Front Burner - Tension and trauma for refugees in Greece

Episode Date: October 19, 2021

CBC’s Margaret Evans tells the stories of a coroner, a mufti and a fisherman all living through a border crisis in northern Greece — a country taking steps to keep refugees out.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Allie Janes, filling in for Jamie Poisson. filling in for Jamie Poisson. In the basement of a teaching hospital in Alexandropoli, Greece,

coroner Pavlos Pavlidis keeps a cupboard full of boxes that are lined with these brown paper envelopes. One case, but different personal belongings. Like this. Right. This is something from the Muslim people. You can hear him here talking to my colleague, CBC Europe correspondent Margaret Evans. So these items that Pavlidis has filed away in all of these envelopes, they're the belongings of migrants who tried to take the land route from Turkey into northern Greece and didn't make it. Another ring.

Another ring. Most of them died while they were trying to cross the treacherous Evros River. We found the bodies after many, many months. He died from hypothermia. In the water, only this ring is contact between the relatives and the body. If they recognize the ring, I take DNA from the bodies, Iidis and other people she met on a recent trip to northern Greece. Where advocates are expecting even more asylum seekers to arrive from Afghanistan because of the Taliban's takeover, even as the Greek government takes new steps to keep migrants out. Hi, Margaret. Thanks so much for being here.

Thanks for having me, Allie. So tell me more about this coroner, Pavlos Pavlidis, and the work that he does. Well, he's a real character. He's been a coroner working in that part of the world, in that part of Greece, for about 20 years now. His morgue is in the basement of a teaching hospital. He has this small little team down there. He looks world-weary. He looks like someone who spends a lot of time with the dead

and is completely at ease with that. You know, it's the parade of some of the great tragedies in life come across his coroner's table. When I say he's a character, he's down there, he's listening to jazz as these kind of terrible images are flicking across his computer screen. And he drinks iced coffee out of a pink straw and he chain smokes. And it seems very informal. I walked into one room by mistake and there was a body waiting to be examined.

And it feels informal, but you can't mistake that for indifference. This is a man who really cares about his job. He's a true professional. And he believes that he can help by trying to identify some of the people that, you know, lose their lives along this migrant trail from Turkey into Greece. And can you tell me a little bit more about this specific migrant route, this northern route from Turkey to Greece? When we think about people trying to get to Greece, we all remember 2015, 16, you know, hundreds of thousands of people arriving on boats to the islands. But this is the land border, and tracing that land border is the Everest River and the Everest Delta.

And so it's getting across that river that is really difficult for people, especially if they're not knowledgeable about the river and the water. And that's why it's hard to identify the bodies that he has because a lot of the time they've been in the water for weeks, if not months. Right. And we touch on a little bit of this in the intro, but what kinds of clues is Pavlidis working with to try to figure out who these people are? I mean, oftentimes he said, he told us that, you know, you get nothing, there's no paper, there's no ID. That's partly because of the river, but also sometimes you'll meet people who, on that trail, who say they tried to cross the border and were pushed back by Greek police

who took their passports or something like that, or they try again. So basically he has what he finds on their body that hasn't disintegrated, and he sifts through them. And there's something strange and intimate and gentle about it because, you know, each thing is in a little plastic bag, and he pulls it out and describes it to you, whether it's a ring or a bracelet. You know, he was looking for a bracelet that he said he once found

that said on it, you know, I believe. So it's very intimate because you know that you're getting an insight into a life that's been lost, but you know that these are the things that someone who did know that person might recognize, a wedding ring. Sometimes even somebody's carrying nail polish with them, sort of these signs of hope on the other side of getting somewhere where they might be able to apply that nail polish. on the other side of getting somewhere where they might be able to apply that nail polish. I mean, how often is he actually able to, you know, to identify these bodies, to, you know, connect the families with this person who died?

Not very often, sadly. But for him, the reason that they keep all of these, obviously, is in case they get a call from the Greek police in Athens, he takes DNA from all of the bodies. He tries to keep them as long as possible in a refrigeration unit, which is basically outside his office, humming away in the parking lot. And it's full. It was donated by the International Committee of the Red Cross.

He says he needs another one. He says he needs another one. So I want to ask you about another person you spoke to on your trip who's also trying to bring some dignity to the people who die on this journey. He's a Mufti that you met in the town of Sidiro. What can you tell me about him? of Sidiro. What can you tell me about him? Yeah, Sidiro is, it's a Turkish speaking Muslim minority village in Greece. They don't like to acknowledge that they have a Turkish minority, they wouldn't call it that. But in any case, Mehmet Sheriff Damadolu is the mufti of the village. And the problem of people dying and not having anybody to claim them has been

going on for decades. And he's someone who, there's a small migrant's graveyard up in the hills that he tends to and takes care of. Humans, when they're alive, they have a value, they have a dignity. This dignity doesn't disappear upon their death. When they don't have anybody claiming a body or they're not able to identify it or launch an investigation one way or the other, they have to bury them. So we went up to have a chat with him.

You know, when we got there, he had a young man sitting with him, and he said to us when we got out of the car, you know, you came looking for the dead, but you've found one living. Isn't that better? And, you know, this young man was a Syrian from Deir ez-Zor. He told us he was 18 and that his name was Mahmoud. He said he'd come across the border. This wasn't the first time, but he'd been pushed back and that he'd come this time with some friends and they'd been arrested and he'd kind of lost heart. He'd basically decided that he didn't want to go on

without his friends and he'd found the mosque in the village, and so the Mufti called the police. In Greece, you can be fined or arrested for helping migrants or asylum seekers. And so people are very wary about even being seen talking to them. And especially somebody from the minority community would be especially anxious not to appear to be assisting. So basically when we got there, they were waiting for the police to arrive. I mean, I remember thinking it's hard to help the dead because they've lost everything, their lives,

but all of their documents, of course. But it's also kind of hard to help the living too if you're trying to help someone. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization. Empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix.

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And so let's talk more about that because, I mean, broadly, it's become a lot harder for asylum seekers, for migrants from anywhere, it seems, to get into Greece now than it was a few years ago. Can you tell me what's changed? Well, I think there are a couple of things. I mean, there is a fatigue factor for locals as well, because it really was a heavy burden on Greece at the beginning. And there was a lot of outpouring and help and assistance offered by Greek people to the refugees as they came through. But there is also still this sense that Greece has been left on its own. The European Union had kind of a sharing plan so that EU member states would share the burden.

It's never really been followed through on. And the election of a conservative, a very conservative government in 2019, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, that's also made a difference. They've made keeping migrants out a big part of their platform. So they're building along this river. The Greek government has just finished building part of a wall that it started in 2012. And it's now about 40 kilometers long. And it's, you know, it's got infrared sensors, it's got cameras, they've got drones flying above the border, you know, so they're trying very hard to kind of fortify that border so that people can't get across. There have been lots of allegations by human rights groups, some backed up by the Council of Europe,

newspaper investigations talking about pushbacks, Greek border forces actively pushing back boats arriving by sea or pushing them back at the river on the land border. These are allegations consistently denied by the Greek government. Okay, and I do want to talk more about what Greece is doing on the water in a minute. But first, let's talk about what their government is calling closed and controlled holding centers. Can you tell me what they are and how they differ from a typical refugee camp in Greece?

Yeah, this is a plan not yet fully realized. They plan to open five, they call them controlled, closed holding centers on five different islands. And they've already opened one on the island of Samos. They call them kind of a one-stop shop facility where they could deal with asylum claims. You would have people who are waiting to be returned or deported back to their countries. They say that, you know, they'll have a market in it, that people won't have to go to villages, all this sort of thing, and that basically it will be a much more dignified place for refugees to live. You know, we all remember the images from the Moria refugee camp on Lesbos. It was, you know, overcrowded.

There were more than three times as many people there than it was originally built for. You know, open sewers, not hygienic, and eventually it burnt down. On the night of the 8th of September, Europe's largest refugee camp went up in flames. And so it's certainly, you know, this is certainly not Moria, this idea.

But the problem is that the freedom of access to come and to go and they would be kept away from population centers. And you're seeing that in the existing camps, that it is already harder for people to get in and out of the camp. And they say that we then can't, while we're waiting for our claims to be processed, we can't work, we can't function. And that sense of the walls are closing in a bit. So what do advocates that you've spoken to say about these new holding centers? Well, I mean, they welcome any attempt to kind of provide

more sanitary and less crowded living conditions for people. But they are worried about the closed nature of the camp. They don't know what it means when you say closed and controlled. And there's a lot of concern also about the psychological impact on people. And in particular, and also about the psychological impact on people. And in particular, Doctors Without Borders, Betsen Sans Frontieres, was worried about that issue. And they basically say they're very ill-disguised, you know, prison camps, detention centers,

whatever you want to call them. Right. You also spoke to a Greek fisherman named Alexandros Adelis, who's also been involved in another effort by the Greek government to try to keep migrants from coming in from Turkey. I feel for them. On the other hand, Greece cannot sustain them all. Europe has to take them. Yeah, he's a fisherman up along the Evros River and a very jolly, jovial fellow. And he kind of gave us a little tour of the area, but most of that area is a closed military zone

and has been for a long time anyway because of the difficult relations between Greece and Turkey. But anyway, the people up there say they're tired of that part of Greece, constantly just being thought about in terms of migrants and asylum seekers. And what he was talking to us about was the incident in 2020, when the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in a dispute with the European Union said, I basically invited all of the asylum seekers, migrants in Turkey to go to Europe via Greece. He was going to open the border with Greece.

President Erdogan wants the EU to take on more of a share of refugees. The number of those who've headed to Europe has reached hundreds of thousands. There will be more. Soon, this number will be in the millions. And so you saw this surge, I mean, he even provided buses, a surge of people heading towards the Greek border. I was reporting on the Turkish side at the time. And so we saw what was happening on the Turkish side, people kind of coming back, dripping wet, you know, some of them families.

People basically got caught between the Greek police on one side and the Turkish police on the other, you know, a push back, a push forward. And people told us they'd had their passports taken. They were, you know, a push back, a push forward. And people told us they'd had their passports taken, they were, you know, as I said, dripping wet, they had their shoes taken, sometimes their pants. So there was that huge trauma. And basically, Adelis is saying, he and others were called to arms, if you like, not real arms, but basically called upon, asked by the Greek government to help repel or guard the border, is how they would put it. That here was totally different. We had been positioned on the border to stop the invasion that Erdogan had organized. And so he was part of a flotilla. He insists they didn't take part in any physical pushbacks, but that they were there as a deterrent.

So, you know, he's a reflection of people on the Greek side who say, you know, we've had enough of this. And there is a lot of distrust, obviously historical distrust between Greece and Turkey. Right. I mean, on the note of Turkey, Greece has also recently changed its laws to make Turkey a safe third country for people coming from several countries. I think it's Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia, Pakistan, Bangladesh. I mean, this is the same kind of relationship that Canada has with the U.S. in terms of calling it a safe third country. And I know that you spoke to a man named Yunus Mohammadi about this. Can you tell me who he is and what he thinks of Greece declaring Turkey a safe third country? Yeah, he basically runs a very prominent refugee forum in Greece. He is himself an Afghan refugee,

and he's now a Greek citizen. He's been in Greece for, I think, nearly 20 years now. He, others say, basically, what the Greek government has done is given itself legal cover, given itself permission to turn genuine asylum seekers away and send them back to Turkey without having to examine their claims. The problem with that, according to legal experts on one side of the debate, is that you can't judge whether it's a safe country, you know, in a block like that. You basically should, they should still be obliged to hear individual claims. And Mohammadi basically told us that they'd heard stories that Turkey does want to and is in some cases creating holding centres

where they might send Afghan citizens in particular back to Afghanistan. The fear in the Afghan community is there'll be negotiations where they'll just be sent back. We know that even nowadays that there are some operations of sweeps in Turkey and they are collecting Afghans and moving them to a pre-removable centers waiting for negotiation with Taliban and another to deport them back. So from the point of humanitarian and from the point that we are advocating that Turkey is not safe for asylum seekers, of course. And it is really violating the rights of asylum seekers here. I'm wondering how the rest of the European Union is reacting to all of this.

How are the EU and its member states viewing what's happening in Greece right now? I think you see a lot of EU countries watching Greece and taking lessons from Greece, and especially when it comes to the wall that they're building between Turkey and Greece. You see other countries already building walls, Poland, Lithuania, because of what's happening along their borders, you know, with Belarus and the feeling there that the regime is deliberately trying to send people across into Poland. And we're hearing stories there about, you know, like Greece, it's a closed access zone. Humanitarian groups have trouble getting in.

Journalists are not allowed in. humanitarian groups have trouble getting in. Journalists are not allowed in. And so, and, you know, people who are advocating for the rights of refugees would say people are looking at Greece and they're taking the wrong lessons that basically, you know, that people are being abused or put in danger by their failure to kind of come up with a better way of dealing with the refugee crisis and a more humane way. But you do see Greece was sanctioned or asked by the European Commission a couple of weeks ago to look at these reports about pushback, saying we can't compromise our values. On the other hand, the European Union is helping to pay for some of these controlled holding centers. So there's a confused picture when it comes to how the European Union is dealing with asylum seekers and a real lack of uniformity.

People in Greece advocating for refugees would say that the European Union is very happy for Greece to take a tougher line and be this buffer country. What about the coroner, Pavlos Pavlidis, just to finally bring it back to him? I mean, does he think that any of these measures that the Greek government is taking right now are going to mean that, you know, he is identifying less bodies, you know, washing up on the shores of the Everest River. I think he said that, you know, he's over a 20-year career, he's dealt with 500 people who died trying to cross the river or get across that border, 36 at least this past year. He doesn't think that they're going to stop coming, and he certainly isn't going to stop trying to identify them, to offer some closure to families still wondering what happened to their loved ones if he can. I asked him, how do you deal with

this sadness that comes across your world every day? And he said, I'm a professional. It's my job. It's my responsibility to give an answer. It's not a good answer, but it's an answer. It's ethical for me to give the answer. It's not a good answer. It's not a good answer, but it's an answer. This is a satisfaction for me.

But first of all, it's my job. I'm professional. It's my job. Margaret, thank you so much, as ever, for coming on. It's always so great to have you. Thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it. So before we go today, an update from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's visit on Monday to the Tekemlips-Tshikwetmik First Nation. This was his first visit since the nation announced back in May that they'd identified about 200 potential unmarked graves near the former Kamloops Indian Residential School. Yesterday, along with a ceremony honoring survivors and victims,

Cook P. Roseanne Casimir called on Trudeau to make sure attendance records were shared and to provide support for a healing center. But Casimir also didn't let Trudeau off the hook for ignoring a previous invitation. The Nation had asked if the PM would join them on the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation last month, but they didn't receive a response. So yesterday, while sitting directly next to Trudeau, Casimir expressed her disappointment. Instead, in the middle of truth-telling, cultural grounding and sharing that unfolded as part of the commemoration of the very first National Day of Truth and Reconciliation in this arbor a

journalist quietly informed us that the Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was on vacation in Tofino the shock anger and sorrow and disbelief was palpable in our community, and it rippled throughout the world, to say the least. Today is about making some positive steps forward and rectifying a mistake. In video of the moment, you can see Trudeau looking ahead and spinning a pen in his hands. He later apologized for not responding to the invitation. That's all for today. I'm Allie Janes. Thanks for listening to FrontBurner. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.