The refugee camp in Lesvos is notorious. Instead of like 3000 life planned almost 9000 people. A quarter of the children in the camp is suicidal, warns Florian Westphal of the “Doctors without borders”.
Deutsche Welle: you have warned that a quarter of children think in Moria about suicide. What makes the children the most?
Florian Westphal: are two different things. Most of these children are fleeing from war zones – from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Republic of the Congo. Then you have experienced a number of occasions bad things on the run. And in the end, it is these catastrophic conditions of life in Moria. The Camp is completely full.
You have to think that there is sometimes a mother with two, three children for months in a very small tent houses. The people are completely insufficiently supplied medically. Very bad, especially for the children is that they are often not protected at all. At night, the Camp is more or less a law-free Zone. It always comes back to violent attacks, rape, sexual abuse of children.
Florian Westphal, managing Director of the German section of “Doctors without borders”
DW: How old are the children, of which we speak?
Florian Westphal: In our group therapies for children are mixed, especially from six to 18 years, girls and boys. Many of these children have either tried suicide or are thinking about or have hurt yourself. I saw that you cut yourself with razor blades, the arms, and the like. It is mainly Teenagers that relates to it. The colleagues on-the-spot reports that last week alone, four Teenagers had come, and had tried to kill himself, or at least seriously thought about the fact, or the hurt.
Last week an Iraqi woman came. She reported that her daughter, who has so much fear that they will be running in the Camp, only armed with a knife and with the knife under the pillow sleeps. She is compared to her mother and her older sister more and more aggressive, crying but the whole time in between. The girl is practically hardly responsive.
DW: Why are no security services in the Camps? EU migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos said Yes some time ago: money is not a Problem. Greece received sufficient financial support.
Florian Westphal: That’s a good question. It is completely inexplicable that it may be possible to force people to live in this camp to provide for adequate security. For some women, and children, there is a protected area. However, the confidence in the private security service is not great and there is not enough space for all. Many women and children report that they would not trust at night just to go to the toilet. A toilet is used by 60 to 70 people.
Catastrophic conditions in the camp of Moria in Lesbos
DW: How are treated the children and young people?
Florian Westphal: What we can offer under these circumstances, in our clinic, before the gates of Moria, a first call offer group therapy. There we give the children and young people the opportunity to Express themselves by painting pictures and not only describe their own destiny. It gives you the opportunity to project the experience on a fictitious personality because it’s easier to talk about it.
But of course this is not a “trained” medical treatment of people who are really ill. We can’t afford to be there. We have appealed it clear that the children and especially vulnerable persons, in particular victims of torture, as quickly as possible away from Moria. The protection and medical care of these people must be in the foreground.
Florian Westphal is the managing Director of the German section of “Doctors without borders”. The non-governmental organization operates at the refugee camp of Moria in Lesbos, a children’s hospital.