An Open Letter from Moria Camp to Austrian Caritas
Moria Camp, Lesvos May 11th 2020
Dear Austrian Caritas,
we on behalf as two self organization of refugees in Moria Camp in Lesvos would first to thank you very much that you care about us and spend so much time and efforts to raise 1,5 Million Euros for support of the Hotspots on Greek islands. We are living in this hell here and we are greatful for everyone who cares about us.
But unforunately very few organization were here when Corona for the first time spread on Lesvos island and all of us were scared it could reach the camp. We tried to avoid this and did many activities by ourselves with the support of just a few, mainly local groups and organizations.
We see that now many NGOs are collecting money for Corona prevention, but we also wonder why we are neither contacted or called about our needs. We still have almost no water, very few showers and toilets and a lot of other burning issues.
We learned you distributed 40.000 rolls of toilet paper today in the camp, because as you said this is an urgent need and a “gap to be filled”.
We are completely astonished, because we cannot imagine any refugees has told you that. Because we don’t need toilet paper at all. 90% of residents of the camp are coming from countries where people use water instead of toilet paper! And even if, toilet paper would immediately clog the bad sewage system of the camp.
We collected some statements from the camp to prove that we do not make this issue up. Everyone we talked to today was astonished about ths donation. And it is not the only one, we receive many support items we never asked for these days, like winter clothes while summer started here.
We just have a simple request we said many times before: We are happy for help and solidarity, but please ask us before what we need, because we know, we have to live here every day and try to survive these times.
MORIA CORONA AWARENESS TEAM
MORIA WHITE HELMETS