Stuck on Chios - Part 10

When a refugee boat arrived at the beach in front of her house one morning, Toula started to get involved and search for ways to help refugees on the Greek island Chios. She set up CESRT (Chios Eastern Shore Response Team), a collective of independent volunteers helping refugees and the local community.

Summer 2016: Golden grass dancing in the warm wind; beautiful Greek villages with narrow alleyways; soft, clear waves kissing the beaches on which broken rubber boats and dirty life vests are laying. Refugees, mainly from Syria and Afghanistan, are arriving whenever the weather conditions allow crossing the less than 10 km wide stretch of sea between Turkey and the Greek island Chios. The EU-Turkey deal has not changed much about incoming boats, but currently 2500 refugees are stuck there.
Chios is a Greek island, therefore part of the EU, but nobody there refers to it as “Europe”. Europe starts beyond the island. The problem is not anymore that refugees are crossing the Mediterranean in small boats; the problem is that, since the EU-Turkey deal on March 20th, both refugees and the vision of a European Union based on Human Rights are stuck in a nightmare.