‘I feel human again’: migrants on Greek island transfer to EU-funded facility

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This week, Saad Nabhan enjoyed his first hot shower in two years.

The Syrian asylum seeker was among the first arrivals at a new EU-funded facility that opened this week on the Greek island of Samos with the aim of improving the desperate living conditions faced by many migrants.

Since arriving from Turkey last year, Nabhan had been stuck at a filthy camp near the port that residents call “the jungle”, sleeping in a tent without a bed and washing with buckets of cold water.

“Now we have air conditioning, a kitchen and bathroom. I feel like a human again,” said the 55-year-old qualified accountant who worked at the Syrian finance ministry before his house was destroyed in the civil war. “This was the first time in two years I felt as if I was sleeping at my home.”

The Samos camp is the first of five centres in Greece costing a total of €276m built to house asylum seekers entering Europe via the Aegean — one of the most popular migrant routes into the continent from Asia and the Middle East through Turkey.

It offers vastly improved facilities from the sprawling, informal old camp where Nabhan and hundreds of others lived until this week. Unhygienic and, in recent years, often overcrowded, it failed to provide even basic amenities such as toilets and was overrun by rats, said Manos Logothetis of Greece’s migration and asylum ministry.

Escorting journalists around the new facility this week, he took visible pride in its comfortable beds, bathrooms and showers with hot running water, lockers for storage and free Wi-Fi. A new basketball court lacks only players and a football pitch is under construction.

Non-governmental organisations have voiced concerns about the barbed-wire fences and surveillance cameras that give the camp the look and feel of a low-security prison. Residents have their fingerprints taken and must show identification cards to enter the facility through gates that are locked from eight in the evening until eight in the morning.

Logothetis defended the improved security. “We have to know who’s who, where each person resides in the camp, what’s their profile, when their next interview is and what stage they’re at with their papers,” he explained.

Logothetis is no stranger to the needs of the asylum seekers on Samos: before his government position, he served for four years as the old camp’s only doctor.

His concern is that numbers at the new camp should not exceed its capacity of 3,000. The fear is that a big increase in migrant numbers could lead to a repeat of 2015 when a surge in arrivals from Syria and elsewhere overwhelmed Greece’s capacity to deal with them.

“We hope we don’t have that many residents and that we’re again forced to do what we did in 2015, when the migrant flows were so large that we didn’t care about the law. [Then] we would just give people a tent and say ‘stay wherever you like’,” said Logothetis.

His fears are not unreasonable given that the old camp, designed to house 680 people, was at one point home to an estimated 9,000 — more than the population of nearby Vathy, the island’s capital.

Not everyone is enamoured with the new Samos facility. Giulia Cicoli of advocacy group Still I Rise, who came to the island five years ago to help the migrants, said the new facilities were the bare minimum and should not be considered an achievement.

“What they had before was criminal. The dignity of being human was taken away. The living conditions were a violation of any human rights,” she said.

For now, the new centre is sparsely populated. Most of the island’s asylum seekers have been taken to the mainland and new arrivals have fallen sharply since the pandemic began. A total of 10,545 asylum seekers entered Samos in the first eight months of 2019; the figure for the same period this year is 111.

In Vathy, residents were broadly supportive of the new facility.

“The move to the new camp will be good not only for the asylum seekers but for us locals,” said shop owner Alexandros Giokarinis. “They’ll be protected from the cold winters and live in better conditions and we won’t be scared to walk the streets at night. The town will be cleaner and quieter.”

The six-member Ghadiri family from Afghanistan moved this week from the old camp into a two-bedroom container home with its own kitchen and bathroom.

Yet while they agree it is a huge improvement, what they really desire are the papers that will allow them to begin a new life; the family’s application for asylum has been rejected three times.

“I want my ID, I want my husband to start working, I want a home here in Greece and I want my kids to go to school,” said Nadia Ghadiri, 39, whose youngest son was born on Samos.

For Iraq-born Hamad, 23, who has spent three years sleeping in a tent, this week’s move was a bittersweet moment.

“When you see something like this, it makes you sadder,” he said, gazing out of the window as the bus transporting him to the facility climbed a high road, offering stunning views of the clear blue waters around Samos.

“I know we’re going to a better camp . . . but you want to live, you want to work and you want to help your family back home. Here I’ve lost my power and I worry I’ll forget who I am.”