With the Refugees in Leros

Since we have been back in Leros we have not seen any of the refugees going to the beach for a swim in the afternoons. We thought this was because of Ramadan, but apparently First Reception has decreed that no children are allowed to leave Pikpa without explicit permission and then only with their parents (which presumably means that unaccompanied minors cannot leave at all) and few if any parents want to take the children to the beach.

On Thursday, June 9th, we cycled over to Merikhia for a swim.

Simon went in up to his knees and decided it was too cold for an enjoyable swim, but Lin struck out. 

We did not go to Pikpa, but that evening fourteen unaccompanied minors were taken from Pikpa in the evening to the hotspot. This was on a decision of the local representative (‘First Reception’) of the Interior Ministry, who informed the police and the ministry in Athens of his decision. The children were distraught – three of them immediately tried to climb the fence to get out of the hotspot. This was in response to an attempt of one young man from the hotspot to board the ferry with a forged Bulgarian passport, who was immediately detained by the port police and is now in gaol in the police station in Agia Marina. Apparently there have been several occasions on which people have been trying to sell forged passports in Pikpa. Probably as a result of this all volunteers now have to complete an application and provide a photocopy of their passports to be allowed to help.

Today (Friday June 10^th) we went to Pikpa in the morning, as there was no school, and talked to some of the kids. One of the mothers was sitting nearby when the First Reception representative walked across with an interpreter and read out a long lecture to her about the responsibility of parents – to take responsibility for the children, not let them make too much noise, not to let them wander onto the road, not to leave Pikpa in the evening etc. 

By the end the mother was in tears, she thought that this lecture was some kind of admonition of her behavior (she has five young children). Eventually Gillian, a volunteer from New Zealand, and Lin managed to comfort her and explain that this was not directed at her. 

Ahmad and Rehat joined us.

Ahmad is an excellent student, who is making very good progress with his English. He is also learning Greek and has learnt a bit of Hindi from watching Indian films. 

A family of four unaccompanied Yazidi children, three boys and a girl aged from 13 to 19, have had a tough time. Their parents are in Germany and the 17 year old girl has serious health problems. Yesterday the whole family went to Rhodes with a doctor and nurse for her to have a brain scan, which showed nothing untoward. The younger boys had not enjoyed the journey – apart from any memories of their previous sea crossing, they were sea sick.

We helped hand out the lunch, which is more complicated now that Ramadan is under way. About half the people in Pikpa are not fasting, either because they are children or they are not moslems, so we have only half the amount of food delivered at lunchtime. However, some of the older kids try to take food and hide it in their rooms until the evening, so we have to check who is fasting and who is not.

In the afternoon we cycled over to the hotspot to see if we could contact any of the kids who had been moved over there. 

The hot spot is a dense collection of air conditioned boxes, with little open space, and a tough wire fence with vicious barbed wire on top. 

The gate was not locked, but half a dozen police sat nearby and we did not even try to go in. A small group were having a Greek lesson with the two young women who work for Save the Children. A few refugees came out and walked down the road, to sit by the sea. We walked around the perimeter of the camp, but did not see anyone we knew. As we got back to the entrance we meet a local guy who is employed by UNHCR to ferry people between the hotspot, Pikpa and the hospital. He told us that it had been decided that Pikpa would only be for families and he thought that the kids would be looked after in the hotspot, but he did not sound convinced or convincing. We cycled on around the bay and had a look at the building that was reputedly Mussolini’s villa, then the central building of the mental hospital, which is now derelict, the marble steps and floors deep in goat shit. 

When we got back to the hotspot Imtiaz, a young Pakistani boy, spotted Lin and ran towards the fence to talk to us. He said that it was bad in the hotspot. Nobody had told them what was happening and they had no food until Matina brought some over last night. Soon after we started talking a man came up to us and asked us who we were and what we were doing. We explained that we were volunteers at Pikpa and Lin had been teaching some of the kids who had been brought to the hotspot. The man was obviously very nervous that we might unfavourably publicise conditions in the hotspot.  He asked Imtiaz if everything was OK and he said yes, good. We asked the man who he was and he said that he was the manager who was responsible for the hotspot and for Pikpa. He warned us to be careful what we said because we could get him into trouble.

In the evening we went to the performance by the theatre group travelling on the Estonian schooner. It was essentially a very athletic modern dance performance, in an amazing venue in a part of Platanos that we had never ventured into before. The stage and auditorium seemed to be the adjoining flat rooves of houses built into the mountainside with a view across to the floodlit castle.

Le Monde today has published a blog by a French photographer who spent the winter here, including one photo of Anna and some of the children that Lin helps her to teach.