The day Ali Reza stopped being a child his father told him to walk. The 12-year-old Afghan remembers it well because it was on that day that he left his country and was forced to become a man.
”I had no choice. The road to happiness was several thousand miles long. I had to be strong,” he said. ”In Afghanistan we crossed fields. In Iran, mountains and streams. In Turkey, the great big plain and in Greece, the sea.”
When his feet ached Reza heard his father, who loathed what the Taliban were doing to his country, imploring him to go on. And when mad scrambles to dodge Turkish border patrols left his legs swollen and bruised he thought of the tantalising world that lay ahead, so rich and Taliban-free. ”There were some older men who looked after me, people my father paid.”
Joining the wave of unaccompanied, Europe-bound minors fleeing persecution, poverty and war, Ali recalls his great trek from east to west from the comfort of his new home, a reception centre in the northern Greek city of Volos. As one of its 23 wards, he is lucky. Until February, when the centre opened on the premises of a school for autistic children, Reza was forced to endure the appalling conditions of a shantytown camp on the outskirts of Patras in western Greece.
”When he first arrived he didn’t want to eat and if ever we asked him about his family, and especially his mother, he’d burst into tears,” said Anna Zaharianou, a social worker with the Red Cross, which runs the refuge. ”A lot of the younger ones suffer from anxiety and depression.”
The centre is part of Greece’s answer to a phenomenon that has clearly caught authorities off-guard: children willing to take extraordinary risks to escape civil war and developing-world hardship.
Although the constant flow makes numbers difficult to assess charities believe that as many as 2 000 school-age youngsters — from Asia, Africa and the Middle East — have this year alone turned up on far-flung Aegean islands, their first stop on an odyssey that they hope will lead them to Britain and other parts of northern Europe.
Watched over by smuggler gangs, most arrive disoriented and dispossessed. Those picked up attempting to cross in rickety craft from Turkey to Greece are often found wearing nothing more than underpants. ”I’d say the majority are from Afghanistan and 85% unaccompanied,” said Nikos Komblas, a Patras-based lawyer who tries to teach the children their basic rights, including the right to apply for political asylum. ”I’ve never once seen a girl, only boys, many of whom we believe are escaping the country to avoid being drafted by either the Taliban or government forces.”
As the numbers increase the young migrants have been met with racism and anger. With a childcare system that is wanting at the best of times, and inadequate housing facilities, Greek officials are struggling to cope. The fear is that these stateless children, so vulnerable in their legal limbo, will fall victim to traffickers and the perils of organised crime.
”This is not just a Greek problem, it is a European one, but the bottom line is it is also about power,” said Thalia Dragona, a social psychologist and MP with the main opposition Pasok party. ”These kids don’t have a voice. If they could vote it might be different, but they have nothing and so nobody is making this a priority issue.”
Last week Afghan children ferried from the Turkish coast to the island of Leros were staging hunger strikes to protest against the primitive conditions of the overcrowded detention centre that greeted them. The action, which prompted the Greek government to dispatch its deputy health minister to the island, followed dismay over heavy-handed treatment of the minors by police and port authorities.
Children have been arrested and imprisoned, sometimes for up to three months. Frequently they are forced to share cells with adult criminals in what human rights groups have called a flagrant violation of international law.
Such was the fate of Raymond Masamba, whose ordeal began at the age of six when, cowering under a bed, he witnessed his entire family being shot dead by opposition forces in the Congolese town of Brazzaville.
”In February this year I arrived at Athens airport from Congo after a friend of my parents put me on a plane,” said the 16-year-old. ”I just remember being in tears on the flight and then being arrested when the Greeks discovered I had no documents. They took me to the cells on the top floor of the security police headquarters in Athens. I have never been in prison before and there was nobody to talk to, to explain my situation.”
Released two months later, he stopped the first black man he saw in the street, who escorted him to the Red Cross, which dispatched him to the childcare centre in Volos.
”Even though they are minors who by law should be protected they are treated as if they are adult immigrants,” said Eleni Dimitriou, a lawyer who works with the refugees in Volos. ”It’s inexcusable that children who have experienced such hazardous journeys are being held in custody and not asked whether they want asylum. Under EU law refugees have to request asylum in their first country of entry.”
Greece’s asylum policies and poor acceptance rates are nowhere more evident than among the malodorous shacks and muddy alleyways of the shantytown camp in Patras. Here, over open fires, young Afghan migrants dream of heading deeper into Europe.
”In Greece you never get asylum and conditions are very, very bad,” said Muhammed Muradi (14), who left Afghanistan’s Helmand province after his school was attacked by the Taliban. ”It’s a matter of life and death that we work to pay smugglers. To do that we have to be legal, we need papers. I’ve tried to go to Italy on seven occasions and each time have been caught [hiding] in the trucks by the police. It won’t stop me trying again.” —