Refugees in Omonia Square. Chris Jones & Sofiane Ait Chalalet. All Rights Reserved.Bilal is in his mid thirties. He is a refugee from a village close to Hebron in the West Bank. When we met him he had been in Greece for 3 weeks and in Athens for a few days. We met in Omonia Square which is one of the gathering places for refugees especially when they first arrive in Athens. For those refugees who don’t already have friends or contacts in the city this is one of the places to head for in search of information. The square is where refugees, especially men, gather during the day. (Women and children on the other hand can often be seen sitting together outside the cheap hotels where they stay.)
Refugees in Omonia Square
Bilal was looking for help in making an application for asylum in Greece. He liked Greece, he had no friends or family elsewhere in Europe so Greece suited him. He was travelling alone, but in the course of his clandestine journey to Athens, coming over in a small rubber boat from Turkey to Samos he had made some friends and they were now sharing a room. But they were like him and did not know much about street survival in Athens.
He was very stressed about not getting anywhere with his asylum application. Like other refugees he had left the detention centre on Samos with his white paper which gave him 30 days in which to leave Greece. He had assumed that in that 30 days he would be able to make his application. The days were running out and he had got nowhere. He was afraid that when his 30 days were over, he would be arrested and then locked up for up to 18 months. He wasn’t reassured that this was unlikely, given Syriza’s commitment to keep refugees out of detention. As far as Bilal was concerned it was a possibility. It frightened him.
