By Irem Arf Rayfield, Researcher on Refugee and
Migrants’ Rights in Europe
Flying back from our research mission in Greece,
I can’t shake off the image of exhaustion in the eyes of the newly arrived
migrants on the island of Lesvos when describing their dangerous journey across
the Aegean Sea.
The same fatigue was shared by Syrian women we met in Athens
– forced to leave their loved ones behind when they fled to Greece – where
they now live in fear of racist attacks and the perils for their children in a
merciless urban setting.
And finally the suffering of migrants and refugees held for months in the
detention centres and police stations in north-eastern Greece, where
our mission came to an end.
Migrants and refugees fleeing conflict and destitution have been
funnelled towards this area where the Evros
River marks the Greece-Turkey border
and Europe’s frontier.
In February 2012, Greece
announced that it will build a “six-mile long fence topped with razor wire on
its border with Turkey
to deter illegal immigrants.”[1] While the fence, even during its construction, cut
arrivals of illegal immigrants by land down, these outdated measures of control
and deterrence have simply diverted immigration flows
to the sea and the Greek islands of the Aegean.
Thousands of ‘boat people’, mostly from Africa, attempt each year to cross the Mediterranean in overcrowded and frequently unseaworthy
vessels in order to enter the southernmost EU member states. As Greece was about completing its fence, twenty
Iraqis drowned when, within sight of Turkey,
their small overcrowded boat sank off the Greek island of Lesbos.
