Category Archives: Central Asia

Letters to the world from Ritsona(N.23)

Photo by: parwana Amiri
Photo by: Parwana Amiri

Give me back my microphone!!
Our voice must be heard

When I received the video from one of the inhabitants of the Schisto Camp, which presented the suicide of one person there, I decided to not let this “murder” be kept away from the public eye, as so many tragedies had been kept before. I also decided to participate in the Protest of the People that was to be organized in the camp to raise hundreds of voices denouncing not only the suicide but all the wrongs allowed. What follows is the chronicle of what happened.

Monday, 12.07.2021

I am in the car going to the Schisto camp. Upon arrival, I immediately notice the common elements between this camp and that of Ritsona, where I live. As in Ritsona, here too, a group of asylum seekers is kept, in the midst of nowhere, away from any inhabited town, on a piece of dry land enclosed by barbed wire and chains. As in Ritsona the people live in containers that offer little protection from the
weather, be it winter be it summer. It seems that it is an open camp, as there are no walls around it and we enter from the main gate.

Silence reigns in the camp, and I start doubting that 1100, or more, actually live here.

Once inside, however, I had a chance to meet people. I ask them about their problems and what they want to denounce at the protest. I also ask them if they have anything specific to talk about in front of a camera. All remain silent. I turn to the representative who makes me understand that it is very difficult to receive any feedback from the people as to the conditions they live under.

The microphone is here, but the time of protest has changed. I need to consult with people and inform them about the time change.

Walking along with containers, microphone in my hand, I call people to come out. So does a man with a loudspeaker.

After a short while, I can see women looking out from their windows. Many more, men and women, are coming out. As we pass by the main construction, we are seen by a few social workers. On their uniforms, I read: DRC (Danish Refugee Council).
One of them shouts that we need to move away from the building and that she will call the manager. The people waiting around seem to get worried.

The manager is here now. I am curious to find out what sort of person he is, what methods he adopts, and whether his style of management is military as is the case of
many managers in other camps.

“Hi, you don’t live here, right?” he asks.
“No, we don’t,” we answer.
“Ok, come with me, both of you,” he says, addressing me and the man with the loudspeaker.
We are in his office now, a small dark space, which seems like a detention center in a police station

“Give me your asylum cards!!” he demands.

“You cannot ask for our asylum cards,” we respond. “Here is not a police station.
You don’t have that authority and we have not committed any crime!”
His voice is getting louder and louder, but this does not worry, stress, or threaten me.
“You want to make problems in a peaceful camp, inciting people, with your
microphone, to protest!!”
“I cannot see any peace here. And you cannot call a place peaceful just because it is silent because people are afraid to raise their voice by themselves and call me to support their protest. It is not peaceful here. Only the voices are suppressed.”
“You don’t have permission to come here, you should not be here and cannot do anything without my permission.”
“Is this a closed camp? If not, then there is no reason to impose restrictions. What is the difference between this camp and the ones which have walls around them? If the government does not designate Malakasa, Polyester, Diavata, Nea Kavala and
Ritsona as closed camps, then such camps are open to people from the outside.”
“You are making a problem in a camp that has no problems.”
“No problems? If there is no problem, then what are these people complaining about? Why do they want to demonstrate?”
“They do not have any problem, I have all the statistics”
“Then, something must be wrong with your statistics. You better speak directly with the people to learn their problems.”
“You do not want to understand me!”
“I am just assuming that as manager of the camp, you are listening to people and granting them their right to act, to defend their rights. You should not repress them.”
“I do listen to people, and I am trying to do all I can to avoid demonstrations”
“Demonstration is a basic right of people if they live under a democratic regime. They have a voice; they want to be heard and it is neither up to me nor you to decide whether they can raise that voice. After a long time of waiting, they decided to act
now.

They have been waiting to see what you could do and now that they have seen no action taken, they decided to protest.”
“You do not understand the meaning of democracy! I face so many bureaucratic problems! I am trying to put pressure on the asylum office, I go there and give them the list to get the passports from there.”
“When you talk about democracy you refer only to limitations. These do not constitute democracy. As for putting pressure, let’s collaborate to increase it.
Allowing people to raise their voice will help you and your “efforts” to make the process faster and easier.”
“You do not want to understand!”

“On the contrary, I understand very well. There are two options.

The first entails your giving me back my microphone and us having our demonstration today.

The second entails your talking with the people so that I can be sure that they have no complaint and that they are all satisfied.”
Silence fills the room. His hands move nervously. He seems stressed, highly anxious, and angry. He makes a call to someone. Meanwhile, many people are gathered behind the door. They are all telling us that they want to be included in a dialogue with the manager of the camp.

This is the power of people, what I like the most and respect the most. But the manager ignores their demand to talk with him. He is asking to speak with two persons only, the “elected representatives”! This does not satisfy the people. They insist that the conversation should be with all. They all want to listen to what happens and to find out what is going to be decided about them. He leaves the office. We remain and wait to learn what will happen and what will be his decision. Finally, he comes back.
“All of you come with me!”
We are sitting at a table now. He is on one side of the table with his interpreter and I am on the other, with my pen and notebook. In addition, two representatives are on
the other two sides of the table.

The people stand all around.
The conversation has started and I am writing all the items brought up, one by one.
The first issue is the burial of the young man. His corpse is in a police station and no information is given as to what will happen to him. The manager explains that this problem is the responsibility of the police, not the camp management.
“Yes, but if the camp authorities will not help,” one of the representatives intervenes,
“whom can we ask for help? The family is not even here.”
“What about the length of the asylum granting procedure?” another representative asks.

“We know nothing about the interviews, the decisions taken on the basis of the interviews. No information has been given to us. And we have been waiting for so long.”
“Yeah, the process takes time because there are about 1100 or even more people in the camp. We cannot process the applications of all of them rapidly.”
“It was equally lengthy before when the number of people was smaller Now with more people, it has become impossibly slow.”
The manager insists that the process is not unreasonably slow. At that point, the people bring out their papers to validate their claims.
“These are my papers. Look at the date of our interview. It took place a year ago and still, ave no answer about their decision.
“I have been asking for a change of my surname that is written wrongly, but, again, I have received no answer. I had to go to the office a number of times just for a simple spelling mistake. Still no answer.”
“Yeah, these are one of the bureaucratic problems we have.”

“Is a simple misspelling a bureaucratic problem?”
“My family has been here for two years and our documents are not ready yet.”
“They don’t give the guardianship of my son to me.”
“Did you ask TDH about it?”
“Yeah, I have been asking for four months, but still no answer, they don’t reply to our mails.”
“Terrible. I really didn’t  know that they don’t follow up with the problems.”
“It is good that you know it now. Sorry, but this is what I wanted you to learn by speaking with the people.”
“I have been here since 2016,” says one woman. “This is the paper I got at that time from there.”
She exhibits to our view an old paper that seems to have passed many adventures.
Most likely it will pass many more and will have more stories to tell.
She adds, “I was in Hellions camp four 4 years and then they transferred me here.
After one month, they gave me the date for an interview whose purpose now will be for me to prove that Turkey, not my country Afghanistan, is a dangerous place for my life. That is what the new policy of the Greek government dictates. I am here because my life was threatened in Afghanistan, not in Turkey. Turkey was simply the
territory we had to pass in order to arrive at safety in Europe. This new policy will justify the rejection of my application for asylum and will permit my deportation to Turkey. I have psychological problems. In spite of them, I will have to pass my interview and then, most likely, be sent back to Turkey and from there to my country.
What a prospect! It would have been much better to commit suicide than be killed by the Taliban there.”

“You were in Hellions for 4 years and they never gave you an interview?”
“No, they didn’t. I have gotten it only now that I am here and after the new policy that requires my justification as to why Turkey is a dangerous place for my life”
“Oh, I didn’t know about it. In Helionas there are some more similar cases.
Don’t worry, however, we have not had any rejections from this camp, even after the interviews focus on Turkey and not the country of origin.
“Who says we have not had any rejections in the camp. On the contrary, we have had many families rejected.”
“No, we have not”
“I am asking people to call those who have already gotten their first rejection after the policy change about Turkey.”
“Okay sir, you were saying that there has been no such rejection in the camp and that there is no reason for us to protest. Now, after listening to the people for a bit, do you still refuse to give me the microphone and let us all protest??”

“I want to know who got rejected, I want to see them. How can I otherwise believe that it has happened”
“Okay, they have already been called. They are coming.”
“Hello, I am the mother of the family that got rejected. My husband is in Athens. The lawyer called him to follow up on our process with the second rejection.”
“Give me the paper that says you are rejected!!”
“We have not gotten the decision of rejection, but when the lawyer called us, he told us that our case was rejected”
“Oh, I really did not know about it. Bring me your papers, after the decision is made and communicated to you.”
“We cannot wait until all families will be rejected and then search for a solution to stop this outcome. If this process is wrong and you believe it is so, then let us take action to stop it.

Who will pay the value of those lives that are now in danger – the lives that are put at risk of life and death as people are trying to cross deadly borders to arrive at the center of Europe? Who will pay the value of many children’s education and future as they are now over age and have no chance to go to school?

You are trying to hide all these problems, telling us that you are not informed and claiming that your statistics are right. If that were the case, we would have never been forced to act, to protest, and to stand up for justice.”
My conversation with the manager is almost over. There are no more words left. It seems that he has understood all that he needs to know.

In the end, never reflecting on the system, he goes to his office. Before leaving the camp, I give him my book. After that day, I became concerned that the camps foreclose any discussions about
the meaning of human rights, freedom and justice.

Furthermore, they foreclose any possibility about exchanges that would allow us to explain the reasons we are here, our previous lives, our background. The very existence of camps set apart by
barbwires and walls prevents and collaborative action that would eradicate violent acts such as suicides and fighting among groups. People who are kept in detention, not reception as they call them centers, are already criminalized. Prisons breed violence and people that are detained there are often pushed to frustrated violence and when they get out they are changed to the worst.

So how does one persuade people to think differently? About life, about hope, about brightness and good days. We still need to call for change, less violence, less repression, call for reform and rehabilitation. By visiting different camps, I am getting more and more convinced that behind the policies applied and the privatization of institutions dealing with immigration, there is money to be made. The more we are, the higher the possibility for profits. We are like enslaved people in a society which
claims to be democratic. In the path of challenging the basic structures of this society by resistance and action, I am only the tip of an iceberg.

Poems of a Butterfly (No:8)

by : a migratory girl

It needs courage !

It needs courage to build a school !

It needs courage to touch children’s hearts !

It needs courage to welcome homelessness !

It needs courage to stand with us in one line !

It needs courage to open an educational house !

It needs courage to give hope for hopelessness !

It needs courage to give pens to those that have never touched a pen before !

It needs courage to paint  the black and white world of the wounded !

It needs courage to advocate from silences !

It needs courage to give shelter to others !

It needs courage to stay a human !

It needs courage !

It need courage !

BECAUSE ….

It’s easy to destroy !

It’s easy to break hearts !

It’s easy to shout at the silenced !

It’s easy to close your eyes on truths !

It’s easy to hurt those who have been hurtled many times !

It’s easy to sit aside !

It’s easy to show your power against weaknesses !

It’s easy !It’s easy !

But , we will never give up !

We will build again , stronger than before !

We will help again more committed than before !

We will bring happiness and stay happy , happier than before !

We will make islands free

04/05/20

illustrated by : Micol suber

 

 

Poems of a Butterfly (No:7)

a migratorygirl

Every night, before sleep

Every night, silently 

Every night, lonely 

I dress my harsh realities

In dreams 

Every night, with my pen 

Every night, with my words

I hug my dreams 

I review my story 

Every night, before sleep

Every night, when all sleep

In my silence, with myself 

I build with my words 

A new world 

In my world, home is for all

in my world, school is a right 

In my world, you have peace 

In my world, war is banned 

In my world, the world is for all

Sun is mom, moon is dad

Mother earth is a planet for all

But 

When I close my eyes 

In dreams, as in reality, 

I live nightmares ……

04/09/20

Ilustrated by : Alexandra Nikolova

 

Poems of a Butterfly NO:6

How easy you ……. we

How easy you left us behind

How hard we continued the way

How easy you faded our lives

How hard we stayed displayed

How easy you suffocated our voices

How hard we broke the silence

How easy you called us danger

How hard we proved our peace

How easy you counted our deaths

How hard we lost our beloved ones

How easy you called us terrorists

How hard we live with terror

How easy you left us in darknesses

How hard we found lights for our way

How easy you thought us most greedy

How hard we proved being simply refugees

How easy you hid and trapped us

How hard we lived your hells and prisons

How easy you left us in the past

How hard we struggle with present

How easy you sleep in sweet dreams

How hard we live in nightmares

How easy you threaten to divide us

How hard we prove being united

How easy you burned our dreams

How hard we draw new dreams

How easy you left us in prison

How hard we must break the chains

 03/05/2020

illustreated by :Alexandra Nikolova

Jawad’s Journey

Hier gibt es diesen Artikel auch auf Deutsch

Hello I am Jawad and I live in Hamburg now for the last three and a half years. I am from Afghanistan and I want to tell the story of how I came to Hamburg. It is a long story. That I had to leave my country was not my decision and it was also not my decision that I was born in this country.

When I was four years old I had to leave my village and country because of the war in Afghanistan. We fled to Iran. The situation in Iran for refugees was not good. We got a paper to stay only for a short while. We were not allowed to go to school or to work and we could not buy anything in our name. They put a lot of pressure on us so that we would leave quickly again. When they saw us on the street we were always controlled and it also happened that men, when they got back from work, were arrested and deported. In Maschat at the border there was a concentration camp for Afghan refugees. There was no food but a lot of torture. I was not in the camp but my friends told me about it. They had to stand the whole day in the sun or in the winter in the cold. They had to do forced work and when the guards found out that one had been to Iran before, they tortured them. Nearly all of those who left the camp became mentally ill and were deported to Afghanistan. Still today there are people who get shot by soldiers at the border. Many are afraid of that and do not try to escape to Iran.
Continue reading Jawad’s Journey

travel of a refugee

AFGHANISTAN

I’d been living in AFGHANISTAN for almost 11 years.

In AFGHANISTAN our lives were very bad. There I never went to school because there our lives were very bad. When I was 6 years old I had to work.

When I was 7 years old my father has been killed. I wished to go to school but I couldn’t because I had to work.

At home we had just an old radio and when I was listening to it, I said to myself that one day I would be able to make something like that because I liked technology and now I still like it.
I said to my mother I wanted to go to school. But she said “you must work for us”. After my father death I was the older son of my family.

After my father death I have stayed with my family for 3 years. After 3 years I went to IRAN for work.

IN IRAN

I came to IRAN with smugglers.
I went to ISLAMQALLAH, near the border. At night I spoke with a smuggler but he told me that I needed 1 000 000 toman (name of the money in IRAN) – 700 euros- to go to TEHRAN .I said that I didn’t have 1 000 000. He told me he would bring me to TEHRAN only if I paid 1 000 000. I said it was ok and when I reached TEHRAN I would give him 1 000 000. He said ok. At last he told me we would have to walk only during the night.

From ISLAMQALLAH to TEHRAN we walked about 18 days. We slept during the days in the mountains. It was a very hot summer. We were hungry and thirsty, especially thirsty. After 18 days we reached TEHRAN.

In TEHRAN suburb the smugglers caught me because I didn’t have money. I had to stay with them during two weeks. After two weeks one of them said: “if you don’t have money you must work for us”. But I asked him: “for how many days will I have to work for you?”. He said “3 months”. “It’s a lot” I said but he told me “it’s not a lot and I started to work in the fields, buildings…
I worked there during 3months and after he told me that I was free. I was happy and then I went to the town.
Continue reading travel of a refugee

About peace in Afghanistan

Afghanistan is our country. It is the best, everyone loves his country. Country is like a mother because it is where I was born. I want peace in our country. For that we need help of other countries.
How should we build our country? We can not get a job it is not peace. America cant keep peace because they don’t aim to.
Our main request is human rights. Especally in Afghanistan. Every where we have a life like slaves. We can’t do anything nowhere!!!

I wish to live in a peace and happy place

The main problem is I have three sisters and one brother. Our parents died. Because of the war we lost our parents. We couldn’t our life in peace. We would love to study bu we were stooped. I decided to go to a Europe country.
The first thing that comes in my mind when I thing about Greece it is no place that can help us or solve our problems.
From my point of view there is no border for human beings because we are human. From three month that we are crossing the borders we did not smile because we are anxious for crossing the border. Whenever we go somewhere people look at us like we are criminals or have bad manners.
If I would life with complete freedom in a world without borders … I want to live my life as a normal human being like a European. I want to study and step up to a good position. It is not my fault that I am from Afghanistan. From childhood till now we spent our lives in sadness.
If I would be an animal I would be a bird so I can fly somewhere to a very peace and happy place.

I came to Europe out of craziness

My story is a bit different. I came to Europe out of craziness.
My mother dies 9 years ago. I studies in school until 9 grade. My father married again. We are two brothers. My brother is in Afghanistan and I am here. I fall in love with the daughter of my uncle. They are living in Germany and one time they have visited us in Afghanistan. They knew that my mother died and they always loved me very much. Also for 14 years my father and uncle did not talk to each other. They had a fight about something small they couldn’t even remember. So I saw my cousin. They took me for walks and Ii fall in love. But my parents didn’t agree. My stepmother is never on my side. I talked to my cousin and told her “ I love you!. She ask me how it is possible. That our parents would never agree. Also we are from different environments our liefs are apart like heaven and earth. After one month the left back to Germany.
When they left I got lovesick.
Continue reading I came to Europe out of craziness