Why the Pope's visit to Lesbos matters for refugees and migrants stranded in Greece
Pope Francis will visit the Greek island of Lesbos Saturday and visit with refugees who have been arriving there by the thousand from Turkey.
The Pope's visit comes at a pivotal time for Greece and sends a clear message on the Vatican's stance: Refugees are welcome in Europe.
Greece has begun to turn back refugees and migrants arriving on its shores from Turkey, following a deal reached last month between the EU and Turkey.
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Meanwhile, European countries are planning measures to tighten borders, with the Balkan states fully shutting down the route that the majority of the more than 1 million people used to travel into western Europe last year.
Amid all this, around 53,000 people are living in limbo in detention centers and makeshift camps, stuck in Greece as the borders closed and turnbacks began. Many are trying to make their way to family members in more economically stable countries of western Europe, while some have claimed asylum.
According to a statement from the Vatican, the pontiff was invited by the Greek president and the head of the Greek Orthodox church to will visit the island on April 16.
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Lucy Carrigan, Regional Communications Officer for the International Rescue Committee said the Pope's visit to Lesbos makes a difference. She has been working with refugees in Greece for months and knows how dire the conditions are for those making their way into Europe.
Carrigan believes the pope's visit will shed a much needed light on the situation there.
"He has been a consistent advocate for refugees throughout this crisis and has the power to shape both political and public opinion," Carrigan said.
Now more than ever, public attention needs to be turned towards Greece.
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Human rights groups are concerned about the conditions facing refugees and migrants in detention centers on the Greek islands and those stranded at makeshift camps elsewhere in the country. Battling its own economic crisis, Greece is ill-equipped to deal with the influx of people, some of whom have begun asylum applications.
"There is no legal or moral justification to hold asylum seekers and migrants behind bars.”
Butt most will have to wait months for the applications to be removed and are stuck in a holding pattern in the detention centers.
"It's clear conditions at the camps are unacceptable. There are unaccompanied minors locked up behind barbed wire," said Jerome Oberreit, secretary general of the relief agency Doctors Without Borders, or MSF.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) says that those who arrive are being kept in "deplorable conditions" in detention centers, according to a statement released earlier this week.
The blanket detentions are in facilities largely closed to human rights organizations and journalists.
“The EU’s policy, carried out in Greece, has locked up families and others who have fled horrors such as ISIS terror, Taliban threats, or Syrian-government barrel bombs,” said Eva Cossé, Greece specialist at HRW in a statement sent to Mashable. “When alternatives to detention exist, as they do on the Greek islands, there is no legal or moral justification to hold asylum seekers and migrants behind bars.”
Some say the brutal conditions are being hidden from view ahead of the pope's arrival.
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HRW observed people with special needs, including women with young children, pregnant women, unaccompanied children, elderly men and women, and people with physical and psychosocial disabilities being held in the detention center earlier this month.
None had proper access to health care, sanitation facilities, or legal aid.
The group believes the facilities should be converted into open camps that provide appropriate humanitarian services for the vulnerable population. They had once been open centers but the March 20 EU-Turkey deal saw a sudden conversion to the prison-like centers.
The Moria facility on Lesbos, with about 3,100 people, is surrounded by a three-layer fence topped with barbed-wire, according to HRW and journalists on the ground.
"The pope's visit comes at a pivotal moment: Right as Europe is gearing up to send thousands of refugees back to Turkey, locking them up in the meantime in horrible conditions, frightened of the future," Gauri van Gulik, deputy Europe director at Amnesty International, told The Associated Press.
"These are people who fled the horrors of Islamic State, the Taliban, bombings in Syria and more. They deserve Europe's protection and care, and hopefully the pope can shed light on their plight."
Additional information from the Associated Press.
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Megan Specia was Mashable's Assistant Real-Time News Editor and joined the team in September 2014. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism & Mass Communications from the University of New Hampshire after growing up in the Jersey 'burbs. She made her way to New York via a four year stopover in Dublin. Megan previously worked as a journalist and editor at Storyful in both Dublin and New York. Before all of that, though, her claim to fame was as head cake arranger and purveyor of all things sweet at Queen of Tarts cafe in Dublin, where she developed a serious addiction to macarons.
