Over 60,000 migrants are stuck in Greece. Fleeing war, recovering from torture, and seeking refuge – pregnant women, children and parents wait (and wait) for their asylum applications to be processed. But patience is growing thin. Many migrants were doctors, lawyers and engineers in their country. However, they are not allowed to move out of the camp until their asylum claim has been accepted, which can take years.
Many families sleeping on the floor of a destitute school on the border with Albania are Kurds. Inhabiting a mountainous region straddling the borders of Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Iran and Armenia, Kurds are the fourth largest ethnic group in the Middle East, but they have never been granted independence. Famed for their tough resilience, Kurdish militia groups continue to fight ISIS with the hope of recognition, and their own nation state. Instead, many are now displaced in Europe. This Kurdish boy is from Iraq, and restlessly waits for news of his mother and sister. They also fled Iraq, but went missing in the Turkish Maritsa river, and he doesn’t know if they made the journey….
Whilst many have escaped war, and found safety, too many families face a new kind of danger: anxiety, confusion, depression and devastation. Last year, a migrant from this camp in Greece waiting for his asylum to be processed, killed himself. The Guardian also reported that at least three teenage refugees who arrived in Britain from camps have killed themselves in the past six months.
Musham was selling potatoes, when a Russian airstrike bombed the market where he worked. 57 people died, and 75 were wounded, including many of his friends in what he calls a “massacre.” He lost his leg. “My wife ran out of the house barefoot with our two babies to find me,” he recalls.
Rania’s husband was tortured in Syria. Accused of being a rebel, Assad’s government hung him for three hour each day, for six months in a 1 x1 metre cell with two other people. His shoulders have cracked, and he can’t carry his own child. “We had to sleep standing up, because there was no space. When you enter interrogation, you are totally naked, they told me I was part of a terrorist group. I didn’t do anything! People are dying and screaming in front of you. They hit you with electricity cables. The most difficult part is the hanging. You are blindfolded and lose consciousness.” Rania’s husband has found safety in Greece, but remains traumatized. “I just want to move on with my life, and help my wife and son – but we are stranded here with nothing.”
Greece houses migrants in abandoned fields, rural towns and even a disused music school – many migrants believe it is because the government wants to silence and hide them. In one container, 21 people share one tiny room. The U.N. Refugee Agency (UNHCR) estimates nearly one in 100 people worldwide have been pushed out of their countries due to war or political instability. Many countries are unprepared for hosting and integrating refugees into society.
His son plays with his prosthetic leg. The prosthetic is painful to wear: “It hurts my leg. I can’t walk properly, because the plastic is breaking. It is scarring the remaining part of my leg.” When it rains, his plastic leg fills with water.
Musham’s son is four years old, and hasn’t spoken for over six months. He refuses to talk, or eat. His father mimics a plane exploding: “He is scared, of the bombs.” They fled Aleppo, a key battleground of the civil war. Many neighbourhoods have been completed destroyed. Most of the city lies in rubble.
Rania herself was shot in the knee as the fighting intensified. She shows a picture when she was at hospital. “I was pregnant, but I lost the baby because of the bombing and the shock.” Rania was a professional photographer in Syria, taking photos of weddings and parties before the war began. Now there are no parties. Her family have been living in tents and containers for almost four years. “I don’t even have money to get my knee properly treated so I can walk normally.”
Thousands of migrant children are not in school - an entire generation, listless and lost. Mona’s family fled ISIS in Iraq. She has never been to school. “I was given a school bag, but we have no teachers,” she says quietly. There is no policy or focus allowing for children to continue their education and Greek schools are underfunded, and can’t accommodate language barriers and children who have psychological difficulties due to war.
Over 60,000 migrants are stuck in Greece. Fleeing war, recovering from torture, and seeking refuge – pregnant women, children and parents wait (and wait) for their asylum applications to be processed. But patience is growing thin. Many migrants were doctors, lawyers and engineers in their country. However, they are not allowed to move out of the camp until their asylum claim has been accepted, which can take years.
Whilst Europe obsesses over economic migrants and politics, thousands of children and families seeking genuine refugee are left abandoned on our shores. Leaving bloodshed, arriving to abandonment.
Many large NGOs have left Greece, leaving volunteer-run organisations like Refugee Support to supply essentials. Yet funds are dwindling, and as more migrants arrive – like Kazia from Iraq pictured - without housing or food. “We do what we can", says Refugee Support Founder Paul Hutchings. “But Europe is failing in its moral obligation to give people the opportunity to rebuild their futures. That's not going to happen while they are stuck in refugee camps.”
Texts and photographs by Michele Cirillo and Emanuela Laurenti.
Premise
Only scratched the surface by the passing of time, by the Islamic conquest and other foreign dominations, the Kurdish culture is now in danger of being forgotten, or worse, losing its true identity, confused in recent years with the Muslim or Turkish tradition. Put through to the Ottoman Empire and then divided by the Western powers in the four states of Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria, in the last ninety years, the Kurds have been victims of persecutions and slaughters that occurred with greater ferocity in Turkey, where a regime of forced repression resented every expression of their cultural identity. “Mountain Turks”. As Turks called Kurdish people. But in those mountains, dominated by the great Ararat, unquestionably still persist the flavors of ancient and specific traditions, traces of a thousand-years old past, vestiges of a precise and recognizable identity. Among those mountains, the first days of the wedding of Sükran and Samet took place, a symbolic union, especially because of their origins and historical events: Sükran is Kurdish, Samet is Turkish. Our journey starts here. In August 2014, at Xarik place as first, in Eastern Anatolia, and at Yozgat then, in Central Anatolia.
The Wedding
In the social structure Kurdish family is considered an inseparable unit: it is the core on which dipend the whole society and its importance is manifested on the occasion of a marriage. Specifically, the Sükran and Samet wedding party lasted five days: the first part of the celebrations was held in the bride family home, in the altitudes of Xarik, with sober characters although colored. The remaining four days of celebrations, took place, with the most sumptuous atmospheres, in the groom's family house. In Yozgat, a Turkish small town. The criteria that direct the marriage of two young people often depend on the relationship between their families. Even if there is not anymore the custom to give in marriage young girls, young men have some freedom of choice, young women even less, waiting for a sincere marriage proposal. The history of Sükran and Samet, fortunately, is a different story.
Traditional armenia cross- Khachkar
June 9, 2015
Amuda, Syria
A remarkable increase of people infected by Leishmaniasis is reported across the Middle East. As the ongoing conflict in Syria is causing the migration of thousands from the countrysides, many refugees and residents are exposed to the parasitic disease which is transmitted to humans through the bite of infected sand flies which breed in rubble and trash. The disease causes horrible open sores and well as disfiguring skin lesions.
Leishmaniasis, commonly known among Syrians as “Aleppo pimple”, had previously been contained in Aleppo and neighboring cities. However today’s refugee crisis has triggered a huge outbreak with hundreds of thousands affected in Syria and neighboring countries that are hosting Syrian refugees.
Reports indicated that ISIS-controlled territories, specially in Raqqa, Deir Azzor and Hasaka, are the regions most affected by Leishmaniasis.
Bilal,13, from Syria, is a self-described geek. He wants to study and learn English and German, but he needs new books and wants to reach Germany as soon as possible to go to school and learn more about the world. He sits on an abandoned car while translating verbs from Arabic to English.
R., 32, from Syria kisses her nephew. They live in an abandoned train at Idomeni railway station in Greece, at the border with Macedonia. Some 12,000 refugees live in small tents and the ruins of an old railway station in Idomeni.
A night shot of the border fence between Greece and Macedonia at the Idomeni camp.
Raha, 41, from Syria, is in Idomeni with two sisters. She waits to reach her two sons, aged 15 and 20, who arrived in Germany months ago. Raha is still stuck here after two months.
A Kurdish girl spends an evening playing with a recycled table football game at Idomeni refugee camp, a makeshift camp on the Greek-Macedonian border where thousands of refugees are stranded.
Iraqi Army soldiers backed by the Kurdish Peshmerga and Sunni militia fighters entered the village of Rwala in Nineveh Province, southeast of Mosul, on April 18.
The Iraqi forces are trying to capture ISIS strongholds as they prepare to retake the city of Mosul from Islamic State.
Video provided by Kurdish Peshmerga.
Audio dropouts from source.
Panagiota Vasileiadou, also called "the Idomeni refugees' grandmother" is a 82 year-old Greek woman who houses five Syrian refugees in her home.
In a improvised cinema, refugee children watch a cartoon movie at the makeshift camp of Idomeni, in Greece. Movies keep refugee children entertained, despite all the sorrow and trials they face.
A Pakistani group of between 50 and 70 refugees live in an abandoned hotel building close to the Greek-Macedonian border in Idomeni, Greece.
Syrian refugees have dinner along the railway at Idomeni camp. The railway connection has been blocked for a month by refugees who are protesting Macedonia's decision not to let them through. Police have tried to clear the tracks but refugees still resist and occupy the railway while waiting for an European solution.
Asif, 23, from Pakistan, is living in an abandoned building with about 50 people along the highway that runs close to the border with Macedonia.
S. is from Pakistan and he lives in an abandoned building along the highway that runs close to the Greek border with Macedonia. He shares a little room with four to six other "travel mates". They have been waiting and surviving here for two months without electricity, windows, doors and bathrooms.
M., 24, from Aleppo, shows shocking evidence of torture in Assad's prisons. He says he was arbitrarily jailed and tortured for 4 months. M. is living in the ruins of an old railway station in Idomeni, Greece.
Around 12.000 refugees live in small tents and the ruins of an old railway station in Idomeni at the Greek border with Macedonia.
A Kurdish boy sits by a fire in a railway repairs hangar where thousand of refugees have set up their tents at the northern Greek border point of Idomeni.
Refugees queue daily for food in Idomeni, a railway station in Greece at the border with Macedonia.
People protest after mouldy food was given to a group of refugees in Idomeni camp, Greece. Part of a meal distributed by a Greek NGO was delivered rotten and was soon thrown out, leaving people very angry and exhausted.
Kurdish families have dinner along the tracks in an abandoned hangar of Idomeni railway station near the Greek border with Macedonia.
Idomeni railway station at night. More than 10,000 refugees are living in small tents and the ruins of an old railway station in Idomeni, Greece. The camp stretches out for hundreds of meters along the railway tracks that cross the border between Greece and Macedonia.
A veiled woman walks during the misty dawn at Idomeni refugee camp, on the Greek border with Macedonia.
A Muslim woman prays in the early morning at Idomeni refugee camp at the Greek border with Macedonia.
About 12.000 refugees are living in small tents and the ruins of an old railway station in Idomeni. The Idomeni camp stretches out for hundreds of yards along the railway track that crosses the border, and for hundreds of yards on either side. The vast majority sleeps in camping tents set directly on the muddy fields, or the coarse gravel of the railway tracks.
Migrants sit in the cold light of the early morning at Idomeni refugee camp at the Greek border with Macedonia.
"Hotel Hara" is a makeshift refugee camp on the forecourt of a petrol station near the Idomeni refugee camp, on the Greek-Macedonian border.
Photos taken on the frontlines near Ashrafieh District in northern Aleppo. Heavy clashes are taking place in the opposition-held area between the Free Syrian Army and Kurdish YPG fighters backed by soldiers of the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
The YPG (armed wing of the PYD) have launched an offensive in northern Aleppo as they attempt to take control over strategic areas on the Syrian Turkish border.