Months ago Greece was on the newspapers for different reasons, images of huge queues in front of the ATMs with pensioners, workers and young people who were waiting for their money. It was an individual pain caused by country’s debt crisis. Now, the image is different because we can see pensioners, workers and young people from Syria who are sleeping over their bags in the corner of cafes or in a small tent in the middle of nowhere. More than 100.000 refugees and migrants have arrived in Greece in the last two months, the issue is spiking while this country is asphyxiated with austerity measures. Nowadays, it is not easy defend Europe, it’s more difficult to convince the citizens to be more Europeans or to say that we need more Europe to solve the problems, moreover, we must to be quite ashamed.
We proclaim our liberal values but the politicians’ lacks human perspective and vision for how to adopt an international refuge system that is feeling down. The refugees are not a burden, it’s a humanitarian responsibility. This crisis could have been managed, and we are not speaking about the roots causes of the war, we are speaking about how we could be able to distribute the refuges as possibilities of each country instead of this chaotic way of movements that triggered fear. We are not convince that the future is multicultural and try to avoid is impossible.
Concern refugees safety is not only about Greece, the main concern is global political. How can we organize ourselves to assume our international responsibilities and respect our international law and human rights?
Sara Pérez