WSJ: Volunteers Flock to Greek Island to Fill Void in Migrant Crisis

Rushing In to Help 

Hundreds head to Lesbos to help, but tensions mount with overwhelmed officials and aid groups 

By Matina Stevis 

LESBOS, Greece— Gaia Giletta looked out at sea through a zoom-lens camera one day this fall and spotted a wooden boat sinking, its cargo of migrants floundering in stormy waters. Failing to reach the Greek coast guard, the Italian nurse called a team of Spanish volunteer lifeguards here.

Down the coast, Gerard Calans was among the volunteers who got Ms. Giletta’s alert and rushed out to sea to help, navigating past dead bodies. “Some of them were babies,” the 34-year-old from Barcelona said.

Michel Abdel Malek, a 29-year-old Dutch volunteer doctor, was on shore receiving survivors, and bodies. He couldn’t revive a little girl. “There was actually no way I could have given the kid a chance,” he said, dragging on a cigarette between lips dried white by sea winds. In the end, most of the more than 30 who drowned were children.

The Oct. 28 shipwreck off Lesbos—now the main migrant gateway into Europe—underscored the rising human toll of Europe’s biggest migration wave since World War II and the makeshift response here. With Greek officials and professional aid groups overwhelmed, a patchwork of volunteers has converged on the island to help fill the void—bringing both relief and a new set of tensions.

The incident has propelled hundreds more volunteers from Europe, the U.S. and elsewhere to come to Lesbos and help however they can. Financed by charities, personal savings and crowdfunding platforms, the helpers range from medical professionals to some who can offer no more than a hug. 

As thousands of migrants risk the perilous 8-mile sea crossing between Turkey and Lesbos each day, volunteers and official organizations are often at odds. Staff at the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and other groups complain of the amateurism of some do-gooders. Many volunteers, in turn, accuse government agencies and aid groups of a slow response.

“The UNHCR can’t (just) put up tents and go away,” said the 25-year-old Ms. Giletta, who has raised about €2,000 ($2,190) from family and friends to spend seven weeks here volunteering her nursing services. “They’re not present; they’re not coordinating.”

Few on either side here are confident that a well-coordinated aid effort will emerge in time to stem the death toll. Since January, some 436,000 refugees and other migrants have entered the European Union via Lesbos—half of all of those who have traveled by sea to Europe this year, according to U.N. figures. Over that time, some 200 people have drowned and more than 100 remain missing just in Greek waters of the Aegean Sea. The onset of winter is deterring few, and brings additional dangers. Fresh bodies wash up on Lesbos many mornings.

On a recent day at the Blue Sea hotel lobby, in the island’s main town of Mytilene, Alessandra Morelli, regional operations chief for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, was frantically drawing arrows on a map of Lesbos, marking the most common landing spots for migrant-smuggling boats along the Lesbos coastline. Bedraggled Syrians slept on the hotel steps. Hundreds of others, including infants, elderly and disabled people, were camped along the port just outside. A UNHCR staffer quietly sobbed in the corner, disturbed by the misery around her.

“This is the island where everyone cries,” the staffer said. “I just can’t believe this is Europe.”

Ms. Morelli acknowledged that the UNHCR had been slow to set up here. But, she said, it normally isn’t needed in developed countries such as Greece. “We were here but not in full force, because we were saying, ‘This is Europe; do we have to operate like in Dadaab?’” Ms. Morelli said, referring to the world’s biggest refugee camp, located in Kenya.

The U.N. refugee agency now has more than 30 staff on Lesbos and is assuming the fully fledged role it normally takes on in humanitarian emergencies in the developing world.

Ms. Morelli and others from major organizations say they think some less-qualified helpers are getting in the way—and that misdirected private efforts may even be putting the lives of both migrants and volunteers at risk. “Everyone recognizes [the volunteer efforts],” she said. But “now it’s time to bring professionals.”

On a recent sunny day, volunteers jostled on the beach as dinghies bobbed toward the shore. Helpers spread along the coastline waved and shouted to migrant-filled boats, competing to draw them to their area of the beach. English, Swedish, Hebrew and Spanish mixed with the migrants’ Arabic, Farsi and Urdu.

As a dinghy bearing more than 60 people landed, a scrum of volunteers hollered, the noise and confusion making babies aboard cry. An American woman waded into the sea, shouting: “I’m the baby-hugger, I’m the baby-hugger.” Others rushed to help children and women off the boat first and distribute thermal blankets.

Some less-than-expert sailors are venturing out to sea to perform rescues using flimsy dinghies recovered from the refugees and migrants who have arrived. Qualified lifesavers operating on the island, even some volunteer groups, say they are aghast.

“We had a situation where people from a volunteer group were in the water and we had to save the refugees and the volunteers,” said Albert Roma, another lifeguard with the Spain-based group, Proactiva Open Arms. His team of six Spanish and Argentine lifeguards deployed here voluntarily after the end of Spain’s summer tourism season. They brought two Jet Skis with them and are using donations to buy another rescue boat.

Many volunteers here say they are angry with the official groups’ attitude. They say they would welcome a professional organization that coordinated the hundreds of helpers who have come here out of good will on their own dime.

Greek authorities, who did participate in the Oct. 28 rescue operation, are overstretched. The island’s coast guard has only four vessels, two of which are too large for rescuing people in the water, say local officials and volunteers cooperating with them. The coast guard has saved thousands of people this year, but the coastline is too vast and the weather getting too bad for them to cover the seas without help.

EU officials say Greece is failing to tap all of the European money that it could get to pay for rescue efforts. Greek officials say the application process is too bureaucratic.

Meanwhile, private efforts are raising millions in days. Gofundme.com, a crowdfunding platform, said more than half a million dollars have been raised for the refugee and migrant crisis through 640 campaigns to date. Close to 50 individual campaigns for Lesbos are also active, with volunteers raising tens of thousands of dollars to fund their travel and stay on the island, medical equipment, and other supplies.

Mr. Malek, the Dutch doctor, is working with 30 medical professionals from the Netherlands under the Boat Refugee Foundation. He raised €10,443 ($11,393) from more than 100 donors through tilt.com and threw in some of his own savings. He has been writing daily updates to those who funded him, posting photos and explaining where the money is going.

The Nov. 13 terrorist attacks in Paris have brought anxiety to the exhausted volunteers working on Lesbos, following the revelation that at least two of the attackers entered Europe via Leros, another Greek island, posing as refugees. The revelation has sparked a visceral debate across Europe about whether the EU should crack down on the route to ensure no more militants use it to carry out attacks.

Ms. Giletta says some volunteers fear that policy and the public mood could soon turn against letting in genuine refugees. Perhaps some militants are exploiting the migration route, she says: “But you can’t blame an entire refugee population.”

Iris Adler, a 32-year-old Israeli doctor volunteering with the humanitarian aid group IsraAid, said that what saddened her most is that the loss of life is avoidable. “The refugees could have been on the legal ferry that costs them €20, and not €2,000 on smugglers’ boats, and they could come here healthy and warm,” she said sitting at To Kyma, a tiny seaside tavern that has become an operational center for volunteers along the island’s north coast.

“But unfortunately this is not in our hands,” she said. “We are here to do what is in our hands.” 

Source: www.wsj.com 

Dec. 10, 2015
http://www.wsj.com/articles/volunteers-flock-to-greek-island-to-fill-void-in-migrant-crisis-1449802501?tesla=y
PHOTO: PAULA BRONSTEIN FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL