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37 year old Syrian Abdul Rahman Al Hamad has been on the Greek Island of Lesbos for one year. He left Syria because he “didn’t want to kill people in the war.” Adbul was conscripted into the army, but refused to join in what he says were “the mistakes” he witnessed – the rape and murder of innocent civilians. As punishment, for 14 days he was locked in a cell and tortured: “they put me in a cell alone, under the ground, everyday a strong man with a long beard beat me - everywhere in my body, and in my private area too, which has caused me so many problems, even now. They gave me food once a day.” Referring to an attempted rape he says “one night a soldier came and he wanted to do bad things to me. I fought him off.” Abdul has suffered severe trauma since. “The nightmares and the inability to sleep has become normal,” he says, “in my nightmares I see soldiers killing innocent people shooting them and cutting their throats… This dream comes back every night. I can’t sleep 15 minutes without having this dream.” Three times he has tried to kill himself. He sought help from Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders, a medical humanitarian organisation) who offered him medication. “Now I can sleep. Now I can eat. It helped,” he says. But the Post Traumatic Stress he is living with continues to plague him: “I don’t have any hope for my future, they destroyed everything. They destroyed my dreams.”Thousands of people looking for safety from countries such as Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan, Congo continue to risk their lives to reach Europe. Those who try to arrive via Turkey and the Aegean Sea have been trapped for an indefinite period of time on islands in Greece as part of the EU/Turkey deal and its deterrence and containment approach. In Lesvos (Lesbos), there are currently more than 7,500 people in a camp made for a maximum of 2500. With the camp so full refugees are now staying in an informal extension of the camp known as Olive Grove. The awful conditions at Moria camp/Olive Grove and arbitrary administrative situations have had a dramatic impact on their health and in particular their mental health. Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders, a medical humanitarian organisation) teams provide medical and mental health support out of the Moria camp and they run a clinic for severe mental health cases in Mytilene, the capital of the island. Photo Robin Hammond/Witness Change. Lesbos, Greece. 01 May 2018.

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