“He was a doctor by profession, but he knew what we needed here. He turned a desert into a green and fertile land. He gave us jobs when there was nothing to make a living from, he gave us hope for a better future. Even now when we talk to people who went for work to Iran during drought, they don’t believe, we earn our living from Gambiri desert” said Gul Agha a farmer who owns a portion of land around the newly built water canal by Japanese Dr. Tetsu Nakamura.

On the 4th of December, a group of armed gunman opened fire in a broad daylight killing the Japanese physician, a devoted aid worker along with his four bodyguards and a driver. Dr. Nakamura who came as a health physician, realizing the need of the community which was suffering from drought, built a water canal in the east of Afghanistan to give the community the much-needed source of life, water. Dr. Nakamura was the head of Peace Japan Medical Services a Japanese NGO active in Afghanistan since the 1990s, Dr. Nakamura spent 30 years of his life serving people of Afghanistan.

For his great service, he had received honorary citizenship of Afghanistan. The Taliban Spokesman denied any involvement in the assassination of the Japanese doctor via his twitter: “Attack on Japanese national & head of PMS NGO in #Jalalabad city has no connection with the Mujahidin of IEA. NGOs operating in the reconstruction field have good relations with IEA & none are military targets for the Mujahidin.”

A couple of weeks before the assassination of Dr. Nakamura, a hand grenade was thrown in a vehicle used by UN staff killing several people, including a local staff and a foreign national working for the UN. The attacked was condemned by the United Nations Assistance Mission for Afghanistan. No group claimed responsibility for either of the attacks.

But on occasions, the Taliban have deliberately attacked NGOs. On May 8, the Counterpart International – an NGO funded by USAID – was attacked at the center of Kabul. The Taliban claimed the responsibility via the official twitter account of the Taliban Spokesman: “#Breaking US network named Counterpart involved in harmful western activities inside Afghanistan under attack by IEA Mujahidin in Shahri Naw of #Kabul city. Site currently under deadly attacks. Mentioned NGO was established by USAID organization. The Taliban further added that “Around 40-50 foreign advisors occupied the US network under attack mentoring Kabul admin workers in various aspects of brutality, oppression, terror, anti-Islamic ideology & promotion of western culture”. The Taliban have always been against the NGOs working on specific issues that they called the “promoting western culture”.

In the documentary by NHK world about Dr. Nakamura, he says “many foreigners come here, promise to respect the culture of Afghanistan but, they do not always do so but we keep our promises”. “Even if I die, we will continue, the work we have started won’t stop” promised Dr. Nakamura.

The Afghans who work with humanitarian agencies face severe problems in their daily lives, which almost goes unnoticed by the media. Last year an Afghan couple were working in the eastern province of Laghman with one of the few NGOs active there were threatening to abandon their duties. After not paying much attention to the warning letters they received from the Insurgents, Jan Mohammad (name changed) who worked as a local staff with the NGO was killed. His widow who was working as a local employee with the same NGO was fired due to the security threat she posed to the NGO. The NGO told her “we don’t want to put our staff and the compound in risk by keeping you,” the victim who preferred her identity to remain unidentified said.

A Swedish Committee operated clinic was raided and bombed by the US-Afghan forces in Wardak province on the 8th of July killing local staffs and a patient, who was suffering from Appendicitis. A local resident who goes by the name of Ahmad Shah said the government forces attacked and blamed the clinic for treating the Taliban fighters. “It is a health clinic providing services to the people in need, how the clinic could deny a dying person help based on which side he is? He added”

In the year 2019, there have been 133 Attacks on health workers or facilities impacting humanitarian access and health services. The number of aid workers killed  was 27, while another 31 were injured and 33 were abducted in 2019. The delivering of humanitarian assistance in a conflict zone comes with a heavy price to everyone involved as well as the people in need.

L'articolo The Precarious Lives of Aid Workers in Afghanistan proviene da InsideOver.

“NGOs are part of the business model of human traffickers.” So declared Hans-Georg Maaßen, head of the German domestic intelligence service between 2012 and 2018, that is the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. Fifty-six-year old Maaßen was born in Mönchengladbach, and was appointed head of the services taking over from the Social Democrat Heinz Fromm. He was dismissed in September 2018, following a meeting in Berlin between Chancellor Angela Merkel, the Minister of the Interior Horst Seehofer and Andrea Nahles, head of the Social Democratic Party, due to a verbal confrontation with Chancellor Merkel regarding anti-immigrant protests in Chemnitz, and Maaßen’s alleged sympathies towards Alternative for Germany (AfD). Recently, his name has come back into the spotlight in Italy, after he shared an article on Twitter taken from the blog Journalistenwatch, which states that events involving the rescue ship Sea Watch and Carola Rackete were a mise en scene put on by public TV broadcaster Ard, and therefore the German government, to the detriment of Italy. This thesis, Hans-Georg Maaßen, as he explains to us in the exclusive interview below, “cannot confirm,” but neither will he categorically deny.  

Dr Maaßen, do you think there could be someone in Europe who is using the issue of immigration to try and weaken Italy? 

I don’t think anybody in Europe wants to weaken Italy or the Italian government through the immigration issue. I think the topic touches a number of interests: traffickers who make lots of money by exploiting immigration to Europe, a lot more money than through drug trafficking; NGOs sometimes acting with a quasi-fanatical religious zeal, and other NGOs which make money out of it. As well as a number of individual European countries that are secretly pleased if Europe is destabilized.   

Do you think that the true role of NGOs is solely to save human lives?

Their main priority appears to be their quasi-fanatical religious zeal toward migration to Europe. The migrants themselves are not the priority for these dangerous fanatics; they are only the means by which they can prove to the world and to themselves their moral superiority. That said, there are certainly also NGOs that make a profit through their operations. If NGOs were really only interested in rescue missions at sea, they would not be transporting migrants to the coast of Europe when the safest and nearest ports following these “at sea rescue missions” are located along the North African coast in Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco. Countries where the Germans like to spend their holidays. 

Do you believe there is a connection between traffickers and the NGOs?

I cannot confirm that there exists a planned cooperation between NGOs and traffickers. Irrespective of this, they are a part of the traffickers’ business model in that they are taking on board migrants almost like a shuttle service in the middle of the open sea where they have been abandoned by the traffickers in unsafe boats.

But who finances the NGOs?

I assume the NGOs are prevalently financed by private donations. 

What should the Italian government do regarding immigration from North Africa and what do you think of the policies of the Minister of the Interior Matteo Salvini? Is “shutting down the ports” a solution?

My personal point of view is that immigration through the Mediterranean Sea should immediately be stopped. The first thing to do in order to reach this objective is prevent the boats from leaving the North African ports and coasts and to redirect any boats in the Mediterranean Sea carrying migrants back to North Africa or other non-European countries in order to strike a decisive blow to trafficking. Together we were successful in defeating piracy off the Horn of Africa by adopting strict measures. Now we must break the backbone of this trade in human being and put an end to human trafficking. 

In Europe, the majority of the population is against “opening the borders” to mass immigration. What is your position on the matter? 

I agree with the opinion expressed by the majority of the European population. I have always been in favour of the fight against mass immigration with all the necessary tools made available by our countries’ legal systems. 

Is it true, as some Italian newspapers have written, that Germany sedates migrants before sending them back to Italy?  

I know nothing of this. 

As former head of the German secret service, what do you believe are the greatest dangers threatening European countries? Are radical Islamism and terrorism still threats that should not be underestimated?  

Terrorism and Islamist extremism still are and always will be a great threat for Europe.  The biggest threat lies in the destabilization of the European democracies and a weakening of unity within the EU. Unfortunately, the migrant crisis also plays a role in this.

L'articolo NGO, Maaßen’s version, former head of German services: “They are fanatics” proviene da InsideOver.

Mytilene. On the island of Lesbo, the hotspot “Moria” located around ten kilometers north of Mytilene. The agreement for the control of refugees that was signed in March 2016 between Europe and Turkey transformed it into a center of detention under military custody, in the “Guatanamo of Lesbo” as exposed by the recent media debate on the subject. Today, the same media have access to the structure.

Here the refugees, around three-hundred, live in military installations made of steel poles, barbed wire and windows not much bigger than a cat-flap. There is no other choice: the only option is to wait for the Greek Internal Ministry to recognize them as refugees. The wait can range from nine to twelve months and during this period the residents must pass three inquiries before they can benefit from international protection. In Moria, families, groups and single individuals leave right at the first rays of light at sunrise: they show their document to the guard one at a time, then the bar is raised and they begin to cross the Mytilinis-Thermis, the main road that links the refugee camps to the centre of Mytilene. After a couple of hours of walking this swarm of aimless souls disperse into the city: there are those who go to fish between the piers of Akra Asfali, those who sunbathe or have a picnic on the beach of Tsamakia, those who lie on benches and those who ask for alms to the few tourists who populate the Old City.

Moria, Lesbo. Seen from outside the compound of the refugee camp.

They approach with little difficulty, happy to find ears that are willing to hear their stories. «I sorted everything before I left, directly from Algeria. Some of my friends came to Greece last year and they helped by sending me a contact. I called and then I left for Turkey […] There was about thirty-eight of us on the dinghy and we set off from Assos (Behramkale in Turkey, ndr)» . Samir Solo is 21 years old and lives as a squatter in the peripheries of the town. He is one of the many refugees who decided to escape the refugee camps to go and live – illegally – in an abandoned building or a disinhabited and run-down block of flats. This seems to be one of the scenarios for refugees arriving on the Greek islands: completing a long, dangerous, expensive and traumatizing journey, aboard make-shift dinghies to escape hell and then to simply find another, to which most however still prefer to escape from as well. «I couldn’t live in the refugee camp in Moria: it was a prizon. Even if I live illegally here at least I’m free» , continues to explain Samir while he fixes his camp-bed inside a ruined building near Asafali, which since October last year he calls “home”.

Mytilene. A first aid boat from the NGO ERCI during a patrol operation in the sea. From 2015 many non-governmental organisations received the mandate and the funds from Greece and from the EU to lend aid to arriving refugee boats. Today, there are hundred of these NGOs that work in the whole of Greece arguing over the areas of territory on which to operate.

The Greek government is about to officially declare the end of the state of emergency in the country and pause the international funding of the hundred of NGOs that work in Hellenic territory and who preside in the waters on the border of Turkey. One of the motivations that pushes a refugee to cross the Aegean sea is the awareness that they will be helped and recovered by one of the many boats that patrol the sea. Knowing that the operators and volunteers of ERCI, Refugee Rescue, International Rescue Committee and above all the police forces of the international company Frontex are all there for them gives them a positive outlook on the future. The maritime miles to cover are little, but human lives are always at risk. «We know that with all of the people who we help it is not always clear. With some, already after the first few questions about their age or origin, we have doubts. But when you find yourself with soaking wet and freezing children in your arms any political thoughts are forgotten and the humanity that we have inside of us takes over. During the last aid operation I didn’t have time to wear the emergency equipment and I grabbed a child with my hands. It was my paternal instinct to overcome the rules of engagement” says Cristian Dascalu the captain of Frontex’s Romanian vessel MIA1102, who’s team patrol the Greek-Turkey maritime border from sunset to sunrise.

Aegean sea, Greece On board the vessel “MIA1102” of the company Frontex during a patrol of the border.

The condition of the refugees rests upon a traumatising process that is at its worse when concerning the devious and dynamic methods of exile and funds for survival, but is also worsened by adverse situations that are difficult right in the country that is expected to save him. For example being in a refugee camp, the uncertainty of obtaining a residence permit, problems with adapting to a different culture, the difficulty of creating relationships with the local population and others. This vicious circle does not only affect the mental health of the individual but leads to a depressed response that will affect the person in their daily life and means that they cannot conquer their desired new life. In November of 2016 Professor Anagnostopoulos of the University of Athens wrote in the American Journal of Psychiatry that in Greece «thousands of migrants, who are the most traumatized refugees who flee from war or persecution, experience very stressful situations such as family separation, living in inadequate places, complications with legal procedures for immigration, cultural differences and other stimuli that move them away from their goal. […] They find themselves aligned to a society gravely hit by the crisis that is unable to respond sufficiently to their emergency and that does not offer economic opportunities or meet their expectations.» This key extract can help one understand why the refugees chose to stay inside the refugee camps even after obtaining recognition, as well as the international protection and a residence permit through which to find work and move towards other European countries.

Moria, Lesbo. A refugee in a refugee camp.

The prohibiting conditions of life in Moria – or in”Vial” in Chios – is certainly not the only threat to escape from, and certainly dressing in the clothes of a squatter is not an ideal situation for someone who is already fleeing. The refugees are even trapped beyond the world of the barbed wire, as they are plunged into the centre of a hostile world, economically arid and inhabited by citizens who are even struggling to live themselves. «The economic crisis is that of the refugees in Greece», continues Anagnostopoulos, «these are two overlapping and interlacing concepts that influence vulnerable individuals or groups. Unemployment, poverty, the insecurity of work and the growing social inequalities brought to the majority of the local Greek population that provoke deep psychological pain and suffering». The refugees are also affected by this and the vicious circle described just above continues to numb the whole situation.

Refugee camp Moria. Faktur. 38 years old, has a document that states his status as a refugee. Few have it. «I don’t want to go anywhere from here. What would I do out there? I’m alone, here I have all my friends».

«I don’t want to go from here. What would I do out there? I’m alone, here I have all my friends». Faktur Anwar is thirty-eight years old and comes from Pakistan. From December last year he could leave Moira and Greece, but he won’t. He is protecting the residency card in his hands as if it were a relic. He spends his days with friends from the tent on benches outside the refugee camp and on the beach, playing on their mobile phones which they charge with a solar powered battery. «I searched for a place to work. Everyday I asked if I could do something. They always told me to go, that there wasn’t any work. I have nothing else to do, I’m better off going for a swim».

L'articolo Greece, the conditions of the refugees proviene da InsideOver.

Red and orange jackets, the same type found under airplane seats or in ship cabins. These are life jackets, which can save your life in the case of an emergency. For many years, life jackets have been associated with asylum seeker emergencies; videos and images have immortalized the countless desperate people scattered in the ocean, needing to be saved by patrol boats, by firstly throwing out the life jackets. Take this scenario for example; during the apex of the Balkan war which defines the Aegean area.: the blue of the ocean and the orange of the life jackets worn by the migrants is one of the clearest images thought of when you speak of the immigration emergency in Greece.

This is where the symbolism of “life jackets” was born, in the Spring of 2017 by reporters Luigi Avantaggiato and Benedetto Sanfilippo. The two journalists spoke of the disembarking of the migrants on the Greek coastlines of Lesbos and Chios. In particular, the reporters went into detail on both sides of the migration phenomenon occurring in Greece: the refugees, their conditions and how they were living, and of a Greek population crushed by the financial crisis. There are those that watch the activities of non-profit organisations, which in fact often profit off the trafficking of migrants.

L'articolo Life Jackets proviene da InsideOver.

“Since two years ago, here in Chios, we slept with the door open. Nothing happened, because we know everyone. Today however almost everyone has alarm or insurance on their house: we are scared of what we can’t see and what we can’t control. In the last few months we have suffered violence and theft carried out by refugees who have not fled from any war. The island of Chios was a beautiful place to live or spend a holiday. Not anymore. This cruel game between Turkey and Europe has transformed our island into a filtering system for migrants and refugees.” This is not the voice of a mayor, an assessor or a politician: these words come from ordinary people, the couple Nanà and Giorgios Agios who live in the Old Town of Chios.

Every morning they open the shutters to let the light enter into the bedroom and to help them wake up. But the new day does not bring a smile to their faces: they say “Kaliméra” to the guards of the refugee camp of “Souda” which is right below their house, in the heart of the archaeological and monuments area of the city, where around 1,200 refugees live. The shelter is a very long line of containers from Unhcr that are hung in an area of about 6 kilometres squared leading into the harbour behind, where other tents and make-shift camps meet the pebbles and the water of the Aegean.

Refugee camp “Souda”, Chios, Island of Chios. The refugee camp was installed inside the archaeological and monument area of the Castle of Giustinaiani, built in the Byzantine era in the 4th century AD. The installation of the camp contributed in a determinate way to the crash of tourism on the island.

For the citizens of Chios enough is enough: they are tired of the local institutions who will not – or are not able to – resolve the problem and they are tired of the same refugees who continue to contribute to the problem and chaos that damages the social micro-economy of the island. Soul and Vial, in fact, were theaters of various tense situations (fires, raids and stabbing) exploding because of the diverse – perhaps far too many – ethnicities and religious communities that reside there. The most recent happened on 5th March 2007, when two rival clans clashed in Vial and threw stones and abuse at each other and fights broke out on the whole island.

Chios, house of the Agios family. Nanà helps her son with his homework; “This cruel game between Turkey and Europe has transformed our island into a filtering system for migrants and refugees.”

A few months ago in Sino it was difficult to discern unhappiness in the words of the Greeks. The huge refugee crisis back in 2015 displaced the entire Hellenic community, but feelings of help and support for the others had prevailed over the rest. Today however the situation could not be more different: in Greece and on the north eastern Aegean islands a confused and schizophrenic narrative seems to have taken place, caused by inconsistencies, a tale marked by intolerance, cultural isolation and xenophobia, and on the other side local community and single individuals who are taking responsibility in helping and supporting refugees alongside the NGOs. “I’ve never had problems in filling my room. We are family run, little is enough. Today however I put on the fire to prepare the place where I cook the fish only when I see customers come into the restaurant.” From the island of Lesbo Irene Filautis speaks of when her husband assisted the refugees who arrived on the banks of Agrilia Kratigou “with his own hands”, just a few kilometers south of Mytilene. While she complains about her situation, from her phone she shows the pictures of building blocks occupied by refugees and of the occasional dumpster that has been set on fire in the public park of the city.

Mytilene, Lesbo. Irene Filautis in her restaurant. “Today however I put on the fire to prepare the place where I cook the fish only when I see customers come into the restaurant.”

She is very courteous and welcoming, like all the Greeks however. And it is interesting to notice that the sentiments that are in the air are often very close to the disadvantage, to the resignation and loss of the other’s sense of self, it is right here where the most important values of culture and of western policies were born. The red light that caresses the coast of Molivos illuminates the pile, or better, the mountain of hundreds and thousands and millions of life jackets used by the migrants to cross from Turkey seems to confirm this finding, and sadly is telling of the migration problem in Greece that is so rooted in the country it is almost part of the landscape.

Eftalou, Molyvos, Lesbo. A tip outside the urban area that collects the millions of life jackets and wrecked boats used by migrants to make the crossing.

The flux of migrants and the installment of camps contributes largely to the tourism crash. In the study of January 2017 published by the Laboratory for Tourism Research and Studies of the Aegean University, curated by Professor Theodore Stavrinoudis from the Medesima University and Stanisla Ivanof from the University of Varna in Bulgaria on the effects of migration on the economy of tourism, the percentages show us that there were drops of 43% in incomes, 36% in revenues and 24% in market prices. Now the banks of the Aegean beaches don’t have umbrellas or sunbeds for tourists on them any more but instead act as a space for the carcasses of dead animals.

Eftalou beach, Molyvos, Lesbo. In 2016 along this beach a few corpses of dead refugees who died during their journey across the sea were found. Now it is a deserted beach. During a walk in search for signs of migration left on the shoreline, I came across this carcass of a dog, that had died some months earlier and had been left to rot.

“Every morning I look out of the window and I hope to not see migrants on the beach in front of my restaurant. We have been here for thirty years and we only have one season to work in, nothing else. For us it is difficult to keep going because the tourists are not interested in the situation. They want to sit here outside, relax and have a drink. They can’t see certain things.” The Eftalou Taverna is completely deserted as Manuel, the owner, explains how difficult it is for tourism to continue to go on in such a place “invaded by migrants. We are open only because here in Eftalou we know everyone and many come to see us.”

 Eftalou, Molyvos, Lesbo. Manuel is the owner of the Eftalou Tavern: “Every morning I look out of the window and I hope to not see migrants on the beach in front of my restaurant.”

These fleeting portraits of the Greek population describe a frozen situation that threatens the economic and social survival of the Hellenic community but that is in contrast to other reality present on the Aegean islands that works in the favour of the thousands of refugees present on the islands. In the words that belong to Eric Kempson, a sculptor of English origin but who moved to Lesbo and who for years has offered his own help as well as his wife Philippa’s help towards the migrants fleeing Turkey: “In February 2015 we started to help these people because they were arriving in a disastrous state, from war zones and with gun wounds. They landed right on the beach in front of us.” Eric and Philippa’s family respond with Ellenis Workshop, a creative laboratory that produces artistic manufacturing to be sold, with the proceeds then donated as aid to migrants. Every day Eric, Philippa and the volunteers visiting the workshop receive donations of all kinds and from all continents (clothes, medicine, first aid kits, thermal equipment etc) that they catalog and distribute to the masses in difficulty. This commitment is the voice of these lively groups that use art and creativity as exchange vehicles in favour of human dignity, breaking into what is the present and unstable scenario of the NGOs committed to Greece and the Mediterranean. “I always say that we are in need of an international organ to govern the humanitarian agencies and the NGOs, because many of these are just doing business.” The accusations made by Eric are harsh, but the enunciation of these words comes from years of work on the territory of Lesbo and from a knowledge of how the logistics of life guarding organised NGOs really works: “In October 2015 they said that on the island there were present around 120 non governmental organisations. I believe that 80% of these NGO are corrupt, solely aiming to make money from this catastrophe.”

L'articolo “80% of NGO’s profit from immigrants” proviene da InsideOver.