In 2015, 856,000 people passed through the Greek islands, and in 2017 and 2018 only just under 30 thousand (according to UNHCR). But 2019 brought already a growth – over 60,000 newcomers. Today, boats coming to Greek beaches are back again, and practice shows that you can get stuck in Lesbos for a good few years. Nikos and Katerina run a small restaurant on the island, where every refugee can feel at home and eat a meal for free.
24.05.2023
Forcing people to leave the island by starving them is an act of unimaginable cruelty. This is happening in Europe, which, after all, bears human rights on its banners and has signed every possible treaty to express this. Today, the Greek authorities have decided that the end justifies the means. And the means is to drive migrants from Lesbos. The means – to cut them off from their right to sufficient nutrition.
More than 500 residents of the camp on Lesbos stopped receiving meals overnight. They have no money or work and their children have no access to education. Now they have nothing to eat. The first ones are already starting to leave, but no one is waiting for them in Athens nor elsewhere in Europe. They find themselves trapped between war and persecution at home and a closed, rejecting Europe. Let us call them prisoners, as they have indeed become prisoners, although every prisoner in Europe, even the worst, gets three full meals a day.
What can we do about it? Break down, get angry, disagree, protest. But we can also give at least one meal to the hungry – these include men, women, children, the sick, diabetics and pregnant women begging for our help. This will not change the attitude of the authorities, but it will ensure that no one in the camp suffers from hunger. At least until someone changes the rules that strip these people of their dignity and basic rights.
One meal is PLN 15. This is enough to ensure that no one goes to sleep hungry tonight feeling abandoned.
27.08.2023
The unpaved road stretches for kilometres and winds down the mountainous slopes. It cuts through bone-dry pine forests. From here to Mitylena, the island’s capital, it is more than 40 kilometres. To any sign of civilisation – more than 10. Out of sight, out of mind of all outsiders, a gigantic new refugee camp is […]
14.08.2023
Onur was a baker in Kurdistan. He is not afraid of any job. Stately, broad-shouldered, hands like vices. They have strength and feel. He arrived in Lesbos eight years ago. Abdul got off the boat on a Greek beach a year later. In Syria, he was a mechanic. He has fixed up his decrepit old […]
09.08.2023
“No disease will touch them. They are wild trees. They have already survived more than one pest.” When Nikos talks about olives, he grabs the listener’s full attention. You fall into a tunnel where there are you, Nikos and the olives. We talk like this for several hours. I don’t know how many. Nobody is […]
