“The Moria refugee camp”
The Moria refugee camp, in Lesbos, Greece, is
located near the capital town of Mytilene. It is home to 9.000 asylum seekers
living in desperate sanitary conditions. Migrants live in groups up to 30
people, crammed into tents or metal containers and a lot of children and
adolescent have attempted suicide or serious self-harm, since they came to this
place. Approximately 3.000 minors live in the Moria camp, place of terrible
healthy conditions with a lot of rubbish, scattered everywhere, that makes the
air unbreathable and causes many health problems to people who live there.
Migrants come from war-torn countries like Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, but the
refusal on the part of European countries to take in asylum seekers arriving in
Greece, makes people imprisoned on the island, with no way out.
Moreover, physicians and psychologists say that
minors are targeted in the sexual violence and suffer from depression. MSF
organized a therapy session with children aged between 6 and 12, who had
attempted suicide or were suffering from depression or self-harming. One phase
of the therapy involved a storytelling activity in which kids tried to create a
story with drawings and words: the children began drawing war scenes or
shipwrecks. One of these drawings tell of trauma: stormy seas dotted with
terrified faces and lifeless bodies of children floating among the waves. The
only moments of normalcy Moria’s children get come to a small play area 200 m
from the camp, built by Salam Aldeen, where they can play with inflatable
castles or watch a cartoon on a large screen. It is the only place where they
can be just kids, without bombs, violence or rapes.
Irene Treccarichi, III H
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