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Mytilene, Lesbos – Anis Alizai arrived in Lesbos with her parents and four siblings in December 2018.
After sleeping for seven months asleep in the olive groves around the Moria camp, the main reception center on the Greek island at the time, the Afghan refugee family was given a precious modular home in Kara Tepe, a municipal camp considered an example of humanity and solidarity. Since its inception in 2016.
Anis, 17, dreams of studying mathematics at one of Greece’s most competitive technical universities, and will succeed.
“I went to vocational institute in my foundation year. They told me I was very good at math, and I told them I would try for high school next year, ”he told Al Jazeera.
“They said it was a lot harder there, and I said ‘I don’t care.'”
Anis was successful in a Greek institute. He took an exam at the First Experimental High School in Mytilene, a high school on the island that admits only 13 students a year, and rigorously prepares them for college entrance exams.
When she was just one year old in a Greek school, Anis scored 80 percent on the exam, and along with an Iranian refugee, she got seats in class.
If all goes well, Anis would take the college entrance exams in the summer of 2022.
But now that future is in the air, as the government abruptly closed the Kara Tepe camp this month, moving most of its 1,000 residents from a road called Mavrovouni to a tent.
Rights groups have said Kara Tepe is “safe” and have condemned the closure.
One of the components of Anis ’success was her stable environment.
In Kara Tepe, her younger siblings can attend kindergarten and language classes offered by support groups.
The camp itself, a promontory overlooking the upper sea, felt more like a village community than a refugee camp.
There was a door and families felt safe to let their children run without supervision.
Although Alizaia has not yet been granted asylum, she is still alive with food and medicine provided by the council and volunteers.
Mavrovouni is another story.
“A tent with no doors you can close is not safe,” Anis said.
“You could go [Kara Tepe] to the public schools in the village … I don’t know if we’ll be able to go to school in the new camp. “
Greece opened public schools for asylum seekers in September 2016, but not on the islands.
This is because they were considered halfway houses, houses that would provide international protection to newcomers or deport them to Turkey.
The process was supposed to take weeks, but in many cases, like Alizais, it took almost two years.
Anis’s ability to go to high school was an exception, and she may not be able to continue after being put back into the general refugee family population.
Mavrovouni was hastily built on an artillery range after Moria was burnt down last September due to a fire by police.
“It’s not clean, the accommodations aren’t properly waterproofed, they’re not on flat ground,” said Imogen, a volunteer in a support group that works in Mavrovounin. “There are no mattresses. It’s not the right place for people to sleep.”
Aerial view of Mavrovounio camp, human rights groups have sounded the alarm [John Psaropoulos/Al Jazeera]
Raed Alobeid, the head of the Syrian community, told Al Jazeera: “We are waiting for our fate and how we are going to die.
“It’s better to transfer [people] from this prison to the peninsula. It’s like prison. I’m not saying this. Everyone says this. Two hours, you leave for a maximum of three hours and then you have to come back. “
‘You feel too scared to leave your tent’
Thousands of refugees have been taken to the mainland this year as the government has tried to overcrowd the streets to try to eradicate refugee unrest and political problems among Greek voters.
About 7,500 asylum seekers remain in Mavrovounin, less than double that number when Moria was burned.
But according to Dr. Caroline Janssens Without Doctors (Medecins Sans Frontieres or MSF), the government has not solved the challenges of the crowd.
“Today we had a pregnant woman who moved to our clinic [from Kara Tepe], which is completely freaking out. He and his family are now in a huge tent full of single men with their four small children. So it’s completely out of place. It’s completely absurd. “
At 5:00 a.m. this morning, while it was still dark and it was raining, 50 vulnerable refugees were taken by Greek police from Kara Tepe 1 to a new tent in Moria 2.0 hell. 1/3 pic.twitter.com/Ykb5BoJ380
– MSF Sea (@MSF_Sea) April 24, 2021
Janssen said some MSF sick women have complained that they have been raped in the new camp, although the government has made sure it is safe.
“You feel scared at night to leave the tent, you can definitely go to the toilet if you’re a woman. You stop drinking at two o’clock in the afternoon to avoid going to the toilet. If you have to go, you pee in a bottle,” she said.
The now-burned Moria camp was home to thousands of people, but there were always fears about the impact of poor conditions on refugees. [John T Psaropoulos/Al Jazeera]
For children and young people like Anis and her siblings, she is in danger of moving.
“There’s a child who was already being treated for mental health issues and was having very serious panic attacks, dizziness episodes, symptoms that we stabilized. All of these are coming back, as children, before he moved, he knew he was going to come back,” Janssen said.
Flashes of hope
When the mayor of Lesbos was elected in 2019, he ordered the closure of Kara Tepe and the government promised to decongest the eastern Aegean islands.
The Kara Tepe promontory is likely to become a driving practice area.
There is a glimmer of hope in Anis.
He and his family may be sent to the mainland instead of Mavrovouni, the hope of most refugees in Lesbos.
“Everyone is angry because they are very angry with the asylum. Some have waited a year, a year and a half, “said Alobeid, head of the Syrian community.” What we need from European countries is to help the people, to help the children inside this camp. “
The European Union has pledged 267 million euros to build a new generation of better quality camps with refugee reception centers on the five eastern Greek Aegean islands.
The government says Greece has focused the trial on new asylum cases for about two months.
None of them are responding to the problems of older residents, such as Alizais, because their cases, if any, have been delayed, as resources have been directed to new cases.
The anise remains elastic.
“I don’t know if we will be allowed to stay in Greece,” he said. “But I learned in math that there is a solution to every problem.”
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