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Dresden - 4 août 2012 - 11h18

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Karlovasi, Samos island, October 20, 2015

Dear Sarah,

Since my last letter, the Mayor changed his policy. Now – Officially – help is welcome and is coordinated by his office. I underline ‘officially’ because I’m not sure that the official Samos is ruling this island. To understand why I call into question the real power of elected people, let me please describe the recent evolution of the relationship of local business with the refugees (generally simply named as ‘Syrians’).

When tourists were here: Taxis and hotels were refusing Syrians.

Now that almost all tourists left: Taxis are tuned on Police radio so when a boat of Syrians accosts they try to be as closer as possible to their arrival and to offer their services for the few minority that can afford it.
Hotels accept Syrians, again for a narrow minority (generally but not only young educated single urbans or couples without kids or only few).
Of course, the nice bills with all taxes that the German tourist was receiving are not printed for Syrians. It’s a pity because for an economist it would have been a splendid indicator of the size of the market.

Anyway, I’m not here to make a survey of the unformal market on a typical Greek island but as a humanitarian worker that has also to understand how our intervention is perceived, used or misused by the economic powers and the elites. This is also important for the security assessment that we update on a daily basis.

And, what happened this Sunday is interesting for a better comprehension of the context. As our logic of intervention is to be as close as possible to the point of arrival of refugees in order to provide medical first aid immediately after their long and dangerous trip, we set up the simple following intervention:

1. A light medical team in a car started at 07:30 on the north road of the island (from Karlovasi to Kokkari).
2. On their road they found a 1^st group of refugees and made a quick medical screening in order to see if any emergency medical need was needed (if yes, their referral to Vathy/Samos town  hospital would have been organized).
3. One of the medical team member called me immediately in order for me to send a bus to pick up the refugees (agreement with the buses owner was previously set).
4. The bus started the transfer of refugees to a small house next to the port police station (were the identification of the refugees is performed).

But, when the 1^st bus came to Karlovasi, a port police guy came to me saying that what we were doing was illegal and that we need to stop or he will lose his job and will not be able to feed his children (this is the ultra classical sentence that you ear on several occasions). He was nice and told me, please stop the buses somewhere where I do not see it.

In the meanwhile, the medical team identified a second group of refugees and the bus driver called his boss in order to have 2 buses to pick up the refugees and to avoid them waiting too long. Unfortunately, they stop in a place a 200 meters from the Port police station but still visible from this station. The port policeman came with his private car to stop that. After a calm discussion with the port policeman, the bus driver told me that we will have to stop for today. The policeman told me that taxis were calling him asking him why ‘he is letting the bus transporting refugees as it is illegal’.

I need now to explain several things:

1^st transporting refugees is not illegal, you just have to report it by calling the police (by the way, as we are of course not authorized to check IDs how do we know that they are refugees?). Of course this is what I’ve done immediately after calling the bus driver. Several days before, I met the head of police on the island that confirmed me that this is the proper methodology + I red the very short new Law.

2^nd The port police is not in charge of the movements of refugees on land. They register them because they are coming for the sea but then the normal police is in charge of the Legal aspects of their movement on land.

The next day, yesterday, I went to the main town of the island to meet the head of the port police to try to solve this issue. He was very kind and simply told me that this issue is not under his authority and that he is not in charge of the movement of refugees on land. I need here to underline that both coast guards and port police in Vathy are super helpful, human and apparently dedicated to their mission.

Then, I met a volunteer that explained to me that the blockage comes from the head of the port police in Karlovasi (I met what has to be his boss in Vathy). That was clearly said to me by one of the port policeman, ‘my chief is Mr xx in Karlovasi’. My personal feeling (and it is of course not a fact) is that all these ordinary port policemen are really trying to do their best to help the refugees in due conformance with Law but that they have a kind of a mafia boss that they are afraid of.

If this feeling is confirmed by facts, it means that all what we will do to help the refugees (for instance shelters as the rain is coming) will be impeded by pathetic economic and power interests. Because 2 or 5 % or even 10 % (I don’t know) of Syrians can afford to pay hotel, all the others have to suffer to spend part of the few money they have and have to keep for the road ahead.

In Niger the main explanation during the malnutrition crisis was that ‘bad’ mothers were stopping breast-feeding too early (including from Unicef) which of course was totally stupid (I can develop on that as I drafted then a shot paper on the causes of this crisis).

Here Syrians are presented by some as ‘so greedy that they prefer to sleep outside with babies instead of paying for a Hotel room’. At the end, and this is the so classical rhetorical figure of the victim presented as responsible of the crime that hurts her (can’t find now the seminal paper on that from 1972 from what I remember), the Syrians are presented as responsible if their children get sick. Do you know what The UN High Commissioner declared: ‘We cannot winterize a moving crowd’? Did he ear about heated buses? and was it a problem when they UNHCR participated to Ethnic cleansing in Bosnia? At this time they found buses. But don’t worry, in 10 years, as for Bosnia, they will draft splendid papers to explain their own mistakes, as they have done for Bosnia.

We are here, as a team, for and with the refugees. Could sounds not ‘professional’ but together with part of the local population it is from them that we find the energy to move on and, believe me it is too late to stop us.

Unfortunately, in order to keep our energy we have to forget for now the drawn ones that are much more than what is officially reported.

Kindest regards,

vn

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processus
le génie constructeur grec fut géométrique, mis au service d'idéalités paradigmatiques

celui des romains est politique

ils le mettent au service de leur propre cité promue archétype à imiter par tous les peuples

il s'ensuit une autre temporalisation de l'être, non plus par les processus cinétiques observables, mais par des processus mnémoniques narrables

(des hégémonies brisées, p 290 et 289)

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law and order
l'homme respectueux des lois en vigueur viole leurs contraires, que la déesse lui ordonne pourtant de retenir comme de force égale; inversement, celui qui observe ces contraires que le consensus rejette, viole les lois en vigueur.
Parménide détecte comme une illusion transcendantale dans la doxa: la fiction selon laquelle être égalerait être présent. Fiction impossible à dissiper dont il résulte encore que, quelque soit la règle à laquelle nous nous plions, nous restons placés en même temps sous la loi et hors la loi.
(Reiner Schürmann, Des Hégémonies brisées, Trans-Europ-Repress, Mauvezin, 1996, p 131 De l'un qui tient (Parménide)).

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accablement ?

l'accablement vient de ce que le mot qui sauve a tout l'air de s'imposer comme une évidence naturelle dés que nous parlons.

'Dis énergie électromagnétique ...' Directement contre l'ineffable métaphysique du Tractatus, Wittgenstein a cette formule d'allure kantienne : "On croit retracer toujours et encore la nature, et on ne fait que longer la forme à travers laquelle nous la considérons." (§ 114- Investigations philosophiques)

civilization

"Civilization is hooped together by manifold illusion"

la civilisation tient, cerclée par une multiple illusion

(William Buttler Yeats - Meru - the poems, R.J. Finneran, NY, 1983, p 289)

(Reiner Schürmann, Des Hégémonies brisées, Trans-Europ-Repress, Mauvezin, 1996)

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réel
nous serons d'autant plus dans le réel que nous resterons profondément et conséquemment fidèles aux sources esthétiques
(de Adorno à Benjamin, lettre du 20 mai 1935)

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fyi, a letter to colleague:
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Karlovasi, Samos Island

October 11, 2015

Dear Sarah,

What I witness here yesterday evening and night is simply incredible, as yesterday was, and the day before. I write you today because I found a time window for that.

Refugees, we have families with new-borns (the youngest was of 1 day as the mother delivered on the inflatable boat during the crossing), we have children with or without parents or relatives (I saw one 16 y. old boy alone, totally afraid yesterday sleeping on the port of Samos town), we have pregnant women, we have all Syria from rich to very poor (and they are by far the most) facing a dangerous sea-crossing because they have no choice anymore.

Yesterday in the port of Karlovasi, we had around 300 refugees including 8 new-borns, 7 pregnant women (certainly more as only these ones were obviously pregnant and confirmed it, some are under 18 y old), 80 children. Refugees came exhausted. They wait hidden in Turkey for several days before.  Some didn’t have food for days. Frontex had to rescue boats that get lost on the rocks. They lost all what they could take and they cannot anyway take much.

You have people with chronic diseases without treatment, you have war wounded, crippled but they are still afaraid and they don’t want to make problems so they don’t report unless you have are not a kind Arabic speaker. We hopefully have two in our small team.

The rain was coming. Volonteers from the island (mainly habitants) rehabilitated a small house but we couldn’t shelter in this house all families with children. Not a single baby or children was crying, I noticed it as a very strange fact. Volonteers organized food, clothes for them. My team was providing health care to those the more in need.

As I met the Mayor the day before, I SMS him that we face a critical situation and that we are urgently in need of a shelter. You have plenty empty bulding around. One of them is a former disco-club just next to the house rehabilated by volonteers. It has 8 toilettes, a big space etc. In town a temporary school that was used before and which is now empty.

After my SMS, the Mayor immediately called me and told me that he gave instruction to either open a place for the refugees or to move them from Karlovasi to Samos Port. I can’t describe you now the situation in the port of Samos but I the situation there is even worse than in Karlovasi. So I told him that they need to find a solution here in Karlovasi. The Deputy-Mayor came. He first told me that he wants to move them in the empty school. That he needs to find the keys. Then came back. He had with the keys but he decided to move one group of refugees in Samos Port. I tried my best to convince him that in this case, it’s better to stay here as volunteers found some space on the port, open to all winds but at least with a roof. It’s next to a huge ferry that stays there, occupied by the workers because they did not get paid for months (years?). I also need to assess the situation there because I’ve been told that they are starving.

When three buses came, I gave instructions to my team to stay away as we cannot be involved to what is a form of forced displacement (Police don’t really need to use violence as the refugees are shocked and they don’t want to make any problem, they just want to move forward). Anyway, we are only four for now, and two of us were providing health care at about 150 m.

All in a sudden, one policeman came to me super angry: ‘look what they are doing, the bus driver ask 10 euros to each refugee’. I came to him and asked him: ‘why are you doing that?’ He told me:’I didn’t get paid, I need to survive somehow’. These buses are from Ktel (a public company I think).

I then decided to move to Samos port to see the situation there, when they will arrive. One of the volunteer that stayed in Karlovasi called me, she told me that now the chief of the port police came and that he was shouting on the refugees in order to get them in the bus. I will get the full story today, but from what one refugee told me, several habitants came to stop this displacement of refugees.

In the Port of Samos, you have 20 shelters boxes for an average of 800 refugees coming every day. On Fridays, you don’t have ferries so you have even more refugees in the port and around. In these boxes, you don’t have water, no beds, no toilets, nothing. On the port, you have only 4 toilets and you can imagine how they looks like.

While I was waiting the buses, the Mayor called me to told me that apparently 3 persons are trying to fetter the process of moving the refugees. I told him that it’s not my team and that I’m not presently in Karlovasi. I told him that most of them cannot anyway take the bus as they don’t have money to pay the 10 euros. He told me that they made several surveys and that the Syrians have the money to pay. I told him that it is not what I have witnessed (now the families are coming, they have sold all what they have or get in debts, of course few rich refugees but they don’t sleep in the port, they get an room in an hotel). I asked him why they don’t at least get a receipt? He told me that it is not is business as it is a private company operating the buses. But he organized this transportation.

Before the bus came, we find here mothers with babies without baby milk (some are not breath-feeding, some have no milk anymore after the sea-crossing). It was already late but my colleague managed to find milk in town. I get some as well from volonteers.

The bus came. I will never forget the gaze of a young mother with her new-born, lost and afraid. I will never forget this about & years old girl exhausted and traveling with her grandmother. Lost, afraid, with no shelter, in the middle of the night.

I went back to Karlovasi to check the situation of a group of refugees that arrived in the meanwhile.

When I get back home, it was 2 am. this Sunday, October 11, 2015. In a way, this situation is much worse that what I have seen in Africa because we have plenty empty building all around us. Together with the volonteers, we will provide food, we will rehabilitate buildings if needed, we will provide blankets, we will get decent toilets and showers, we will warm the refugees as our brother human. During WWII, some people of Samos on their way to Egypt, stopped in Syria, in Palestine. They were refugees there at this time. They don’t forget how warmly they were hosted. They want to help but the authorities do their best to stop/slow them and the number of tourists is slowly decreasing.

I need to rush as the ferry from Samos Port is stopping in Karlovasi this morning. Don’t have time to reread and correct errors. Sorry for my poor English.

Take care,

vn

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point
Kafka parle du point de non retour. C'est le plus difficile à atteindre de tous les points.
(W.S. Burroughs - The Western Lands - 1987)

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