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This week, Saad Nabhan loved his first sizzling bathe in two years.
The Syrian asylum seeker was among the many first arrivals at a brand new EU-funded facility that opened this week on the Greek island of Samos with the goal of enhancing the determined residing circumstances confronted by many migrants.
Since arriving from Turkey final yr, Nabhan had been caught at a dirty camp close to the port that residents name “the jungle”, sleeping in a tent with out a mattress and washing with buckets of chilly water.
“Now now we have air-con, a kitchen and toilet. I really feel like a human once more,” stated the 55-year-old certified accountant who labored on the Syrian finance ministry earlier than his home was destroyed within the civil conflict. “This was the primary time in two years I felt as if I used to be sleeping at my residence.”
The Samos camp is the primary of 5 centres in Greece costing a complete of €276m constructed to accommodate asylum seekers coming into Europe through the Aegean — probably the most fashionable migrant routes into the continent from Asia and the Center East by means of Turkey.
It provides vastly improved services from the sprawling, casual outdated camp the place Nabhan and a whole lot of others lived till this week. Unhygienic and, lately, typically overcrowded, it failed to supply even fundamental facilities similar to bogs and was overrun by rats, stated Manos Logothetis of Greece’s migration and asylum ministry.
Escorting journalists across the new facility this week, he took seen satisfaction in its snug beds, bogs and showers with sizzling operating water, lockers for storage and free Wi-Fi. A brand new basketball courtroom lacks solely gamers and a soccer pitch is below building.
Non-governmental organisations have voiced issues concerning the barbed-wire fences and surveillance cameras that give the camp the appear and feel of a low-security jail. Residents have their fingerprints taken and should present identification playing cards to enter the ability by means of gates which might be locked from eight within the night till eight within the morning.
Logothetis defended the improved safety. “We’ve got to know who’s who, the place every individual resides within the camp, what’s their profile, when their subsequent interview is and what stage they’re at with their papers,” he defined.
Logothetis isn’t any stranger to the wants of the asylum seekers on Samos: earlier than his authorities place, he served for 4 years because the outdated camp’s solely physician.
His concern is that numbers on the new camp shouldn’t exceed its capability of three,000. The concern is {that a} massive enhance in migrant numbers might result in a repeat of 2015 when a surge in arrivals from Syria and elsewhere overwhelmed Greece’s capability to take care of them.
“We hope we don’t have that many residents and that we’re once more pressured to do what we did in 2015, when the migrant flows have been so massive that we didn’t care concerning the legislation. [Then] we might simply give folks a tent and say ‘keep wherever you want’,” stated Logothetis.
His fears usually are not unreasonable provided that the outdated camp, designed to accommodate 680 folks, was at one level residence to an estimated 9,000 — greater than the inhabitants of close by Vathy, the island’s capital.
Not everyone seems to be enamoured with the brand new Samos facility. Giulia Cicoli of advocacy group Nonetheless I Rise, who got here to the island 5 years in the past to assist the migrants, stated the brand new services have been the naked minimal and shouldn’t be thought-about an achievement.
“What that they had earlier than was felony. The dignity of being human was taken away. The residing circumstances have been a violation of any human rights,” she stated.
For now, the brand new centre is sparsely populated. A lot of the island’s asylum seekers have been taken to the mainland and new arrivals have fallen sharply for the reason that pandemic started. A complete of 10,545 asylum seekers entered Samos within the first eight months of 2019; the determine for a similar interval this yr is 111.
In Vathy, residents have been broadly supportive of the brand new facility.
“The transfer to the brand new camp will probably be good not just for the asylum seekers however for us locals,” stated store proprietor Alexandros Giokarinis. “They’ll be protected against the chilly winters and reside in higher circumstances and we gained’t be scared to stroll the streets at evening. The city will probably be cleaner and quieter.”
The six-member Ghadiri household from Afghanistan moved this week from the outdated camp right into a two-bedroom container residence with its personal kitchen and toilet.
But whereas they agree it’s a large enchancment, what they actually need are the papers that can enable them to start a brand new life; the household’s software for asylum has been rejected thrice.
“I need my ID, I need my husband to start out working, I need a residence right here in Greece and I need my youngsters to go to high school,” stated Nadia Ghadiri, 39, whose youngest son was born on Samos.
For Iraq-born Hamad, 23, who has spent three years sleeping in a tent, this week’s transfer was a bittersweet second.
“Once you see one thing like this, it makes you sadder,” he stated, gazing out of the window because the bus transporting him to the ability climbed a excessive street, providing beautiful views of the clear blue waters round Samos.
“I do know we’re going to a greater camp . . . however you need to reside, you need to work and also you need to assist your loved ones again residence. Right here I’ve misplaced my energy and I fear I’ll overlook who I’m.”
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