Moria and the Desecration of Hope
Hope is alluring. It’s that great force which governs every action of retaliation, whether it merely be to take one more punch, or to gather up house and home and seek refuge in a far-off land. Such is the determination for thousands and thousands of refugees from the Middle East, who flee the war-ravished countries of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria in favor of European stability. These migrants travel through Turkey to the adjacent Greek Isles, where they are legally kept until their immigration case is settled. However, with such an influx of asylum seekers in recent years, the processes typically used to grant citizenship have become stagnant and inefficient — so much so, that in the Greek refugee camp Moria, conditions have become otherworldly hellish. Bolstered by the Greek government’s own failures, inhabitants wait in vain for up to two years, desperately clawing at the smallest semblances of normality, from toilets, to showers, to food, to shelter. Among the many dislocated people packed into Moria, hope is quickly fading to resignation and imprisonment. The treatment of these vulnerable people is nothing short of a human rights abuse, and the Greek government must act immediately to mitigate further damage.
Moria is a refugee camp on the Greek isle of Lesbos. Originally designed as a detention center, it quickly became used as an intermediate gateway for refugee entrance to Greece. Desperate immigrants arrive by the boatload on Lesbos, having crossed a narrow strait in the Aegean sea between the island and Turkey. The beaches are spotted with eerie piles of discarded neon life vests, their owners long gone or, more likely, left to rot somewhere further inland.
With more rafts landing every day, Moria has become inhumanely overpopulated. Its residents are packed together like sardines, and they must compete with innumerable others just to placate their most fundamental needs. Built for a population of 700, Moria’s population overflow was patched by enough temporary housing to sustain 3,100. Today, over 9,000 people reside in the camp, sharing miniscule shacks or loose tarps for protection. They wait twelve hours a day for moldy food, share their toilets with seventy people, and share their showers with eighty. Raw sewage leaks across the grounds, sometimes finding its way into areas where young children camp. Such hostile conditions speak to an undeniable level of negligence. Above all, the overcrowding must be resolved. No humans should live in hopeless subjugation without access to suitable shelter and food. These are two of our most fundamental human rights, all but denied to residents of Moria.
Moreover, this endless physical abuse wears away at the mental well-being of Moria’s inhabitants. Sexual harassment runs rampant, affecting girls, women, and even young boys. For their safety, girls are advised not to use the bathrooms at night, and must be escorted even during the day; they cannot even go to the bathroom for fear of being raped. The International Rescue Committee runs a mental health center at the camp and recently released a report on this gruesome reality. They found that 50% of all treated patients had experienced gendered or sexual violence. Moreover, 60% of patients reported “suicidal ideations,” and 30% had previously attempted suicide. Ironically, for many, even attempts to take their own lives aren’t enough to free themselves from Moria’s grasp. The New York Times reports that due to overcrowding, these suicide victims are quickly discovered and resuscitated. The mental wellbeing of Moria’s inhabitants has been razed. With little access to the basic necessities for life, many have found Moria to be a darker fate than whatever hell they sought to escape.
But how could it have gotten so bad? The answer lies in a 2016 deal between the European Union and Turkey, intended to discourage immigration. Under the deal, refugees must apply for asylum or be sent back to Turkey — and many who do are still returned. As a result, camps like Moria have been transformed from intermediary checkpoints along the path to Europe into strongholds, intended to imprison asylum seekers until their case is tried. Then, they are either dragged back to Turkey, or shipped onto the Greek mainland. On the most fundamental level, there is is nothing inherently wrong with this system; it makes sense to have some form of immigration checkpoint, especially on such a highly trafficked route with thousands of foreigners flooding in. Yet, Moria is not prepared nor capable of supporting this setup, and has been slowed to a crawl under the stress. Today, it languishes along, the failing cog in a machine that violates the basic human rights of thousands upon thousands of people.
For Moria, there is a deceptively simple solution; above all, additional funding would allow the camp to drastically improve its conditions with better food, facilities, cleanup, resources, and security. Moreover, through such funding, Greece would be able to resolve overcrowding by simply expanding the camp. Astonishingly, such funds were in fact allocated by the E.U. — around €561 million in long-term funding for Greece to sort out its immigration problems. Less astonishingly, Greece has managed to bumble this life-saving funding in a way so inexplicably idiotic, it can only be rationalized by its own involvement.
Of this funding, the vast majority has not been released, as Greece has not met the level of “strategic planning” required in its terms. Of that which has been released — around €153 million — an even vaster majority was misspent. One official placed this leakage at around 70% of received funds — about €110 million. Therefore, only around €43 million has served its actual humanitarian purpose. This is unacceptable, even by Greece’s standards. The Greek government must plug these leaks and reorient its priorities around the thousands of hopeful immigrants whose lives are being all but decimated while the government continues to chase its short, incompetent tail.
Article 25 of the U.N. Resolution on Human Rights states that every human is entitled to “a standard of living adequate for [his] health and wellbeing.” Yet, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the inhabitants at camp Moria are robbed of even their most basic human rights on a daily basis. They live in fear and hopelessness, surviving only from meal to meal. With sanitary travesties abound, sexual assault rampant, and mental collapse lying in wait, every passing day is a trial for life or death. This very ambiguity is what many sought to escape. The Greek government, in accordance with E.U. legislation, must pull themselves together for the sake of thousands upon thousands of people for whom hope is fading to little more than a distant, mocking memory.
Originally published November, 2018 in the Point of View
