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June, 2016
Athens - Eyes fixed on an English phrase book, ten-year old Raha* appears oblivious to the smog billowing from the docks just metres from the tent that her family had claimed two months earlier in Athens’ Piraeus Port. Nor did she seem bothered by the heat rising from the asphalt: “Is the pilot in the cockpit?” she read out-loud, cautiously grinning as she looked up from the book for approval.
Originally from Afghanistan, Raha’s family is one of thousands stranded on the Greek mainland in July 2016 faced with an impossible choice: an indefinite wait in squalor or return to war-ravaged Afghanistan.
More than 49, 000 asylum seekers are stuck on the Greek mainland as of 1 July, 2016 due to border closures. The options given by the EU to this group are few: apply for asylum in Greece, relocate to another EU country, reunify with a relative elsewhere or return home.
However, unlike Syrians or Iraqis, Afghans are excluded from the relocation possibility which is creating divisions between asylum seekers, said the International Organisation for Migration in Athens.
“We are seeing fights on a daily basis between Syrians and Afghans- as Afghans believe that policies have been shaped for them in an entirely different way,” said spokesperson Kelly Namia in Athens in April.
The EU asylum relocation agreement made last September requires applicants to come from a country with more than a 75% EU-wide refugee recognition rate. With more than 25% of individual asylum claims made by Afghans rejected in the past quarter, the nationality as a whole is thus excluded from the scheme.
“In 2015 in Europe we are suddenly considering certain nationalities refugees and the rest not,” said MSF Greece’s Director of Medical Operations in April.
IOM has hence reported an increase in Afghans in Greece requesting voluntary return to their homeland.
The IOM program, based on the right to return, gives beneficiaries 400 euros for their first expenses upon arrival home and in some cases re-integration assistance of up to 1, 500 euros to open businesses or the like.
“Of course we cannot assist people to return to Syria or to countries where there is war and it is not safe,” said IOM.
Yet, for many Afghans the risks they face in Greece outweigh the dangers of returning to the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan, where Al-Jazeera reported a Taliban led suicide-attack on Thursday 30 June, 2016 that killed 27 police recruits and injured another 40.
DESTITUTION, ILLNESS AND EXPLOITATION OF ASYLUM SEEKERS
For families like Raha’s living in Piraeaus Port or Ellniko (a former airport departure lounge), diarrhoea, scabies, lice and lung infections are common.
“It is paradoxical to have a doctor on location, but not the conditions in place so that people don’t fall sick in the first place,” said the emergency coordinator of Greek NGO, PRAKSIS.
A large-scale exercise to pre-register asylum seekers on mainland Greece was launched on 8 June 2016, according to UNHCR spokesperson Willian Spindler.
"So far more than 15, 500 people residing in open temporary accomodation structures have received asylum seeker cards valid for one year… pending the full lodging of their asylum application," he said from the UN in Geneva on Friday 1 July.
Meanwhile, asylum seekers remain dependent on the Greek authorities for food. The right to work, otherwise guaranteed by EU asylum regulation doesn’t apply to unregistered nor ‘pre-registered’ asylum seekers in Greece – for which there are many.
“The food distributions aren’t short but the food provided is according to UNHCR’s latest assessment- “not proper” – as in it doesn’t provide the necessary daily intake of calories nor vitamins,” said Constance Theisen, MSF Humanitarian Officer in Athens.
Without other options, newly arrived mothers, unaccompanied children, and young men are resorting to negative coping mechanisms. Victoria Square, in the centre of Athens, is known amongst the NGO community as a hub for migrant exploitation. Here, asylum seekers sell sex to meet their basic needs. Others hand over their ID cards and savings to smugglers who lock the vulnerable into situations of forced labour, alluring them on promises of transportation to safer EU countries.
“After all we have been through, we don’t want to go back to Afghanistan. But even that would be better than Greece,” Raha’s father told me – ushering his older daughter back into the meagre shade of their tent.
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This article is based on interviews and findings of my thesis research completed for the Graduate Institute, Geneva in June 2016.
*Name changed.
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