IMAGE: CNS photo/Stoyan Nenov, Reuters
By Cindy Wooden
VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Pope Francis’ trip to Lesbos, Greece,
April 16 comes at a frightening and critical time for tens of thousands of
refugees and migrants waiting and wondering where they will end up, said
members of Catholic aid agencies.
Maristella Tsamatropoulou, spokeswoman for Caritas Hellas, the
Catholic charity in Greece, said when rumors started swirling that Pope Francis
would join Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople on a
visit to refugees, “we believed it immediately because our pope is
spontaneous; he’s a force of nature.”
Last October, when several thousand refugees from Syria,
Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries were passing through Greece on their way
to other parts of Europe, Caritas Hellas had five paid employees. Now the
number of refugees and migrants has grown and the borders with other European countries
have been closed to them. In response, the paid staff at the Caritas central
office in Athens has grown to 15 people and there are 40 other employees around
the country, including in Lesbos.
Among the migrants and refugees, Tsamatropoulou said,
“the terror is immense.” The northern border with Macedonia closed in February, and the European Union and Turkey
signed an agreement to forcibly return to Turkey those not applying for asylum
in Greece. The agreement went into effect March 20.
What was a transit center in Idomeni, on the border with
Macedonia, has become a muddy encampment of more than 11,000 people hoping and
praying the border will open. The Caritas spokeswoman said the Greek government
keeps saying it will close the Idomeni camp, “and we fear it won’t be
peaceful.”
Already impatient refugees, stuck on a field never meant to
serve as a camp, occasionally try to force guards on both sides to let them
pass into Macedonia. They are pushed back, including by the use of water
cannons or tear gas.
Tsamatropoulou said staff from Caritas and the other aid
agencies continue trying to convince the people at Idomeni to go to one of the
smaller, organized refugee centers set up by the Greek government. Conditions
are better there, she said; at least there are hot meals. But the migrants and
refugees at Idomeni can see the border and are certain that it will open
eventually. They want to be the first ones across.
The scene in Lesbos had changed dramatically as well, she
said. Prior to March 20, when the Turkey-EU agreement went into effect, the
migrants and refugees were more or less free to come and go. Now, many of them
are in what amounts to detention centers.
Jesuit Refugee Service, which also operates in Lesbos and
other parts of Greece, issued a statement April 12 saying Pope Francis’ visit
“could not come at a more critical time.” JRS believes the Turkey-EU
agreement “violates the international law and the principle of ‘non-refoulement’
or not pushing back people in need of protection.”
More than 150,000 refugees and migrants have arrived to
Greece so far in 2016, JRS said, and more than half of them reached the country
by arriving in Lesbos. In addition, “the U.N. refugee agency has announced
more than 22,000 unaccompanied minors are stuck in Greece and facing an
uncertain future of possible violence and exploitation,” the statement
added.
“During a time when pushbacks are seemingly the
solution being put forward by the EU, we hope the pope’s visit is not just a
symbol of hope for refugees, but a concrete push for the Greek government and
other European states to actualize those hopes,” said Jesuit Father Thomas
H. Smolich, JRS international director.
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