The interviews are always interesting. You know first-hand the reality of the interviewee. With some you laugh at discovering it and in others, hopelessly, you break when he or she shares it with you. Eva Compés He has gone a month to the island of Lesbos by the hand of Doctors of the World and on the way back she has taken a moment to tell us what she has lived there, in the first person, without screens that mitigate reality, without hot cloths, without hypocrisy or postures.
Thousands of people daily have passed through the island of Lesvos women, children, sick, young, elderly, all fleeing death and finding the abandonment of Europe and our governments, as citizens “We would have to complain a lot more” Eva says that even today she cannot understand the behavior of European governments, much less after the signing of the treaty with Turkey.
Eva is from Madrid, has two children and works as a nurse. He has always had the intention of doing international cooperation when the time comes, when his children have been somewhat older and independent, so that Mom left home for a month, for example, as in this case.
“Yes, I tell my children everything. When I leave everything is talked to them, it will be so long, if it seems good and clear, then I tell you what I have done. The return I take to raise awareness but not only my children who are aware of course. "
A reality that must be known
Awareness and dissemination of what is done in these campaigns It's fundamental and from NGOs like Doctors of the World they know “What Doctors of the World raises is that we know what happens, that people know what happens and what doesn't. I have gone to an institute to give a talk too and I will surely go to more but still it is not possible to transmit everything that is happening.
From 1,500 to 2,000 people daily they have been arriving at the small Greek island of Lesbos of 16,000 square km and that until this humanitarian catastrophe had a population of around 85,000 inhabitants. Now the island is completely overflowed and its inhabitants have modified their routines integrating into it the continuous avalanche of people looking in Europe “A quiet place where you can live and your children can go to school” as they told Eva themselves.
As usual, children and women are the most vulnerable in a situation as disastrous and illogical as the refugees are experiencing, concrete cases sometimes help to humanize these large numbers that as mere spectators surpass us.
“Once a mother came with her little son to look at the child's ear because they had hit him. We looked at him, the ear was fine, we saw nothing strange and she started telling us her story.
She was an Afghan woman who had lived in Pakistan since she was seven years old, married for love but her in-laws hated her, in fact her father-in-law killed one of her children as a baby and cheated on her husband saying it was her. The husband believed her but they were still living under the roof of his parents. Unfortunately, the husband died of a bomb and she understood that she had to run away with her second child before her father-in-law killed her and the child.
She had no money so how does a woman pay for this trip?She was twenty-five days locked in a room with another woman and the children of both and both were raped by an undetermined number of men. One of those days to his son, one of those men gave him alcohol to drink, the boy, of course, became ill and vomited and those men beat him up.
Hence the blow in the ear that she wanted us to see ... "
But circumstances and personal stories, like that of this woman, are not solved or improved upon arriving in this Europe:
"… she he has no right to refugee status because Europe has decided that Afghans no longer live in war and besides she cannot prove that she is Afghan and they take her for Pakistani but neither can she prove that her husband's family will kill her if she returns to Pakistan.
Days after seeing her in the center, a companion found her in a gutter, hitting her head with a rock. He had tried to suffocate his son and kill herself because he did not want to go back to Calvary to return to Pakistan.
What is your option until you reach Germany where she had a brother?
Get back in the hands of the mafias… ”
A humanitarian catastrophe
This is happening a few kilometers from our country, from our life, from our home, from our children. This is happening today, now, with other children who are not ours and other mothers who are not us.
What can we do from here to try to help? I ask Eva.
"It is true that you don't have to go all there but collect material, donate to the NGOs that are working in Greece as we do from Doctors of the World, complain, complain a lot.
We would have to complain a lot more, collected from signatures ... everything adds up and we can each do a lot of things. Raise awareness of our neighbor, for example.
I feel terrible when I agree with people and ask me where I have been, I answer that in Lesbos and they release me “what happens there?” Is a sad feeling, very sad. People live their life and that to me, right now that maybe it's because I have a live flesh wound, it's like throwing salt in it.
Or that you put the television at work and say “oh, take it off because it makes me sad”, of course, it makes you sad but this happens and we can't turn our heads, something will have to be done! We don't care about everything and I am increasingly clear that we would need to be twelve hours in another person's body, nothing more, to see your children soaked and see people who do not know where to go and who tell you that they only want to live in a quiet place where their children can go to school, that is that Afghan women are illiterate, that in their country they don't let them study. ”
It is not an earthquake, it is not a pandemic, it is not a tsunami… it is an armed conflict behind another, it is a war behind another, it is a human exodus of people who only want an opportunity to continue with their lives and how it is logical, for people who like Eva try to help on the ground "... the feeling of frustration and much, much helplessness, is continuous."
Even as when there are visits by politicians concerned about what is happening and that move to the ground to give visibility in the media that is gradually losing, as happened when it was Monica Oltra who approached Moria:
“… We had a work shift and we could not go but it happened that I went to where she was because I accompanied a family and although I am unable to approach someone because I am terribly embarrassed, I felt the need for that I had to do it once and I approached her.
I thanked him for coming and Monica said, no man thanks to you and asked me "And is this always the case?" (taking into account that for her as for all who have gone, the military had previously half-dressed a little, half cleaned before showing her the center). I couldn't go on and I started crying “What if this is always like this? Not that way, it's worse!Please do something, this can't go on like this! You can only do something! ”
All in tears, I could not say anything else, the person who accompanied her also crying ...
You have to see it, the children shattered from sleep sleeping on the floor in any way, the soaked people sitting on the floor making huge lines to give them a plate of rice.
They don't even ask, I was left with the idea of touching their feet to see if they were wet or not And on top of that they thank you and also leave their wet shoes for the one who comes, so that they find them dry!”
50,000 people they are lost in Greece, without being able to access a Europe that has closed its doors by signing a treaty with Turkey that violates both the Geneva Convention and the most basic human rights.
50,000 people You have to choose between losing your life or dying, there are not many more options. The refugee camps that used to be transit are now containment, there is no way out to Europe, there is no hope for them ... unless something changes in us.
