All … Probably related to this, a fist fight broke out amongst young men during the food distribution time. A place where people on the move can access more than just their basic needs, but services and … After a fire destroyed that camp, the two women were repatriated to the Kara Tepe camp, along with more than 6,000 other people. If European countries remain unwilling to reckon with the larger identity crisis underlying these policies – the refusal to accept non-white and non-Christian refugees as integral parts of their societies – a generation of people like Ahmad, Mohammed, and Fatima will continue to be dehumanised and retraumatised. The law enshrines a rule already broadly enforced in the camps, but NGO workers fear it’s an underhand way of limiting their ability to operate. In total 18 people went from campus to camp and joined us … The rest I have to turn away. Perpetually overcrowded and under serviced, Moria burned down in September 2020 only to be temporarily replaced by Kara Tepe II, where conditions are reportedly worse. The same regulation gave the Greek migration ministry broad powers to effectively shut down operations of any NGO that fell foul of them, which Moschopoulos described as a "blatant attempt to exclude people willing to speak up about abuses and wrongdoing within the state's official system.". Follow me on twitter @FreyLindsayMCP, or email me on friederik.lindsay@gmail.com, © 2021 Forbes Media LLC. https://www.actvism.org/en/opinions/kara-tepe-refugee-camp-lesvos-greece Less visible than what happens on the Greek islands is the situation in camps on the mainland where tens of thousands of refugees live in similarly inadequate accommodation, are often denied access to asylum services, and are sometimes subject to violence from, it is alleged, the Greek police. But the pandemic has made even this small, autonomous act more difficult as security guards use social distancing measures as an excuse to deny refugees access to stores. From 2015 to the present, tens of thousands of migrants and refugees trying to reach Western Europe have passed through the Kara Tepe camp. A line of people forms in front of me. In both Kara Tepe Refugee Camp and Moria Refugee Camp, authorities have announced that movement outside the camp will be restricted to 100 people leaving each hour, between 7am-7pm, and that only one individual per family is allowed to leave the camps at a time. I returned to work as a volunteer physician on Lesvos in December last year. Help make quality journalism about crises possible. Hope and Peace Center Our Hope and Peace Community and Distribution Center is only a few hundred meters away from Kara Tepe Refugee Camp, which is the new camp built following the fire at Moria Refugee Camp on Lesvos Island in Greece. The camp is managed by the Municipality of Mytilene and UNHCR in collaboration with the NGOs that operate there. The chilling effect these actions have, Moschopoulos says, are reflected in the new confidentiality law, which will further hamper peoples' ability to speak up about issues in refugee camps. The New Humanitarian is an independent, non-profit newsroom founded in 1995. These people have escaped from war zones, crossed hostile borders, and braved the sea, only to end up here, on the Greek island of Lesvos, where I’ve seen the EU’s racist, xenophobic, and Islamophobic migration policies intensify during the coronavirus pandemic. The Minister inspected the living conditions of the approximately 7,000 asylum-seekers in the camp, where icy conditions prevailed, and “issued instructions for their improvement,” state media reported. Shelter at Kara Tepe refugee camp So, especially for the ladies, imagine yourself in this scenario. It hosts over 1,000 people from primarily Afghanistan. The temporary refugee camp in Kara Tepe is seen from above on 28 September. The news of the planned closure of Pikpa camp comes after the earlier announcement by the government that Kara Tepe Camp, also accommodating vulnerable people, must close by the end of December. north of Mytilene, a 10-minute walk from Kara Tepe camp. After a fire destroyed that camp, the two women were repatriated to the Kara Tepe camp, along with more than 6,000 other people. Only one member of each family can leave the camps per week, a measure that is strictly enforced - despite the fact that no such restriction exists for people living in towns and cities across Greece. The importance of an education. "That (narrative) is an illusion that would be very clear if the evidence came out," he says. Rose is breastfeeding her baby, born last August while living in the chaos of the Moria camp on the Greek island of Lesbos. I run some IV fluids and speak with Greek colleagues about transferring her to a hospital. So far, about 9,000 people have registered in Kara Tepe: according to the number of guests registered in Moria before the fire, about 2,000 migrants are still missing. We offer physical rehabilitation treatments for refugees and migrants who have come to Europe from countries at war and countries under violent political and ethnic conflicts. Shelter at Kara Tepe refugee camp So, especially for the ladies, imagine yourself in this scenario. For the next three weeks, I stayed in Kara Tepe and Moria, the two refugee camps, as a volunteer for Save the Children, the international relief organization. The child has been having diarrhoea for several days. *The names of all the asylum seekers and refugees mentioned have been changed to protect their identities. My name is Hannah and I will be travelling to Lesvos in May to volunteer with a Dutch organization called Because We Carry (BWC). Our experiences volunteering for the great Dutch organization Because We Carry @ Kara Tepe, Lesvos, Greece Camp Kara Tepe, Camp Oxy, Disaster Tech Lab, Drop in the Ocean, Lesvos, Pikpa, Refugee Crisis, Skala, Smuggling, UNHCR Post navigation Previous Live from Lesvos – The Journey Begins – Day 1 Our beloved puppet Abu Rami will visit Kara Tepe with a special lesson and will pass out dental kits to children and caregivers. That's why the recycling program was launched in the Kara Tepe camp, home to 261 vulnerable families with a total population of 1,300 refugees. This law is the latest step in what has been characterised as a crackdown on NGO workers and volunteers since the right-wing New Democracy party took over government mid-2019. Read also: 'We made it': Iraqi refugee … But Ahmad’s eyes fill with fear, and he backs away. Our Somali interpreter, Abdi, is close by. This is the protocol I am required to follow. It’s an easy way to remove or prosecute NGOs and volunteers.”. It is a terrible thing to have to decide who is and who is not deserving of care. He is anxious, and his sentences jumble together. The camp is managed by the Municipality of Mytilene and UNHCR in collaboration with the NGOs that operate there. My Experience at Kara Tepe. Source: Getty Images (obviously) When needed, these sorted boxes get moved 80 meters across the gravel access road to camp and into a green shipping container to restock the supply at the distribution point. In news reports , Notis Mitarachi, Minister of Migration and … "Shirin", an Afghan journalist at Kara Tepe camp on Lesvos Kara Tepe is considered the “good” camp on Lesvos. Please join me in showing support for the refugees who are currently confined--many for a year or more--on the Kara Tepe Family Refugee Camp in Lesvos, Greece. The ‘lucky ones’ receive the few tickets we have available each day for dental care and scabies treatment. (Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has denied these practices.). “Moria is horrendous. You are making it worse,” he cries. And greater restrictions on refugees' movement due to the pandemic have seriously hampered their ability to access basic services, like healthcare. I tell him she needs to get tested for COVID, and he and his wife may need to as well. Our reporting on humanitarian aid has uncovered sex scandals, scams, data breaches, corruption, and much more. For those many thousands remaining, the authorities established a new temporary camp, “Moria 2.0,” on an uncleared former munitions site. Masouma, a young Afghani woman living at the Kara Tepe refugee camp in Greece for the last six months, is a shining example of an empowered woman. As a doctor in a European refugee camp, I found deep neglect and xenophobia ... Around 7,000 people live in the Kara Tepe II camp for refugees and migrants (in the background), erected last year on the island of Lesvos, Greece after the Moria camp was destroyed in a fire. Kara Tepe was the overflow site for Moria Refugee Camp, the main registration center in Greece and Eu… The thought is crushing his soul. Graffiti on the outer wall of Moria refugee camp in April 2016. Critics have also alleged the government violated international law by suspending asylum procedure in March, instituted overly-punitive COVID-19 lockdown restrictions in camps, withheld integration support to those who have received asylum, tear-gassed protesters and shut down accommodation for asylum seekers. One Happy Family Community Center is located 4.9 km. I write about business, migration and how the two intersect. Last May, at Kara Tepe refugee camp in Lesbos, Greece, seven school-age children gathered at a table to play with crayons. After hands grabbed for the preferred colors—yellow and blue-green were in demand for drawing the sun and the sea—most of the kids spent the next hour depicting the usual scenes of flowers and clouds, dogs and cats, and stick-figure portraits of their families. In mid-2020, the government announced all NGOs operating in the country would have to register in order to continue, a requirement which, given the hurdles involved in actually registering, appeared impossible for many groups, who accused the government of simply trying to shut them down. This store, which is located in the Lesvos refugee camp for the most vulnerable cases, offers residents the opportunity to select a new set of clothing every three months. I returned to work as a volunteer physician on Lesvos in December last year. In this setting, I worked in triage in a medical clinic made of port-a-cabins on the shoreline next to Kara Tepe II. December 19, 2020. My Experience at Kara Tepe After a negative test, they will be able to see a doctor. Kara Tepe refugee camp, on Lesvos, Greece. As a volunteer and journalist in the Syrian refugee camps, Moria and Kara Tepe, on the small island of Lesvos in Greece, I questioned whether it was safe or even right to stay, given that many of the refugees are young Syrian men, a small percentage of whom might be aligned with ISIS. The Greek government has enacted a new law that prevents NGO workers and volunteers … Kara Tepe, the first camp I volunteered at, is a camp for families only. On days I am working inside the clinic, I meet men like Mohammed, a former political prisoner in Syria. In news reports , Notis Mitarachi, Minister of Migration and Asylum, cited a request by the local community to close Pikpa . From February 3rd to 12th, Marie and Frank travelled to Lesvos, to do volunteer work at the refugee camp Kara Tepe and organise a project week for students and teachers of the Hogeschool van Amsterdam. ‘COVID has provided a pretext for dehumanisation to continue largely under the radar and with impunity.’. The news of the planned closure of Pikpa camp comes after the earlier announcement by the government that Kara Tepe Camp, also accommodating vulnerable people, must close by the end of December. Kara Tepe, the first camp I volunteered at, is a camp for families only. Now, around 7,000 people are living in Kara Tepe II, a quickly erected, makeshift camp on a windswept, lead-contaminated, flood-prone patch of land next to the sea. Our readers trust us to hold power in the multi-billion-dollar aid sector accountable and to amplify the voices of those impacted by crises. The stray dogs bite at my ankles. Perhaps most notoriously this year, in September, a fire raged through the Moria detention center on the Greek island of Lesbos. Photograph: Panagiotis Balaskas/AP. Social Media Manager & General Dogsbody for Humanitarian Support Agency. She has been wheezing all night. One NGO worker who has spent years working on the island of Lesvos, where tens of thousands of refugees have been held in prolonged, cramped and unsanitary conditions, called the new law “crazy.”, “It won't stop information getting out," said the worker who preferred not to be named, "the residents will get the word out, but if it is the case (that this law is real) it just highlights how draconian the new regime is. To avoid retraumatisation, I gently ask him to simply answer “yes” or “no”. Probably related to this, a fist fight broke out amongst young men during the food distribution time. The sanitation facilities in Kara Tepe II are inadequate, and refugees are only provided two meals a day, often consisting of rotten, inedible food. I came to Kara Tepe in May 2017 to volunteer with a group of other Harvard students. It will be replaced in 2021 by a new, permanent camp for up to 5,000 people created with EU assistance. All … 0. Kara Tepe, which is just a few kilometres from Moria, has been hailed as an exemplary site for housing refugee families. After volunteering in Kara Tepe Refugee Camp for almost two months and hearing people’s personal stories in the many layers of pain they are built upon, I couldn’t get through this one without crying. Kara Tepe: A refugee camp built on top of ancient/Ottoman ruins. Children, who make up more than a third of camp inmates at Kara Tepe, are suffering the most. Eight women live in one of 18 small basic rooms under a large tent, nicknamed "the women's camp." Kara Tepe is a refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesvos. On Lesbos alone, 49 children and young people with … According to the IRC, 62,000+ refugees fleeing violence are stranded in Greece.Many of them are living at Kara Tepe, a formerly empty site on the island of Lesbos. Camp Care Comics is a series of engaging booklets and care kits that address unpleasant health conditions, such as lice, scabies and toxic stress in a fun and engaging way. Based in Lesvos, Greece. But if they test positive, they will be sent to the ‘isolation centre’, which is really a series of tents cordoned off behind barbed wire where necessary care is non-existent. Save Dignity, Save PIKPA And Kara Tepe - … Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. A former army barracks designed to house only a few thousand people, the Moria center had swelled to possibly over 20,000 inhabitants by the beginning of 2020, making it one of the most densely populated areas on the planet. It is a terrible thing to have to decide who is and who is not deserving of care. She worked in the Moria camp where more than 8,000 people live. I’m told she’s unlikely to get the tests that she needs. In October, a group of 29 humanitarian NGOs called on the Greek parliament to investigate so-called “pushbacks” of asylum seekers from Greek territory back into Turkey, as well as outright extrajudicial expulsions, both of which would violate international non-refoulement law. This striking quote from Laura, one of the founders of Movement On The Ground, truly applies to our resident and visiting volunteer-run clothing store in Kara Tepe. Lesvos Solidarity manages Pikpa camp. Sign up to receive our original, on-the-ground coverage that informs policymakers, practitioners, donors, and others who want to make the world more humane. A hundred muffled voices call out from behind face masks in Dari, French Lingala, and Somali insisting they need to be seen by a doctor. I try to warm up Fatima’s hands so the pulse oximeter will take an accurate reading of her blood oxygen level. The New Democracy government has been keen to show they are better able to manage migration within the country, with a greater emphasis on control, than the previous Syriza government. She is shaking and shivering with a fever and showing signs of kidney infection and severe dehydration. Since the the beginning of COVID lockdowns, there has been a 66 percent increase in attempted suicides and other self-harming behaviours amongst refugees on Lesvos. We’re on the ground, reporting from the front lines, to bring you the inside story. Though many of the issues in Greece long predate the current government, they nonetheless have come in for significant criticism for their treatment of refugees and asylum seekers. “The Government has been doggedly pursuing a campaign against NGOs and civil society involvement in migration and asylum,” says Manos Moschopoulos, senior program officer for migration with Open Society Foundations. This summer I am volunteering in two different refugee camps in Lesvos, Greece. In our clinic, we have essential medicines for a variety of medical conditions, our stethoscopes, and not much else. Now, to access basic medical care, refugees have to pass through multiple checks to prove to Greek police they have a problem that requires attention. If you can handle the weight of what that link represents, I urge you to Walk in the Shoes of a Refugee. Short-term volunteers, well-meaning grown-ups, come and go in the lives of refugee children, particularly over the summer holiday season on Greek islands. I came to Kara Tepe in May 2017 to volunteer with a group of other Harvard students. In the end only a few hundred unaccompanied minors and other asylum seekers were taken off the island. On my own journey to Lesvos, airport security repeatedly forced me to remove my hijab, something I have only previously experienced in Xinjiang province, where the Chinese government is holding an estimated 1.5 million Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in so-called ‘re-education camps’ where rape and torture are reportedly systematic. Many refugees used to rely on grocery stores outside the camp to supplement meager rations. Mohammed’s wife holds his arm to comfort him. Following, for my applied field experience, I chose to travel to Greece and join HSA as a volunteer in Kara Tepe camp in Lesvos; a refugee camp in the largest transit point in the East Mediterranean route, which is the first assistance site for refugees and migrants departing from Turkey to Europe (HSA, 2016). He has a sharp pain running from his head to his toes, and he can’t sleep at night. The camp, with a capacity of 1,000, is meant to house more vulnerable refugees including women, children and families. I see a line of human beings form hastily in front of me. In this exclusive video report produced by the Real News Network (TRNN), Dimitri Lascaris, correspondent for TRNN, provides context to the ongoing refugee crises and talks directly with two refugees from the Kara Tepe refugee camp in Lesvos, Greece, about their travel experiences as well as the reasons why they left their countries of origin.. Kara Tepe houses about 700 refugees. The difference with before the European Union signed a deal with Turkey to stem the flow of migrants in exchange for economic and political favors is that now they stay at the camp much longer and capacity is reduced. Those still lost at sea today cannot speak up.’, ‘For migrants and refugees like me, the virus hasn’t changed that much.’, 25 years of journalism from the heart of crises, rape and torture are reportedly systematic, continue largely under the radar and with impunity, Become a member of The New Humanitarian today. By 2016, the world was in a crisis of a different sort as more than a million refugees fled war and unrest in search of a better life. I don't want to show up empty handed so I’m raising money to s.. Help us deliver informative, accessible, independent journalism that you can trust and provides accountability to the millions of people affected by crises worldwide. December 31, 2020. Kara Tepe refugee camp, on Lesvos, Greece. ‘I now know the choking effect of tear gas and the sounds of live bullets.’, ‘Maybe the humanity is in the fine print.’, ‘EU leaders are accountable not just to European voters, but also to the subjects of their policies – including the nearly 13,000 asylum seekers displaced from Moria.’, ‘I put my life in the hands of smugglers and traffickers and arrived safely. He tells me living in this camp is even worse than being tortured in Syria. Inzamelingsactie - I'm traveling to refugee camp Kara Tepe in Lesbos and raising money to support them. Migration and Asylum Minister Notis Mitarakis paid a visit to the hot spot of Kara Tepe on the island of Lesvos at midnight Tuesday. Around 7,000 people live in the Kara Tepe II camp for refugees and migrants (in the background), erected last year on the island of Lesvos, Greece after the Moria camp was destroyed in a fire. The Site Manager is Mr. Michail Batzakis. You too can be a part of this initiative by donating directly to Go Project Hope. Before the pandemic, we worked inside Moria. From February 3rd to 12th, Marie and Frank travelled to Lesvos, to do volunteer work at the refugee camp Kara Tepe and organise a project week for students and teachers of the Hogeschool van Amsterdam. Together with a team of twelve others, my job was to set up a “child-friendly space” in each of the camps – a place where children who had survived ­crossing the Aegean Sea could play. *Ahmad makes it to the front of the line carrying his two-year-old daughter, carefully wrapped in a blanket. Refugee for Refugees operates a warehouse near Moria Camp. In this moving account from our archives, one Vancouverite shares her story of volunteering in a refugee camp in Greece, the families she met, and the children she’ll never forget. Kara Tepe provides a community atmosphere for its residents, meaning that its staff and volunteers are comprised of both international volunteers, local staff and residents themselves. Back inside the clinic, I meet 25-year-old Fatima. I need to know if he is a torture survivor so I can refer him to more-specialised psychiatric care. Kara Tepe (Greek: Καρά Τεπέ, from Turkish for "black hill") is located about 2.5 km to the north of Mytilene, the capital of the island of Lesbos. The new camp lacks stable electricity, has inadequate washing facilities, and is prone to flooding. Support our journalism and become more involved in our community.