Time is running – and you are already 110 years old …

Laila Saleh: “I do not know if I have the time. Maybe I’ll die trying to visit her …. If it’s God’s will, I’ll see her. ”

But it’s not just in God’s hands.

The German and Greek authorities must do something to speed up the process. Because if they do not, their application will be processed until 2019. And then it will probably be too late for Laila.

“The process takes several months. Their application will be processed in January 2019. Maybe she will not live by then. We will try everything to speed up the process but it is not in our hands,” Fay Koutzoukou says, on behalf of the NGO Solidarity Now.

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The article by Sophia Ioannou, Head of Communications, concerning the living conditions at the Moria camp in Lesvos following the on-site visit along with Giorgos Moutafis, photojournalist. The article was published on the newspaper’s Christmas issue.

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Ioanna Fotiadi writes in Kathimerini newspaper & kathimerini.gr, for the Christmas issue: “The journey of 110-year-old Laila from Kobanî”.

The journalist on behalf of AFP visited the SolidarityNow home where the Syrian 110-year-old Laila Saleh is hosted along with her family. Her documents say she was born in the Kurdish city of Kobane in Syria in 1907; despite her age, Laila made the dangerous journey across the Aegean to the Greek island of Lesbos in an inflatable boat. Laila hopes to reach her granddaughter in Germany before she dies.

Ahmad, in his country Syria and in the Arab world, is among the well-known contemporary authors. Today is one of the SolidarityNow beneficiaries who lives in a house in Athens with his eldest son in the framework of the ESTIA emergency support program. In the link below (47’.02-49’.04) you can see Ahmad describing his life and Sophia Ioannou, Head of Communications, speaking about the hosting program ESTIA implemented by SolidarityNow and its results.

See the video here

The electronic magazine Vice, published  nine short videos (gifs) that were produced shortly prior the Christmas holidays and after the on-site visit of SolidarityNow representatives and the photojournalist George Moutafis. These short videos show in a brief but comprehensive way the inhuman living conditions of the refugees at Moria camp.

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While Recep Erdogan visits Greece as the first Turkish head of state in 65 years to do so, Turks who recently fled reflect on what compelled them to go. Marianna Karakoulaki and Dimitris Tosidis report from Thessaloniki.

Fear and uncertainty has been spreading in Turkey for years. Serhat, 24, a political activist and member of a progressive-leftist organization was an active participant in Istanbul’s leftist scene; now he lives and studies Greek literature in Thessaloniki and is an active member of a leftist student union.

“My story does not have to do with escaping the state per se — It’s more complex and the reasons are many,” he says.

Read more: Turkish President Erdogan’s Greece visit quickly turns descends into verbal sparring

In October 2015 Serhat was planning to go to a protest in Ankara but decided to stay in Istanbul as his father was ill that day. Hours later two explosions went off at the protest Serhat had meant to attend.

“Some people I knew from the progressive-leftist political space were among the dead. For me that day was the turning point. Political repression was evident,” Serhat says. “We could no longer organize and participate in political protests. They led us to silence ourselves. Friends of mine were imprisoned. Yet things became even worse after the coup [attempt],” he continues.

Serhat came to Greece where he had once lived. He was looking for a place where he would be free to be politically active.

Read more: Turkish academic to be tried for signing peace petition

“Turkey’s character has changed; the people’s political mindset has shifted. It’s not just [Turkish President] Erdogan and [his party] AKP, but the general wave of extreme conservatism — something that cannot be changed that easily,” he says.

A merciless witch-hunt

Dominika Spyratou of the Greek NGO SolidarityNow, which provides assistance to refugees, says that more than 1,000 Turkish citizens came to Greece seeking asylum after the July 2016 failed coup, while almost 300 Turkish families are now in Thessaloniki.

Read more: Turkey seeks arrest of 360 more military personnel in post-coup crackdown

Sabahattin and Erkan (not his real name) met at a detention facility for migrants in northern Greece but they now live in Thessaloniki.

They had both crossed the Greek-Turkish land border in May. Both supporters of cleric Fethullah Gulen— who Turkey claims was behind the coup attempt — felt they had no choice other than to flee the country.

Sabahattin was a filmmaker and director in Istanbul before he decided to leave. He was also an active member in the Gulen movement. Before he left Turkey he had been trying to reunite with his wife, a Swedish citizen.

“After the coup my passport was cancelled by the government, they later removed it from me and didn’t let me renew it. I was forced to come [to Greece] as I felt I was monitored,” he says.

Sabahattin believes that Erdogan behaves like a dictator, but that he will not stay in power for long, despite the backing of a large part of Turkish society. But until then, he fears what might happen to those like him who have supported the Gulen movement.

“We have heard of kidnappings, and we know people who were kidnapped by Turkish intelligence officers. We are afraid that the same will happen to us,” he says.

Fleeing from torture

Erkan worked as a geologist at the Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources in Ankara until, a month after the coup attempt, he was suddenly suspended. Sometime later he was arrested and accused of being one of the coup plotters and of killing the victims on that July night. In late December he was arrested. He refused to confess to the alleged crimes. The next day the authorities arrested his wife. Both were kept in jail for 10 days. Four months after his release, Erkan was again arrested. His wife went into hiding.

Read more: NATO officers from Turkey have turned into stateless asylum-seekers

“I was taken to a large sports hall, about 160 government officials were there. They tried to make me sign a confession, and they threatened that they would kill me if I didn’t,” Erkan told DW.

“I was handcuffed to a chair and my head was covered with a bag. They fired water from a firetruck’s hose at me and later placed huge blocks of ice on my lap. When they took a break, they asked me to sign the confession. I didn’t,” he says.

“They didn’t let us talk, they didn’t let us sleep on our backs, they didn’t let us sleep on the left side. Only on the right side. If during the night we turned sides a soldier would come and kick us. They gave us food that was inside blocks of ice, we had to melt the ice in order to eat.”

Erkan claims some people who had once held higher, political positions suffered worse abuse, and some were even raped.

Erkan was put under house arrest. A day before the authorities were due to bring an ankle monitor to track his movements, he took his wife — who had remained in hiding — and his two children and headed to the Greek border. The family climbed in a small boat and crossed the Evros River to Greece. The following day he surrendered to the Greek authorities for entering the country illegally and asked for international protection.

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Sorry, this entry is only available in Greek.

Mrs. Lyberaki, the organization’s General Manager, was interviewed by the journalists of the “Ntama Spathi” radio show on Athens 9,84;

The islands’ decongestion is a matter of humanism.

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Daar* was scared to tell anyone he was gay, let alone the foreign officials who held his future in their hands.

So when the 28-year-old Syrian from Damascus had his first interview for European asylum on the Aegean island of Lesvos, he kept mum, even though revealing his identity would have helped him start a new life away from the island’s squalid camps.

“I was afraid,” he told IRIN. “I didn’t know how to say that [I am gay], and didn’t want to talk about that with the official interpreter who was present during the interview. He is from the Arab community and I didn’t know how he would react.”

In his second interview, Daar decided to tell the asylum office he was gay, helping him gain asylum in a European country and leave the island.

What Daar may not have known at first is that under EU law, people who have been persecuted or face persecution in their home countries due to their sexual orientation and gender identity qualify for refugee status and potentially asylum.

But a weeks-long IRIN investigation has found that EU governments are often failing to even identify gay, bisexual, and transgender asylum seekers, much less afford them special protections that, as a vulnerable group, many desperately need.

Ignorance and fear

Joey*, a volunteer from the UK who came to Greece to help LGBTQI individuals through their immigration and asylum procedures, understands why many people share Daar’s original instinct to hold back.

The onus is on asylum seekers to raise issues of sexuality and gender in the interviews that are a required part of the asylum process, and only then can officials ask questions on the topic. In some countries, like Finland, France, or Sweden, questions around sexual orientation aren’t allowed at all as they’re considered a personal intrusion.

“Why would you, if you come from a country where you can’t really be open about who you are, why would you go to an official, policeman, or representative of the asylum service and say, ‘and by the way, I am lesbian or transgender’, or anything?” questioned Joey.

Katherine Reilly, an activist for LGBTQI rights who has advised asylum seekers on the interview process, agrees: “You have to carry on your shoulders two stigmas at the same time, and I understand why many people are not ready to deal with it,” she told IRIN.

Some people cross the hurdle of telling officials they are gay or transgender and claim asylum because of it, only to find their applications have been rejected. Last year Eliana, a trans woman from Lebanon, was rejected in Germany on the grounds that she crossed from Turkey to Greece as a man and therefore couldn’t be considered trans.

In 2014, the European Court of Justice concluded that asylum seekers couldn’t be asked to present proof of their sexual orientation “in a way that violates their privacy and dignity”.

But some asylum offices, in Hungary for example, still ask for proof that is humiliating and/or impossible to provide.