Via the Balkan Human Rights List

A desperate plea for help has been sent to the authourites by a group of 225 migrants who are being held in the disgusting conditions in Mersinidi, Chios (East Aegean). I have posted about this detention centre before and it seems that since the Amnesty International report and urgent action appeal came out in 2005, nothing has changed. If anything the situation has worsened. The “camp” is made up of metal containers which can hold up to 108 people (although I do not think that it is right to hold any human beings in such a place).

The toilets are broken, many “rooms” are flooded with filthy water and disease is spreading. Many of the people detained there have no clothes, blankets or soap. They receive inadequate food and even this is sometimes rotten.

In the letter the group write:

We do not know what crime we have committed to deserve such harsh punishment and treatment. We escaped from war, poverty, oppression and genocide and came here to find refuge in a land of peace

I have never stopped being shocked by the lack of humanity we are capable of. I remember being a very young girl and feeling what I am feeling now. It is not just writing about it here that brings on this sadness and anger at our inability to treat our fellow human beings as we would wish to be treated. It is shameful. We should be ashamed. We should be angry. We should be shouting in the streets. We should be pressuring our governments. We should be doing something.

Yet I sit here writing blog entries and commenting on other blogs and every day a hundred other atrocities find their way onto my desktop. And I sit here reading and writing but I am unable to act. Why ? Well, it all seems so insurmountable.
I also have a life and the everyday reality of that means that mundane things have to get done. I can barely face that at the moment, let alone do something about the appalling conditions other people are facing. It is horrble to admit that this is all I can do at the moment.

I did the urgent action appeal (and blogged about it) when it first came to my attention almost exactly a year ago and it is deeply disturbing that the situation is still ongoing, despite the efforts of Amnesty International and the Greek Helsinki Monitor and many, many others.

I am feeling negative (as you may have noticed). Feelings of “overwhelming pointlessness” strike again. I am putting this out there because I think we need some fresh ideas about what we can do and I don’t have the answers.

If you having any great ideas for action on this or any of the other issues I write about here, please let me know. I am stuck. I just want to crawl back into to bed and hide from it all… and that’s really going to help isn’t it?

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