Christmas was business as usual on Lesbos: No day off for the people smugglers who profit from migrants’ desperate need to reach Europe.
On Christmas eve, 19 more refugees lost their lives off the coast of the Turkish city of Izmir after their boat capsized in the Aegean Sea.
Rescue teams managed to save 21 people and were still looking for other survivors, according to the Turkish coast guard.
Over a period of a few days in mid-November, the steady stream of small rubber boats carrying refugees and migrants over the choppy, chilly waters separating Turkey and the Greek islands of the eastern Aegean slowed to a trickle. “We didn’t know why,” an official from the Greek Interior Ministry said.
Had Turkish officials begun clamping down on the criminal rings of people smugglers? Had EU border closures and tougher rhetoric begun to deter people from making the hazardous crossing? Was it the weather? “We later found out that they had sold out of rubber boats,” the official said with a grim laugh. “When new shipments came in the arrivals picked back up.”
“We have reports that the smugglers drop their prices when the weather is bad,” Daniel Esdras, head of the Greek office of the International Organization of Immigration said. “It is a business like any other. And for those who don’t have enough money that is their only opportunity to cross and they take it.”
Much talk, but little action
In the face of these numbers even hard won responses appear at best inadequate, such as the EU’s relocation scheme for refugees, which provides for the transfer of 160,000 asylum seekers between EU countries over the next two years and has effectively yet to begin.
More recently on December 17, Greece and the EU’s external border agency Frontex agreed to launch a rapid intervention operation. The plan, due to begin at the end of the month, will see additional Frontex officers assisting Greek authorities largely in migrant and refugee registration and screening and coastal patrols on the islands and the newly created ‘hotspot’ centers.
Up until the morning of 23 December the hotspot in Lesbos, Moria recorded around 3,000 people while other migrants were found in many places around the centre waiting to be registered. But, according to reports, the situation at the recording and certification sites in Moria is becoming difficult because a great majority of Frontex’s staff has left for their Christmas holidays while refugees keep arriving at the same numbers regardless.
Meanwhile the Greek authorities, already ill-equipped and under-funded to manage the enormous flows moving through the country, find themselves continually on the back foot as new variables change the facts on the ground. The irregular flows of primarily Syrian and Afghani refugees has attracted migrants from other countries and particularly Iran, Morocco and Algeria, Yet in late November, Slovenia and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) shut their borders to all those not from Syria, Iraq or Afghanistan, stranding the rest in Greece.As a result in Victoria Square in central Athens – long a hub of migrant activity, which has been repeatedly cleared over the months after police interventions – one can once again see migrants sleeping out in the open, this time mainly Moroccans and Algerians. Despite the border closures many say they will persist in their journeys to northern Europe.
Greek dismay
After a dramatic summer of economic brinksmanship between the Greek government and the EU that resulted in the near collapse of the country’s banking system, many Greeks now view Europe’s lukewarm assistance in dealing with the refugee and migrant crisis as par for the course in a union where short-term national interests are often seen to be trumping ideas of humanitarianism and solidarity.
Even for once ardent supporters of the European Union such as Lena Antinoglou, a resident of Lesbos and longtime volunteer at the PIKPA camp for vulnerable groups of refugees, faith in the European project has been shaken.
“I am disappointed. I suppose I expected a more concrete expression of the ideas of human rights that Europe’s leaders always talk about,” she told DW.
While there has been some discussion at the European level of transporting Syrian and other refugees directly to EU countries from Turkey following screening and registration, any implementation of such a program is likely to be months away and limited in scope.
In its absence the boats look set to continue to arrive, even through the winter, carrying anyone willing and able to pay for a precarious seat.
DW, The Mail
Edited and additional material: Y Xamonakis
