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This article is more than 4 years old
'Prisoners of Europe': the everyday humiliation

of refugees stuck in Greece
Patrick Kingsley in Thessaloniki

Tue 6 Sep 2016 08.58 BST
1 of 10 23/6/21, 5:30 PM
A
t the Softex refugee camp in northern Greece, it is lighter by night
than it is by day. Inside this windowless former warehouse, the lamps
only work in the evenings. That is partly because the place was not
designed to house people. It is part of what was a toilet paper factory.
“It’s insulting,” says Hendiya Asseni, a 62-year-old Syrian, of being housed in a

one-time loo-roll store. “But then everything here is insulting – the life, the food,
the fact we have a toilet in front of our tent.”
This humiliation is the logical conclusion of the migration policies that Europe
has pursued since the death of Alan Kurdi this time last year. Attempting to stem
the flow into Europe, politicians have established a deportation deal with Turkey,
from where most Europe-bound migrants depart, and built fences throughout the
Balkans, trapping about 50,000 people in Greece.
Some still smuggle themselves north. But the vast majority of those still on Greek
territory when the borders shut in March are now stranded in about 50 squalid
camps across the country. At least seven were infested with snakes and scorpions,
aid workers said. In another, the mattresses were full of bed-bugs. But the most
notorious is Softex.
2 of 10 23/6/21, 5:30 PM
A message from a resident at the Vasilika refugee camp in northern Greece. Photograph: Patrick Kingsley/The
Guardian
“How symbolic is it that of all the empty buildings, of all the places for a refugee
camp, one of the biggest and most permanent has been set up in a disused toilet
paper factory?” asks Nico Stevens, head of projects for Help Refugees, a British
charity funding improvements at the camp. “It’s very emblematic of the situation
as a whole.”
Softex sits in an industrial wasteland on the northern fringes of Thessaloniki,

Greece’s second city. Refugees have been here since the border shut in May,
forcing the cash-strapped Greek authorities to hastily house people in whatever
spaces they could find. Several hundred have now smuggled their way north, but
about a thousand are still left. Most of them live in tents inside the gloomy
warehouse. The rest sleep outside, a few hundred metres from a grim row of
burnt-out trains and factory chimneys.
“We’re suffering, emotionally – we’re not good,” says Mohammad Mohammad, a

30-year-old taxi driver whose wife and children are under siege in a Damascus
suburb. Mohammad came to Greece in February, hoping he could make his way to
Germany, claim asylum, and then apply for his family to join him. Instead, the
border shut before he could leave – meaning that he must pay a smuggler to take
him north, or wait for the EU relocation programme to assign him a permanent
place elsewhere in Europe.
But as so many stuck in Greece point out, relocation is not working properly –
with just 5,100 places made available in the space of nearly 12 months. “The
system doesn’t work,” says Mohammad. “At this rate, they’ll need 10 years to get
it finished. But if we’re here for another month, we’ll be in a mental asylum.”
3 of 10 23/6/21, 5:30 PM
200 km
200 miles
1–6
Greece
It is a familiar sentiment. Interviewees consistently said that the limbo they are
trapped in – which has left them far from loved ones, without access to work and
education, and without any clarity on their future – has led to a wave of
depression and mental health problems.
Abouni, 17, is at Softex without his parents and sister, who are still under siege in
Aleppo. As a minor, Abouni hoped to apply for family reunification after being
granted asylum. Instead he is likely to turn 18 before that can happen, and he says
the anxiety of the situation has led to him being taken to hospital four times with
panic attacks.
“Sometimes I feel so angry that I can’t breathe, and then I fall unconscious,” says
Abouni, who asked to be referred to by a pseudonym to avoid being stigmatised at
the camp. “I have family in Syria under the bombs, and when I talk to my little
sister on the phone, she asks if she’ll ever see me again. I’m stuck here in this jail.”
At the Vasilika camp outside Thessaloniki, one of seven visited recently by the
Guardian, the warehouse is brighter than at Softex but the despair is the same.
Hisham worked as a medic for an international aid group for 10 years in Syria but
4 of 10 23/6/21, 5:30 PM
Hendiya Asseni with her husband Badreddine and their son Mohammad. After Badreddine suffered a stroke in the
Softex refugee camp, doctors said he should be placed in permanent accommodation. Photograph: Patrick Kingsley/The
Guardian
Even basic health services are hard to come by. Aid groups like the Red Cross are
present during working hours at most camps, but the services they can provide
are limited. In serious cases, ambulances sometimes take too long to arrive. At
Softex, Hendiya Asseni’s husband, a 71-year-old former civil servant, had his fifth
stroke. Asseni said the ambulance took more than an hour to arrive. When he
finally reached hospital, the doctors said he was too weak to live in a tent. But
their advice was ignored, and he was still taken back to the camp a few days later.
Medicine is also scarce. At Vasilika camp, Mohammad Ibrahim, 10, has a blood
disorder known as thalassaemia, a condition his sisters died from. The Greek
government pays for Mohammad’s blood to be transfused once a month, but they
cannot supply the medicine he needs. His existing supply, his brother Rezan says,
“will run out in about two weeks. And the hospital says they don’t have any
more.”
5 of 10 23/6/21, 5:30 PM
“We are extremely worried about it,” says Roland

Schoenbauer, a senior UNHCR spokesman in Greece. “It’s closely linked to
substandard living conditions for asylum seekers in Greece. In many places, there
are no gender-segregated toilets, there are showers without doors, and there are
sleeping areas where [both genders] are together.”
In some cases, asylum seekers have willingly entered the sex trade because they
feel they have no other choice.
On a recent night in Athens, Hassan describes how he knows when a man wants
to pay him for sex. “With experience you can tell from someone’s stare,” says
Hassan, a pseudonym. “Or when you’re sitting on a bench, and someone sits
down next to you.”
Originally an estate agent, Hassan did not want to discover all this. Nor did the
dozens of other Iranian and Afghans who have turned to prostitution in Athens in
recent months. “But we’re stuck here in Greece and we have no other way of
making money,” says Hassan, a 29-year-old Iranian. “So we’re forced to do this.”
Men have long sold sex in the Pedion Areos park in central Athens, but those
familiar with the scene say their numbers have spiked in recent months – once
Europe began tightening its borders over the winter.
6 of 10 23/6/21, 5:30 PM
Hassan reached Greece from Iran in February, aiming to join the thousands of
other asylum seekers heading north through Macedonia at the time.
But by that point the Macedonian border closed to Iranians – and later to all
nationalities – so Hassan tried six times to get smuggled through the Balkans
instead. Each time Hassan was caught, he says, “and my smuggler ate all my
money”. He had no means of moving on – and no means of staying put. Then a
friend told him about the park.
“Most of us come as a joke,” says Hassan. “We hear about it and we think we’ll see
what it’s like. But then when our families stop sending us money, we have to
come here full-time.”
Perhaps the greatest desperation can be found on the islands, where you can find
the most overcrowded camps. Before the deportation deal with Turkey began,
new arrivals could move quickly to the mainland. But since March, most
newcomers have not been able to leave legally – while deportations have largely
failed to materialise. So the camps are overflowing, leading to tensions with some
7 of 10 23/6/21, 5:30 PM
UNHCR hopes to move 10,000 people out of the camps, and into private
accommodation. Small private projects – like Maria Diakopoulou’s – are also
helping to integrate refugees into local households and communities. About a
fifth of the 100 refugees in her scheme now have some kind of work, and some
have set up an informal business.
But most observers acknowledge the general situation is dire – and has the
potential to turn into a long-term tragedy.
The EU relocation scheme and the EUfTurkey deal are collectively meant to see
most asylum seekers moved out of Greece. But with both schemes faltering, one
of the early architects of the EUfTurkey deal believes many refugees may end up
never leaving.
8 of 10 23/6/21, 5:30 PM
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'Prisoners of Europe': the everyday humiliation of refugees stuck in Gr... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/06/prisoners-of-europe-t...

News Opinion Sport Culture Lifestyle

This article is more than 4 years old

'Prisoners of Europe': the everyday humiliation

Patrick Kingsley in Thessaloniki

“It’s insulting,” says Hendiya Asseni, a 62-year-old Syrian, of being housed in a

Softex sits in an industrial wasteland on the northern fringes of Thessaloniki,

“We’re suﬀering, emotionally – we’re not good,” says Mohammad Mohammad, a

“We are extremely worried about it,” says Roland

Read The Guardian in print Take time to understand the week

'Just run': on the Turkey5Greece border as refugees try to break

Greece passes asylum law aimed at curbing migrant arrivals

Greece races to move refugees from island likened to a 'new Lesbos'

Cold weather reignites fears for refugees poorly sheltered in Greece

Hundreds hurt in police clashes at Greece5Macedonia border

The Guardian Weekly Digital subscription

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