a shantytown on a vacation is-
land never intended for such
emergencies.
They wait because the Greek
government and local authorities
are at odds about what to do with
them, and because a closed-off
Europe has not offered another
place to put them, even as rights
groups decry the camps as an
emblem of the continent’s fail-
ures.
Conditions at the island camps
have never been worse. Children
shiver through the nights, bun-
dled in wet blankets that never
fully dry. There are protests, sca-
bies outbreaks and fatal stab-
bings in middle-of-the-night
fights. The Council of Europe’s
commissioner for human rights,
Dunja mijatovi, has called the
situation “explosive,” noting a
“desperate lack of medical care
and sanitation” — and the hours-
long lines.
many people here fled war and
other desperate environments,
and they risked their lives to cross
the Aegean Sea in flimsy rafts.
They are grateful to have made it
this far. But they describe feeling
humiliated and dismayed, sens-
ing that even in the food there is a
message about the resources Eu-
rope is willing to spend on new
arrivals: not much at all.
A nutritionist told The Wash-
ington Post that the meals appear
to fall below minimum calorie
requirements. one migrant said
the food was worse than at her
former workplace, an Afghan
prison.
“We are living like animals. It’s
not a life,” s aid Zekria farzad, 40,
who had been a journalist in
Afghanistan, which is where
most of the migrants at moria
come from. “A ctually, we are
struggling to be alive.”
Ye t beyond the camp, closer to
the water, locals and tourists are
eating well. Lesbos’s tavernas
serve octopus, grilled squid, feta,
vegetables dressed with lemon
and olive oil.
That jarring juxtaposition is
part of what makes the camp “one
of the worst places I’ve seen on
earth,” said marco Sandrone, the
Lesbos field coordinator for Doc-
tors Without Borders.
“You can get a beer at the port,
and then with 10 minutes’ drive
you see an open-air prison,” said
Sandrone, whose previous post-
ings included Congo, South Su-
dan, Sierra Leone and Haiti.
“There is no transition here be-
tween paradise and hell.”

A notorious bottleneck

How a small resort island came
to host so many asylum seekers —
and serve 57,000 daily low-cost
meals, provided in large part by a
former wedding caterer — is a
story that reflects Europe’s grid-
locked immigration politics.
opened five years ago at the
beginning of a massive spike in
migration to Europe, the moria
camp was supposed to be a short-
term holding center for asylum
seekers waiting to be transferred
to the Greek mainland and else-
where on the continent. Instead,
it has become a bottleneck, with
many people staying in moria for
a year or longer.
The overall number of mi-
grants reaching Europe has
plummeted from the highs of
2015 and 2016, but with no agree-
ment on where to send them,
even slight upticks in people
crossing the Aegean Sea explode
into emergencies in Lesbos.
A year ago, the camp held
4,900 people. Even then it was
notorious for its conditions. Now,
after a year of increased crossings
from Turkey, the camp holds
19,400.
It has burst well outside its
razor-wire fenced barriers, with
most migrants living in tents on
the surrounding hillside. They
have no electricity, no plumbing,
no way to cook except for fire.
They descend into the official
camp for meals, coming through
the main entrance or through
holes in the fencing, and they
crowd into spaces that camp
administrators describe as dan-
gerously tight. Administrators
say fights and scuffles routinely
break out during the wait.
A 20-year-old man from Yemen
died last month after being
stabbed during an altercation,
the second stabbing fatality here
this year.
“A lmost we cannot control it,”
Dmitris Vafeas, a Greek bureau-
crat who is the camp’s acting
director, said in an interview. “It’s
an everyday struggle. We have

greece from A

Photos BY giorgos Moutafis for the Washington Post

Source: Greek Ministry of Citizen Protection THE WASHINGTON POST

The exploding population of

Greece’s island migrant camps

More migrants crossing from Turkey are reaching Greece’s island camps.

Because of tightened borders and gridlocked migration politics, few are being

transferred to the Greek mainland or moving on to other countries in Europe.

2018 2019 2020

38 ,

19 ,

6,

11,

5,

0

10 ,

20 ,

30 ,

35,

25,

15,

5,

40 ,000 migrants

Greek island camps

Moria camp

Official capacity of all island camps

cLOcKWISe FrOM TOP: The Moria camp on the greek island of Lesbos is overcrowded with thousands of refugees whose futures continue to be on hold. They wait because

the greek government and local authorities are at odds about what to do with them, and because a closed-off europe has not offered another place to put them, even as rights

groups decry the camps as an emblem of the continent’s failures. Food lines at the camp are long and people wait for hours to eat. One evening’s dinner consists of hard-boiled

eggs, pita bread and spinach pastries. For breakfast, people line up to receive a single croissant. Sometimes the food runs out before everyone is fed, migrants reported.

Migrant meals appear to fall short on calorie counts

“When you are desperate, you’d eat even grass. Unfortunately, this is the way it is here.”

Ahmad Wait Anwary, who worked as a security guard in afghanistan before coming to greece