Crowded in the 'parking lot' of a supermarket in Lesbos

The life line in Mytilene is a pirated water pipe.

The former inhabitants of the Moria refugee camp pierce the pipes that irrigate neighboring crops, to fill buckets and bottles.

It is the water that hundreds of families crowded in the vicinity of a German supermarket in the capital of the Greek island of Lesbos have had to wash or cook.

The emblem of the food company rises above them like a claim to the Europe they dreamed of.

The products necessary to survive were collected, after walking three kilometers, in heavy bundles at the distribution points that the NGOs have installed.

PHOTO GALLERY

• Lesbos, flight to nowhere

Ahmed and Abdullah are brothers, aged 17 and 16 respectively, from Bamiyan, in Afghanistan, a city known for its two statues of giant Buddhas, dynamited in 2001 by the Taliban.

Both accompany the journalists from EL PAÍS to the settlement along a route between mountains that allowed them to bypass the control of the Greek police.

The authorities surrounded this camp until yesterday afternoon.

On Saturday, security forces dispersed with tear gas and charges attempts to leave the vicinity of the shopping center.

Abdullah shows bruises from the blows he said were inflicted on him by riot police.

His brother Ahmed adds that neighbors from Moria also beat him during one of his forays to collect food.

Other refugees showed bruises and scratches caused, according to their testimonies, by the police action on Saturday and also, they say, during the eviction from the Moria camp on Wednesday of last week.

Abdullah and Ahmed stop to greet Hussein Ramazoni, an Afghan like them, 66, dressed in a blue robe.

He says that the clothes were given to him by volunteers.

Everything he has is donated, such as the blanket from Acnur, the United Nations Agency for Refugees, on which he sleeps.

Ramazoni's goal is to reach Athens, where one of his sons works, but the authorities have not granted him a family reunification permit.

Another young man, this one wearing a Real Sociedad shirt, approaches to greet the group and ask for tobacco.

A colleague of his is treated a few meters away by three German doctors who on their own decided to travel to the capital of Lesbos to help.

The lack of official medical assistance is a repeated complaint by all the people interviewed.

There are extreme cases, like that of Zakaria Mohamed.

18 years old and from Somalia, he arrived in Lesbos five months ago.

The shirt is uncovered and shows a huge scar produced by the impact of a bullet.

They shot him in his home country.

Make sure you still have the projectile in your body.

He finds it difficult to walk and eat, and he decided to cross to Europe to be able to undergo surgery.

Any measure to contain the coronavirus, starting with the safety distance, is mission impossible, as Doctors Without Borders (MSF), the main health care organization on the ground, warns.

The NGO has also warned of a growing tension: “Almost five years locking people up in these conditions can only lead to despair and tension.

With covid-19 and increasing restrictions on the population that has been locked up for almost five months [of confinement], the situation has become unsustainable. "

On the country lane leading to the supermarket, brothers Ahmed and Abdullah climb into a Greek Army trench, with an old tank head pointing towards the Turkish coast, visible from 20 kilometers away, and elevated above the new field that the Greek government is raising up for migrants on the beach of Kara Tepe.

The Ministry of Migration wants to intern here the 13,000 people who were registered in Moria, but many reject it.

In the supermarket parking lot, groups are formed, according to their origin, mainly Afghans and Somalis, who debate the outcome of the situation.

Some have camped out in front of promotional advertisements for German products: 400 grams of smoked meat for 2.79 euros or mortadella for 1.29 euros.

One of them is Abolfazl Mohseni.

He is 13 years old, Afghan and speaks fluent English that he has learned in the almost two years he has been in Lesbos by memorizing Internet videos through his father's mobile phone.

Mosheni acts as spokesman for his family and summarizes that they do not want to be interned in the new field of government because it would mean accepting that there is no future for them.

Mosheni wants to study in England or Switzerland, where he says they have relatives.

The Ministry of Migration details that between 2013 and February of this year it granted asylum to 38% of applicants in its territory, an essential condition to be relocated to other EU countries.

"The camp is a prison, it's going to nothing," says 19-year-old Somali Mohammed Abdallah.

His goal, like that of four friends who accompanied him on the odyssey that took them to Greece, is to work in Germany.

Abdallah refuses to be admitted to the new center, and repeats some of the information that circulates among the migrants, such as that the use of mobile phones will be prohibited, that there will be no electricity, no water and, above all, that they will not be able to leave the facilities .

A spokesman for the Ministry of Migration and Asylum denies it: the use of telephones will be allowed, there will be electricity through generators and leaving the camp will be authorized "during some hours of the day, but never at night, for your safety."

The Government claims that more than 4,000 people have already stayed at the site.

UNHCR has warned of an increase in the unrest of the local population, especially during the disbandment of the Moria camp after being this grass of flames last week. The conflict may escalate if the Greek government decides to forcibly transfer those who do not want to enter the new field. “I'm not going to go, no matter how much police they bring. I'd rather be killed because, locked in Lesbos, they are already slowly killing us, ”says Abdallah. His companions nod.