On a Greek Island, Refugees’ Hopes Are Put on Hold

“Why do the people here not recognize that we are human beings?”

This was the first question I was asked by a young Syrian I’ll call Khaled when I met him this summer at a refugee camp on the island of Samos, in Greece. Khaled is only twenty-five, yet he bears a shock of white in his hair and lines around his eyes, the result of the trauma and torture he underwent in Syria at the hands of ISIS.

I heard the same question from every other asylum seeker I met this summer on the island, where, as Europe and the United States once again tighten the noose around refugees, the camp is the most crowded it has ever been, local tolerance is wearing thin, police harassment is reaching a new high, and refugees’ hopes for their futures are spinning to a new low.

Samos, a northern Aegean island, is nestled up so close to Turkey that refugees from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, and further afield, from several war-torn countries in Africa, cross by boat every day to try to reach the safety of Greece. Once they leave Turkish waters, they are usually captured by either the Greek or European Coast Guard and taken to one of three island camps, the biggest one of which is on Lesbos and the second biggest on Samos.

Run by the Greek government, the Samos camp sits on a hillside just above the capital town of Vathy. Its population now exceeds its intended capacity four times over, even as summer temperatures can soar to 110 degrees, and water is cut off for at least eight hours a day.

A warren of concrete walls and hurricane fences topped with barbed wire, the camp is built on a former Army barracks designed to hold up to seven hundred people in transition, not the three thousand or so who have been living there now for months or even years. Every corner is crammed with light-gray metal shipping containers and crowds of tents. The air is permeated by the stench of clogged toilets, and the ground overrun by rats. As I was waiting to meet the official who was to