“No one passes a test that qualifies them to be born in a country of their choice. It’s the luck of the draw…Being born in a peaceful country, you must share your luck with the less fortunate ones.”—Michael Sohner
By Stas Margaronis
As Greece struggles to rebuild its economy and lower unemployment, it continues to struggle with the flow of refugees from the wars in Syria and Afghanistan who arrive on make shift boats and rafts from Turkey to nearby Greek islands in the Aegean Sea.
This creates increased social and economic burdens on the Greek mainland as well as the Aegean islands of Lesbos, Samos and Chios. This is undermining tourism and the island economies.
The plight of these refugees has become the focal point of a rescue campaign by a small band of Greek, European, Korean, Australian and American refugee activists.
Michael Sohner, a meeting and event-planner based in Mar Vista, California and his partner Tara McColeman, a registered nurse, have been providing support services to Syrian and Afghan refugees arriving on the Greek Island of Chios since 2015.
Sohner has teamed up with Chios restaurateur Kostas Tanainis and other activists to provide food, clothing and other support services to refugees.
McColeman and Sohner raise money to support the Chios Peoples’ Kitchen which provides nutritional meals for refugees on the island in collaboration with Tanainis: “The daily food cost to feed 180 children and 15 families is $250,” Sohner says. ”There is also a need for tents and sleeping bags, shoes and warm clothing.”
Sohner recalls, “I was very affected by the mass-arrival of Syrian and Afghan refugees in Europe in 2015 and I became active when a friend of mine, a teacher from Stuttgart (Germany), told me that he has been helping refugees arriving on Chios coming on boats from Turkey. One of the people that my friend was working with was Kostas Tanainis.”
Tanainis recalled that refugees were literally washing up on the beach in front of his restaurant including, in one case, a baby that drowned in the surf. The sight of people giving their lives to escape from Turkey and war-torn Syria and Afghanistan on make-shift rafts and boats motivated him to become active in refugee assistance.
Today, he says the chronic arrivals of refugees have frightened away tourists and caused a downturn in the Chios economy.
Sohner recalls working closely with Tanainis to help refugees and he and McColeman spent two weeks in Chios in 2016. They prepared food and sorted through donations of clothing.
A kitchen, located North of Chios town, was the center for producing ‘nutritious meals” for the refugees and led to the establishment of the Chios Peoples’s Kitchen (CPK).
The Chios Peoples Kitchen was also supported by teams who came from the United States, Australia Korea, Spain and elsewhere in Europe.
By 2016 an agreement between the European Union and Turkey resulted in a substantial reduction in the flow of refugees arriving on Aegean islands from Turkey where refugees travelled to on their way to mainland Greece and then to European countries. Even so, the flow of refugees did not stop, and boatloads of refugees continue to arrive.
According to the “Aegean Boat Report (ABR),” a site supported by Norwegian activists that reports on refugee arrivals on the Aegean islands, there have been 29,507 people arriving as refugees on Chios, Samos and Lesbos so far in 2018. Of these 25,039 have been transferred off the islands to mainland Greece. The arrivals are 10.4% higher for the first 11 months of 2018 than for the same period in 2017, according to ABR.[1]
On Chios, Sohner reports, refugees are housed in one internment called Vial-a camp that is run by the Greek government. Sohner says the camp has a capacity for 1,000-1,500 refugees but is currently holding between 2,000-2,200 people. The overcrowding means:
“Some of the refugees are living in containers, some are living in outdoor tents and they are freezing in the winter without adequate housing and no hot water for washing. The food is so disgusting that you would not feed it to animals and has zero nutritional value. Doctors from KEELPNO (Hellenic Center for Disease Control & Prevention) a Greek government organization provide health care from Monday to Saturday from 8 am to 2 pm. A Spanish organization Salvamento Marítimo Humanitario provides doctors who provide medical care for refugees for all the other times KEELPNO is not on duty. Finally, the Greek government orders food for the refugee two times a month, If there are more refugees than food supply then some people will go hungry.”
Even after the refugees, “are transferred from the camp on Chios to mainland Greece, they still could wait 2-3 years or more before they receive asylum in Greece and are legally permitted to look for work,” he says.
“As a European I am very ashamed that people seeking asylum in Europe are treated in this manner. I don’t fault Greece for this behavior. I fault Europe. “
Sohner and McColeman are leaving for Chios on December 26 and they plan to take refugees from the Vial camp out on shopping expeditions for food and other essentials and give them a respite from camp life.
[1] https://www.facebook.com/AegeanBoatReport/