Europe shows a Janus face to migrants

20/7/2020

By Jacqueline Bhabha

Greece is only the bully-boy for the broader EU’s withering lack of compassion

The writer is professor of the practice of health and human rights at Harvard University

Every second, three people become refugees somewhere in the world. The most astounding aspect of this number is that it no longer shocks most people — probably because much of it takes place far away, at a safe distance. Large numbers of Syrian and Afghani migrants, for example, are no longer rushing across EU borders, as they once did. But there is still a refugee crisis in Europe: a crisis of protection, of care, and of social inclusion.

Its current epicentre is Greece. It is the EU state with the highest unemployment, one of the weakest economies and the largest number of recent arrivals. It should be part of an EU wide humanitarian plan. But is not, because there isn’t one. Instead, this February, as Covid-19 spread across the continent, the Greek government proceeded to evict more than 11,000 registered refugees from their EU-funded accommodation.

In accordance with tacit EU priorities to act tough on migrants, Greece’s justification was that this would free up resources for newer asylum seekers, stuck in overcrowded and pandemic prone camps on the islands. Bailiffs started to remove families from their homes on June 1.

Where were they supposed to go? The evicted refugees were left to fend for themselves. There are almost no jobs for them to find, and no integration or aid programmes to apply for. Lockdown restrictions have also delayed the issue of tax identification numbers, essential for enrolment in language courses or to get rent subsidies. Within days of the first evictions, more than 800 refugees, including families with newborns and pregnant women, were homeless. Many camped in Victoria Square in central Athens. They have been transferred to temporary shelter, but more will follow.

Video: UN, aid agencies fear worse to come for refugee camps

All this has worsened relations between refugees and locals. Anti-migrant rhetoric has grown. The Greek government argues refugees cannot be “pampered” and must “fend for themselves”. But the circumstances of the pandemic make self-reliance, let alone building a new life, virtually impossible. Social inclusion is a two-way process that takes time and support.

Germany showed this in 2015 when it created classrooms, and language and vocational training programmes for almost 1m refugees. Within a year, 95 per cent of children were in school; within two, 75 per cent of refugees had taken at least one language course and a third were in full-time employment.

Today, neither Greece nor the EU have the resources or the political will of that initial refugee response. Germany’s borders are now also closed. Greece, by contrast, has had to confront a surge of arrivals transiting through Turkey.

Although arrivals are down from 2019, almost 10,000 migrants have arrived in Greece this year, encouraged by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish president, for whom distressed migrants are a bargaining chip in the geopolitical strategic conflagration over Syria.

Greece of course should not have to meet this challenge alone. Yet other, much wealthier, EU states refuse to share the burden fairly and have dramatically reneged on a relocation programme set up in 2015. Less than half of the 66,400 relocations promised to Greece have since materialised. As of May, there remain 84,500 migrants living on the Greek mainland and 37,000 in unsanitary and overflowing camps on the islands.

There they confront the withering consequences of Europe’s diminishing sense of compassion through the evictions, destitution, despair and growing xenophobia that they must face every day. How long until fellow Europeans realise that this crisis, on its own doorstep, is their crisis too?

Vasileia Digidiki of Harvard’s FXB Center for Health and Human Rights contributed to this article

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