#trulight
18.03.2016 idomeni, greece. the european governments have chosen the path of barbarism, leaving all behind that they claim to stand for in the last 70 years. after the second world war the nations met 1948 in paris to pass a bill, the universal declaration of human rights.also this declaration is not written and passed as a international law treaty, it actually transformed into one. “the 1968 united nations international conference on human rights advised that the declaration “constitutes an obligation for the members of the international community” to all persons. there has been numberless breaches of the bill from country´s all over the world since it was launched from 48 nations in 1948, but the western world was always claiming that this is one of their fundamental roots. when you analyze the latest policy of the european union and it´s members, you have to come to the conclusion that these governments unlinked from these rules during the last year.
the new practice to “handle” the refugee crisis uses methods far beyond what is the substance of the declaration of human rights.
in greece and in the mediterranean sea, there is a actual military war mission ongoing, a mission that includes war ships, submarines, planes, drones, helicopters and thousands of military personal from the nato and frontex. the military is officially deployed to fight smugglers and human traffickers, therefore they also approved to use lethal force.
it is pure disinformation by the eu to call this a rescue mission. the mission is launched and created to stop the refugees from coming to europa.
big and small non-governmental organisations like amnesty international,human rights watch,doctors without borders and many more, recently issued press releases that are strongly contrary to the latest actions of how the eu is handling the refugee crisis, including the deal with turkey.
https://search.wikileaks.org/?q=eu+plan+for
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02.04.2016 idomeni, greece. the frustration in the camp is growing fast. the word is out that from today on a huge group of refugees will try to shut down all kind of support like food and medical attention, to protest against the situation they face. they know well that the border is closed, that there is no real way to claim for asylum in greece right now, about the deal with the turkish government. so they are willing to take desperate measures to enforce their claims. yesterday a 14 year old boy had to been stopped in idomeni as he planned to set himself on fire. several refugees are in a hunger strike. the first photo in this set show´s a 15 day´s year old baby. she was born in the camp.
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02.04.2016 camp at eko gas station near polikastro /greece. when i arrived there around 16 o´clock, the highway was blockaded by the refugees. as it turned out the police shut down the medical tent in the camp a few hours before. the medical tent have been adopted by scm a few day´s ago, providing all the official papers to do medical treatments. word is that the police shut down the medical tent to increase the pressure on the refugees to move to the official camps, but the refugees know well about the bad conditions in this camps, the lack of food supply, bad army tents, lack of medical attention etc, so they refuse to relocate to the camps. in this camp there are several cases of refugees that need serious and regular medical treatment, so the closing of the medical tent is life threatening for them. the refugees blockaded the highway for hours, i left before it was open again.
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31-03-2016 camp at eko gas station near polikastro /greece. this place is called the eko camp. it is located on a highway gas station. around 3000 refugees live here in tents, about 25 km away from idomeni. several small ngo´s and private volunteers trying to help with medical attention, food distribution, cloth tents etc. there is even a tent with a little school by spanish volunteer´s. even if it is better than to be in the mud and dust of idomeni, the situation is bad. a lot of family´s live here. the kids play on the roads, even on the highway sometime.
this serious looking afghan girl is maybe 4-5 years old. i saw her several times during my visits on eko station and it was very rare that i saw her smiling. most of the time she had that serious look of a person, who seen and experienced to much.
to be frank, the european union and it´s members handle the situation now like a defensive-war in greece and other country´s in europa. military was alway´s the worst option to handle humanitarian crisis.
all hot spot camps and official camp facilities, including distributions are now under the control of frontex, greek military and other military forces. on the greek islands are fbi, interpol, greek, turkish frontex and other european police that have granted police and further rights. it is almost martial law installed. the official camps are detention center now, but you can even call it concentration camps. from the refugees coming after the 20th of april the military and frontex are ordered to take away the personal belongings, as well as the mobil phones. the big ngo´s like unhcr and doctors without borders withdraw their activities in the camps, publishing statements that they are not willing and able to work in prisons. you have to think about this for a moment. these organisations work all around the globe in almost all kind of crisis and in europa they have to stop the mission because of the political implanted conditions.
the smaller ngo´s where kicked out the camp some weeks before. private volunteers and journalist are generally not allowed to enter the camps. so almost no independent information can leak out of the camps.
since some time the refugees are ordered to claim for asylum via skype and as far as i know this process is mandatory now. this is kind of impossible if you don´t have a computer or smartphone and i actually never heard of one refugee that had a successful attempt to get through this way. that implies that there is no way right now to claim for asylum in greece for these refugees, a clear violation of the geneva convention for refugees and simply diabolic.
when volunteers try to pass supply´s and informations of what kind ever through the fences, the police comes within minutes and stop them. on the other hand the military/frontex hired subcontractors to deliver food. first of all the food is not enough. camps with baby´s and mothers need special food for the baby´s, because a lot of the mothers can´t breastfeed the baby´s anymore, but this supply is not ordered as well as most of the medical goods you need for ten thousands of people. there are several cases of subcontractors delivering bad quality, old, fungal affected food. in pireaus harbor, where a few thousand refugees live in tents now, near the space where the ferry from lesbos is landing, there was a wide spreading food poisoning because of this. these people are vulnerable, live under worst sanitary conditions and you fucking give them rotten food, seriously?
camps like pikpa are ordered to close. pikpa is a wonderful and special place on lesbos. it is a former municipal owned camping space for local kids, a summer camp. it was empty for years. now there is a refugee camp for the refugees that need special support and protection. children and grown ups with traumata, psychological problems, disability´s, ones who recover from wounds and medical conditions. it is a space of peace and care for people who are in real need for it. pikpa is running without state money and all the volunteers are working without payment. it is a real treat, a manifestation of humanitarian values, values that that europa blab about quiet a lot during the last six decades, a shiny example of civil service with almost no coast for the public authorities. there are several places like pikpa in greece. all face the same threat, closing without any plan for creating something equivalent from the government. instead all these special cases are planed to be moved to the official camps as well, all the new cases are going their already.
do we really wan´t to treat refugees, humans of all age, baby´s and small children like the british treated the boers in 1900 in south africa? because this is exactly what our governments implants right now. without the constant help of ten thousands of greek and international private volunteers working to prevent an absolut humanitarian disaster, we would face hundreds, if not thousands of dead refugees on european soil within a few month, because of the conditions they live in.
the european plan is to send them back in “safe third country´s”. safe country´s like turkey, that has a president that want to shape the state as he need it. a state where you face long term prison time if you dare to criticize the president, an islamist who dreams of a new ottoman empire. a man who managed to become the richest dude in turkey by corruption. a country in wich the border troups shoot to kill on incoming refugees, beat them up and sink their boats when they are leaving. a safe country where unattended teenager girls from syria are sold into marriage and refugee kids sold as working slaves. to a state that has not even fully signed the geneva convention nor has a working asylum system. where judges and police forces that try to uncover crimes of the government are thrown into prison, as well as journalist who dare to write about these scandals. a state that fights a brutal war against one if its minority´s, the kurdish, while it supports directly the al-nusra front and other hardcore pro-kalifat combat groups. if this is what you call a safe country, you can also call the caldera of an active volcano a safe substratum for your retirement house.
if we allow our government to treat humans in need of protection this way, because they are not from our region, the very same government will soon have no problem to use the very same kind of actions to the citizen of their own country´s as well. not only betray we all of the values that we claimed to have, but destroy the very fundament of the european union.
the nationalist movement in europa is stronger then it ever was before, since the second world war. two and a half generations after the second world war, the people don´t fear war enough anymore here in europa. they don´t remember what it is like. they just know about it from the media. the war´s we fought have been fought far away from us, mostly.
now the same healing promises are made by the same kind of narcissistic psychopath, using some group of humans to blame all bad on (refugees/muslim/terrorist), to instal repressive states. a lot of people resonate to this, because they live in society´s that offers not much of a future for them or their children. 30-40%, in some country´s even more, of our european populations are poor, undereducated, with no real chance to get better. new laws and technology create the consistently surveillance and screening of all the citizen in all our country´s. these are for sure not signs for freedom. these are signs for dictatorship.
check your history books.
it is our responsibility as citizen to take care of this, or we have to face the same consequences like our ancestors 80 years ago. in that case i can promise you a lot of no fun time.
neal mcqueen
ps.
doing all this, helping people in need with such a large number of people from all over the world, is quiet uplifting, fun, exhausting, intense, happy and sad. almost all of the volunteers come back to their homes as changed personality´s. the experience changes your perception. a lot of the volunteers i talked to during the last six month, told me about this moment when the situation only enable them to function. all of them describe this moment as a no ego experience. this is something that let you grow as a person, as a being. it teaches you humility and can create a inner peace that you will not find in our modern bubble existence.
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20.03.2016 port of mytilini, lesbos/greece. this is the last ferry loaded with refugees from the camps in lesbos for this day. there are still hundreds of syrian in kara tepe, about 700 pakistanis in the olive grove and a few other cases. about the main camp moria we have no confirmed information, since all the ngo´s are expelled from the hotspots now. there was a ferry leaving lesbos today around noon with about 2000 refugees heading to the islands in the south to pick up more refugees and then to go to kavala in the north of greece. i don´t have the exact number but the guess is around 4000 refugees arrived 20.30 o´clock in kavala harbor. they will be brought to several camps in the area. the refugees have to go on the ferry´s to pireaus and kavala, because the eu want to clear all camps on the islands for the new coming refugees, so they can be separated from the ones that comes from the 20.03.2016 on. these one will be handled on the new rules, that are part of the new deal with turkey. the deal implants the plan to deport all incoming refugees back to turkey and for every refugee coming the eu will accept an approved asylum seeker from turkey. this deal is bullshit on many levels and is breaking a lot if european laws, as well as the geneva convention of human rights, which strictly forbid mass deportation. the deal use not the term of mass deportation but use a cover up term which means the very same. this goes along with the fact that turkey is actually not approved as a “safe third country”, so any kind of extraction of migrants and refugees to turkey would be illegal. apart from that it creates other issues. when the plan is to accept refugees from turkey for every “returned” refugee, and only then, and this is done to discourage the refugees from coming “illegal” to europa, the refugees actually knows that there will be a huge need to have them come on boats to greece so even if they are returned other will have the chance to enter. this is dividing and rule at the malicious level. with no people coming to “illegal” to eu, the eu don´t have to accept “approved” refugees from turkey. think about this for a while. if you want to know more about the legal issues of this deal, here is a good read: http://eulawanalysis.blogspot.gr
in some of the photos you can see laura jansenfrommovement on the ground from holland. the last weeks she was part of a team helping the refugees directly in the harbor, providing food and clothes, helping to organize the boarding procedure, negotiate with the police forces to keep them calm and give an incredible amount of love and care to the refugees before they leave into a unknown future. she and a lot of other volunteers from ngo´s like movement on the ground,team humanity, proactivia/open arms,lifeguards hellas, starfish foundation,northern lights aid,scm and more are working over the limits around the clock to make this transition as endurable as possible. again i can not point out enough my deepest respect and admiration for these volunteers and their work. one more detail in the end: the refugees actually have to pay the ferry tickets themeselves.
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17.03.2016 idomeni, greece. this is shaharzad hassan, an eight year old girl from aleppo, syria. in the last weeks she became kind of famous because of her drawings of her traumatic memory´s. since the press loves this kind of story´s she was in the news all over world. now she is running around the camp with her dad, showing the drawings to all media people they meet. it was kind of an strange encounter, i did not really wanted to take the photos, but then i realized that i would put her in shame if i don´t react and did a bunch of photos with her. the one she is holding up is called “living in a camp” and show an impression of idomeni. especially the syrian refugees that i met have a strong dignity, it seems always a little bit harder for them to accept help, an invitation, a present. shaharzad was super sweet in the end, also i could sense that she actually don´t really feel comfortable showing of like that, on the other side proud that she is able to reach attention with her art. her drawings are strong images, but what really got me was the way she looked at me. the eyes of a kid that had seen far too much in her young life. i was thinking of giving her father a litte something, but instead i gave her a lolly and she gave me a big smile back.
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18.19.03.2016 idomeni, greece. on the first three day´s of my time in idomeni the officials where passing the information to the ngo´s and refugees that the camp will be closed soon. if the refugees would not be willing to move away they would use force. now they still hand out flyers in 3 languages saying that the border is closed for good and the refugees should move to the other camps, but because the other camps are actually almost filled up, now there was a change of plans and the authority´s announced that they will try to approve the conditions. what we saw so far is a bunch of new containers for the police positioned in a way that it creates a bottle neck in the middle of the camp. i had a talk about this with a skilled crisis manager from the usa and he told me that this is one of the worst ideas to place them like that he could think of. apart from that it is like in autumn on lesbos, 100% of the support is done by ngo´s and private volunteers. a lot of the groups that have been on lesbos for the last 5-6 month went to idomeni with some of their people to help. the german red cross announced that they will build a huge medical tent in a cooperation with another red cross unit from, i hope i remember this right, denmark. this medicine tent will have the ability to even do surgery´s.
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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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02.03.2016camp pikpa, lesbos/greeece. the therapist and social-workers at camp pikpa are doing a playful exercise with the children to get them used again to a sound that have them left deeply traumatised, the bang. since these children grew up in an environment of war, they connect this sound naturally with explosions and gunfire, so even in a peaceful environment they are scared to death whenever they hear this sound, because it brings them back to worst memory´s of their young life´s. the exercise is simple, they let the children blow up balloons and let them stick a needle in it to make them pop. i am deeply thankful for the work the people in the camp are doing and for the rare chance to document it, because it is the very comprehensible and strict policy of the camp-management to not allow any photos of the refugees in the camp. camp pikpa is a place exclusive for the very vulnerable cases, refugees that are so deeply traumatised that it is not possible for them to stay in the regular camps. the compassion and devotion from the volunteers here is simply incredible and they hold it up on a daily level.
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