Trapped

"When the water first came, I was pushed into a room or compartment and then everything went black.  Suddenly I saw a little light. I swam until it got closer and bigger and I noticed it was a window. I climbed through it.
"When we were in the water, I saw people clinging on to dead bodies. I saw men trying to take life jackets from women.
"The reason only half the people had life jackets was because you had to buy them in Libya, and the smuggler told us it wasn't worth it because the boat was safe.
"We are a big family. I was travelling with my mum, brother, cousins, my cousin’s husband and his family. I have no idea where they are.
"I was detained in Malta for three days. I was throwing up blood but still they took me to detention. Their main priority was getting my fingerprints." 
Anas, 17-year-old Palestinian Syrian boy, Lampedusa, October 2013

Hundreds of migrants have died on boats from Libya to Europe.

© UNHCR/F. Noy

Italy's overcrowded refugee holding centres have gained the country notoriety, their reputation slumped suddenly from heroic to downright ugly. Europe has seen itself overrun with refugees from the brutal sectarian civil war in Syria, where the regime and the rebel militias are both engaging in horrendous atrocities against one another and most particularly against the civilian population. Human smugglers have been making a killing on the plight of desperate North Africans and Syrians.

The tiny Italian rock strip of Lampedusa, the nearest European port that refugees can hope to reach to find themselves, as they imagine, welcome with open arms of comforting haven, has been inundated with the detritus of human desperation. Fearful refugees take passage out of Libya or Turkey in the hopes of reaching a rescuing destination that will embrace their need and allow them to reach their potential aspirations to live in peace and security. Waves of the desperate fleeing war and oppression from Syria to Somalia.

At a detention centre in Rome the past weekend, a group of migrants expressed their indignation and dismay at their reception by using thread to sew their mouths shut. They have few other means to gather attention to their plight that fortune has imposed upon them and which, having escaped, have then been forced to live in squalid refugee camps devoid of basic amenities and hope. Others seek to convey their humiliation and misery by refusing to eat.

Italian Premier Enrico Letta has pledged, in the face of international scrutiny and condemnation, to change Italy's citizenship law from bloodlines to birthplace. A change championed by Italy's first black cabinet minister, Congolese-born Cecile Kyenge. Honourary citizenship had been granted in the full-blown publicity of the October tragedy that saw 360 attempting to find refuge drowning off the island of Lampedusa. Less honour is being proffered to the living.

It is hard to be a refugee in a world where countries are all struggling to meet the challenges of their own needs, finding themselves burdened with the miseries and needs of citizens of other countries. Italy has seen a three-fold increase in the number of migrants, over 2012; its holding centres overflow with 16,000 people hoping against hope that the magic of Europe will promise them a future free of oppression and fear of closely-impending death.

Their welcome, alas, has been far from heart-warming anywhere they land. The millions of Syrians who fled their country's poisonous civil war finding refuge with neighbours in Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and Turkey find scant comfort there, too, as those countries struggle to cope with their needs and the additional problems the presence of the refugees cause internally. Winter is miserable for the homeless and the insecure in Turkey, Jordan, Italy or Greece.

And it was in a small Greek village that 150 Syrian refugees, shivering in the miserable cold, found themselves lately.  Arriving in the village of Praggi situated high on the highlands of north-eastern Greece they huddled in the courtyard of the local church, others under trees in a nearby forest. They were exhausted from their dangerous journey from Turkey, crossing the Evros river, fleeing Syria through Turkey.

Soon after their arrival white police vans appeared and then there were no more Syrian men, women and children present. "Ever since we have lost all trace of them. They just disappeared. Our firm belief is that they were pushed back into Turkey", said Vasillis Papadopolous, a lawyer specializing in the defence of migrants and refugees.

Greece's police and coastguard have an extremely aggressive policy toward refugees attempting to cross the border. Photograph: STR New/Reuters

Bulgaria, arguably, the poorest country in the 28-member European Union, has been unprepared to welcome the estimated 6,700 Syrian refugees who have flooded across their border. Emergency funding from the European Union is expected to aid Bulgarian authorities in coping with the refugees, now housed in inadequate, squalid conditions. Syrian complaints about those conditions have enraged Bulgarians who would countenance their swift removal.

Irregular food supplies and other necessities donated by ordinary Bulgarians wanting to help ameliorate the plight of Syrian refugees many of whom go to sleep hungry, and then cannot sleep for the cold, are not sufficient to fill the gap of their needs.  "I am ashamed, and that is a very weak word for what I feel. We were a closed country for nearly 50 years and have no culture of receiving immigrants", said Iliana Savova, with the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee.

She visited a refugee center set up in haset at the site of an abandoned military camp in southern Bulgaria. As a member of that human rights group, she directs the refugee migrant unit for the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee. The muddy, garbage-strewn field with its clusters of tents, small cabins and freezing Syrians, dismayed and shamed her as a Bulgarian.

Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York Times

Refugees in Syria Put Strain on Bulgarian Resources: As the poorest member of the 28-nation European Union, Bulgaria has struggled to provide even rudimentary shelter to Syrian refugees.

"We thought that Europe cares and that they would save us. But we spent hours in the water before anyone came. So we have lost hope in Europe. There is discrimination and no freedom to move. They say yes we feel sorry for you but there are legal issues. Why did you let us in then? Why not leave us in the sea?
"I was stopped on the train in Austria along with around 10 others. We had already given our money to the smuggler. We asked to apply for asylum in Austria, but they said we need your fingerprints. They got our fingerprints then took us in a car back to the border with Italy.
"We were told the fingerprinting was for security/criminal matters and not for asylum, but they tricked us. And now I am trapped. They want us to be law abiding but they do not behave like that themselves." 

Amnesty International Annual Report