#bw blog
18.-19.03.2016 idomeni, lesbos/greece. the 4 ½ day´s i spend in the camp have been brutal intense. i met so many beautiful souls, saw horrifying conditions, hopeful and lost eyes, have been told dozens of unique story´s, experienced the pride of people who lost everything and now stay for weeks under the worst condition you can not even imagine, but still being able to stay humble. it was simply heartbreaking. on the other side it gives me even more drive to continue this journey, to tell the story´s behind this disaster and about the complete failure of the european politics. when i think of all this strong people, there is no other way to stay strong too, for them, for us, trying to inspire, trying to change minds, trying to explain, trying to help, trying to shine light into the darkness. there is no way i will give up, we need this change. if we fail, our society will fail in entirety. we will fall back into the darkest time of human existence, so there is no other way than to continue. we are the 98%, if we unite, nothing and no one can stop us! talk to each other! spread love and kindness! laugh and learn from our differences! make your life a contribution to all beings!
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THE WAR AGAINST THE KURDISH PEOPLE
18.03.2016 idomeni, greece. this refugee in idomeni is a kurd from aleppo, syria. i met him in the dawn of the day in the end of the trainstation where the camp ends. he was there with a group of dozen other kurdish young men, all from syria, most of them from the same neighborhood in aleppo. they all told me pretty much the same story, that they have not been part of one of the groups that are fighting, but during the last years they had to fight to defend their neighborhood. the kurdish people in turkey, syria and irak are under pressure from almost all other groups, turkey bombs and fight them everywhere, including massexecutions of civilians in southeast of turkey. the official syrian military, together with russia, the syrian isis and other dschihadist groups, are fighting against them in syria. in irak they have a semi autonom area, but also face fighting with turkey, the irak isis and other groups. since the kurdish have established a kind of modernist society in this region, including an equalisation of man and woman the exceed most of the western society´s, they are our natural ally in this region. did you know that they have always a man and a woman deciding together in important positions? nevertheless we let them down, sign a deal with turkey that europa will not interfere with their almost genocide war against the kurds. if europa will really grant the turkish people a visa free travel to the eu, we will face a new massive influx of kurdish people who will claim for asylum in europa.
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19.03.2016 idomeni, greece. today strong wind was blowing away dozens, if not hundreds, of tents in the area. it was a mixture of horror, laughter and for some kids even fun. the last two photos are taken within 1 minute. two members of team humanity let one broken tent fly and in the very next moment their own big tent was blown away, leaving a sleeping member of the team pretty astonished behind on now open air ground.
somehow it was a good allegory for what was happening the same time on the greek islands, refugees hopes where blown away.
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18.03.2016 idomeni, greece. panayotis kouroublis is the greek minister of interior. he visited the idomeni camp on this day and later told the press that it look like the concentration camps of the nazi´s. you have to know that he is actually blind. in some parts i have to agree on his comparison, because the general conditions are really bad and the police on spot is no help at all, but actually the military run hotspots would be much more comparable to that, not because of the sanitation situation but because of the lack of rights, the treatment from the guards, the fact that these camps are actually official detention camps, the rigid rules etc. a lot of them are old military camps or even military detention camps like moria on lesbos. press is not aloud anymore there, thats always a bad sign. since today there where rumors that during the next 2 days lesbos will be “evacuated”. this term means that all refugees on the island will be forced on ferry´s to turkey and deported to there, refusing their human rights to claim for asylum. i predict major protest from most of the ngo´s and volunteers in mytilini and the camps, especially around the harbor to stop this illegal action if this is true. other sources say that the route for deportation will be from athens, not from the islands.
update - on the 19th of march the authorities started to clear all the camps on lesbos, bringing the refugees to the harbor to ship them with 3 ferry´s to kavala in the north of greece. we are not sure where they will go from there. according to the official statement of the eu only refugees that come after the 19th of march will directly deported back to turkey. so my guess right now is that they cleared the camps on lesbos to seperate the “old” cases from the “new”.
amnesty international stated that: it as a “historic blow to human rights”, saying Europe was turning its back on refugees.
“Guarantees to scrupulously respect international law are incompatible with the touted return to Turkey of all irregular migrants”.
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17-18.03.2016 idomeni, greece. idomeni by night is one thing first, a smell. since the refugees have to burn all they find to get some warmth, they do burn a lot of plastic and the smoke is everywhere. all the people who stay here a few hours start to cough and this is not because everyone catch some of the spreading diseases. there is actually a distribution for firewood but it is by far not enough. during the day´s you can see them wandering the wider area around to find additional wood. i only felt not save when the group of young refugees start to march around and chant slogans to fire themeself up for fighting, but apart from that, even in the worst parts of the camp, i never felt that danger to my own safety, which is quiet remarkable in this kind of situation.
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17.03.2016 idomeni, greece. i was watching this young syrian boy playing alone on the rails for some minutes. he was entirely in his own world, playing several roles. then he spotted me and came to me, making signs that he wants me to take photos of him, smiling with his beautiful soft eyes. as you can see a part of his head is burned badly. it was one of these barrel bombs of the assad regime that created the fire that did this to him.
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17.03.2016 idomeni,greece. the situation in the camp is so bad, tensions rise between the refugee groups. young syrians and afghans had several clashes, some minor, like on this photo, but also big fights involving hundreds of people. yesterday night it reached a new peak and it was for a very sad reason. when i was in the middle of the camp yesterday, i saw a man running in my direction. i lifted up the camera to take a photo but when he passed by and i saw all the details i did not take the photo. he carried his daughter and was in panic. her pants down to the feet, the shirt pulled up, naked, with wide open eyes, saggy in his arms. i thought she was dead or at least passed out. it is a picture i will never forget, stronger then anything i actually have taken here and i am very happy that i did not pull the trigger to take it. the syrian say that a afghan tried to rape the girl, but was interrupted, i don´t have any confirmation for it from other sources. she actually was in a deep shock. later in the afternoon, the sun went down already, i witnessed a group of young syrians chanting and powering themselves up to more anger. that was the moment i left the scenery. today i talked to a lot of refugees and volunteers and the picture of what happen after i left is like that: some older syrians, who stay in tends on the rails, told the young guys to not attack their afghan and pakistani neighbours, because “they are good people”. the group of syrians then went to the front of the camp, wich is a “new” part and as crowded as the fields on the other side of the rails. there is one area where mostly afghan stay in tends and that is where they went. they put fire to some of the tends, a few burned down, between 80 to 100 hundred people clashed, fistfighting, throwing bottles and stones. a few of the afghans where beaten up badly and one german volunteer, who was on the scene with a camera, was beaten up so bad that he ended up in the hospital. the refugees also took his camera. wrong time in the wrong place. today there was still a lot of tension in the camp and i believe that this will rise more and more because of the hopeless situation. when you have a lot of young desperate guys in a situation like this, you always have this kind of aggression, in every community, so they turn on each other. that is the base of the divide and rule idea. when you talk with these people, afghan, syrian, irakis, pakistanis, kurdish etc one to one, you meet very gentle and friendly folks, almost all of them. it is this situation they are stucked in, that is fucking them up and don´t forget, most of them coming from warzones.
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IDOMENI I
16.03.2016 idomeni, lesbos/greece. these are my first impression of the camp during the day time. as you can see, the conditions are a plain desaster. still people, especially kids find their way´s to cope with it, which always amaze me. rumors about the future of the camp is that i will be closed soon and if the refugees will not go by choice the authority´s will use force.
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16.03.2016 idomeni, greece. today i went to idomeni to stay for some day´s. wanted to go there for a longer while, but because of some finance struggle i had to postpone it several times. my first impression is of a desaster area. worst conditions i have experience so far since the crisis started. yes, there are several ngo´s giving food, medical attention etc, but the whole camp is a mudfield, people camp and live beside the trainrails as well, food is obvious an issue as well as really bad healthconditions, diseases are spreading. the refugee collect wood from all the area around, but still they have to burn plastic everywhere, it smells like hell. riot police from athens is on the spot, the real bad guys. this young boy from syria was holding his bread like a precious treasure for quiet a while. he came to me and give the biggest smile you can imagine.
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13.03.2016 near agrilia kratigou, lesbos/greece. since a while we see the tactic of frontex and the coastguard to pick up the refugees even if they are only a few hundred meters away from the beach, with no problem to reach it and accompanied by lifeguard boats . they use speedboats to force the boats of the refugees to move towards the big ships, so they can´t slip through. there is actually no reasonable reason to do it this way, because all the refugees that come to the beach are taken care of immediately now by a big number of fully equipped ngo´s and volunteers and will be transported by unhcr in busses to the camps within 20 minutes. when the refugees are picked up by frontex and the coastguard, they have to sit on the windy deck with no treatment, most of the time in soaking wet cloth, no emergency blankets are given to them, no water or food sometimes for more then an hour or two, because the ships stay out to catch more boats until it is fully loaded. this seems to be another inhuman scare tactic by the eu, because this way the refugees don´t have a pleasant welcome, no smiles, no care, instead they face a rude treatment by military screaming at them while they have to sit quiet and are not allowed to move, to smoke a cigarette, go to toilette or anything else. there is a big chance to get seriously sick because of this conditions. this way they might don´t send back the message, to the ones waiting in turkey, that it was taking good care of them, at least this is my guess why they do it this way.
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08.03.2016 camp pikpa, lesbos/greece. this is the hand of a young afghan refugee. while he was on the way to greece, he had to faced the life threatening conditions of winter and incure heavy frostbites and is one of the vulnerable cases that are helped at camp pikpa on lesbos. he is among the most gentle young man i ever met, smiling almost all the time, not even complaining about what happens to him, truly brave. his injury is direct a consequence of the western war in his homeland and of the failed refugee policy. afghanistan is considered as a safe third country by the eu, so he has no chance to get the status of a refugee.
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07.03.2016 harbor of mytilini, lesbos/greece. a syrian family is waiting to enter the ferry to pireaus. since the eu closed the balkan route, they will be stucked in greece, most likely somewhere in athens, with no where to go. the camps in and around athens are full. even if the greek government is able to set up new camps, turn empty industrial space into refugee spaces and using other facility´s, this will be only a drop in the ocean, because there are still coming refugees in big numbers and there is no way that greece can cope with that on it´s own. this will not only lead to a very bad situation for the refugees, ripping them of the hope to live a normal life and a prospect for their children, but also will lead to social and political unrest in greece soon. the rightwings in greece will win bigtime from this eu policy. it is most likely that we will see highly violent streetprotest on the streets of athens and other places in greece within the next 4 to 6 weeks, if the eu is not find a solution to open a way for the refugees to other country´s within the eu.
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