Welcome to Another Summer of The Greek Refugee Crisis

Jeff—Saturday

Ahh, summer time. I can hardly wait to make my way back to Greece and the Greek islands. I’m not alone in that desire.  Tourists for sure can’t wait, and tourism is booming in Greece.  But there’s another group drawn by the change of seasons to make their way to Greece. Refugees.

Their plight is the topic of my current book, An Aegean April, but this post is not about my book. It’s about the circumstances that inspired it, and have me gritting my teeth every time I read another news story on “the refugee crisis.”  One reporter or another carefully details internment conditions in Greece’s island detention centers, yet barely a thing is done to address the horrors they describe.

EU member states, which should do something, adhere instead to the now in vogue axiom of domestic politics:  keep refugees away from our borders at any cost.  Though some speak those words openly, far more sanctimoniously condemn the “crisis,” while doing little if anything toward remedying the situation in any meaningful way.

The North Aegean Greek islands closest to Turkey are the most directly affected, for they serve as unwilling refugee warehouses for whatever number of refugees Turkey chooses to release into Greece. No one knows better than those islanders that their nation (along with Spain and Italy) serves as the European Union’s refugee filter trap, and tempers are wearing thin as global geopolitics takes its toll upon centuries-old ways of life.

True, many refugees are taking a land route into Greece, and the current influx of refugees is not at the levels experienced in 2015, when nearly a million souls streamed into this nation of eleven million—600,000 onto Lesvos alone, a pastoral island of 86,000—but tens of thousands of men, women and children remain penned in overcrowded, underfunded, inhospitable detention centers awaiting determination of their claims for refuge in Europe.  

For certain there is no easy answer.  Open borders is not an option, but nor should the turning away of those truly facing persecution. What is needed is serious commitment to finding thoughtful solutions.  Obviously, Greece, being still in the midst of Great Depression times, cannot be expected to come up with the answers on its own, but as long as the EU is content to “manage” the situation with an “out of sight, out of mind” approach, it will be events not measured efforts, which will determine the future of the region.

What happens next is anyone’s guess, though in light of Greece’s rapidly deteriorating relations with Turkey, and Greek national elections due within a year, I think it’s safe to say don’t hold your breath for an amicable solution anytime soon. 

In an effort to give you a flavor of what’s actually happening on the ground in that part of Greece, I’ve pasted together two news stories. One from the May 2^nd edition of The National Herald (the most widely distributed Greek newspaper in the US), and a second that appeared on May 3^rd in Ekathimerini (Athens’ newspaper of record).

Taken together, they show how island Greeks and Greek politics may be on a collision course over the refugee situation—with ground zero where I set my book!

From The National Herald:

[Headline] Frontex Patrols Find Big Surge in Refugees Hitting Greece from Turkey

As Greek officials feared, the advent of warmer weather is seeing an uptick in the number of refugees and migrants coming from Turkey, by land and sea, the Executive Director of the European Union’s Frontex border patrol said.

Fabrice Leggeri told the German newspaper Bild that said arrivals of migrants from Turkey to Greece’s Aegean islands have increased by 17 percent in the past four to five weeks alone, most fleeing war and strife in Iran, Iraq and Syria.

He said Frontex would need to increase its border presence, which Greece has been asking for more than two years as the country is keeping more than 64,000 refugees and migrants in detention centers and camps, including some 15,000 on islands close to Turkey, which has allowed human traffickers to operate.

An EU swap deal with Turkey has seen only a relative handful of those deemed ineligible for asylum in Greece returned and growing tension and violence on the island camps in the wake of the suspended agreement.

The refugees and migrants head to Turkey in hopes of getting into the EU, usually through Greece, where the are stuck since other countries have closed their borders and reneged on promises to take some of the overload.

Prime Minister and Radical Left SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras, whose administration has been excoriated by human rights groups and activists for what they said were inhumane conditions in the centers and camps was to take some of his Cabinet ministers to visit one on the island of Lesbos on May 2.

On a pan-European level, only 40 percent of repatriation decisions are carried out,  said Leggeri, who added that despite the increase in migration flows that Frontext has the EU’s external borders “under control,” without explaining why so many are coming to Greece if that’s the case.

From Ekathimerini:

[Headline] Protests Greet Prime Minister on Lesvos

During his visit on Thursday to Lesvos, which was marred by clashes between demonstrators and riot police during protests over the government’s and the European Union’s migration policy, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras acknowledged that mistakes have been made with regard to the refugee crisis.

“Mistakes have been made and there are [infrastructure] shortages,” he said while also seeking to attribute the rallies which drew some 2,500 protesters to “those that aim to create a climate of terror.”

Speaking at the Regional Development Conference of the Northern Aegean, Tsipras took a swipe at the protesters for not attending the event to voice their concerns. “If they were here we would listen carefully but would ask them to make proposals,” he said, adding that those who did not come to the event “have no solutions to offer.”

“They chose the road of tension in an environment already burdened by three years of an international refugee crisis,” he said at the conference, which he said was aimed at boosting economic prospects and quality of life on the islands.

Strikes brought Lesvos to a grinding halt on Thursday in protest at the 2016 EU-Turkey agreement which stipulated that migrants and refugees arriving on the island will be deported back to Turkey unless they are granted asylum in Greece.

However, thousands have been stranded on the eastern Aegean island where they live in overcrowded and squalid conditions.

Hundreds of people, some waving black flags, chanted slogans in solidarity with migrants but were blocked by police from approaching government officials.

Earlier in the day, on a visit to neighboring Lemnos, Tsipras sought to send a message of Greek determination to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan amid a spike in bilateral tensions.

“Our primary duty is security and protecting our borders and territorial integrity,” he said. “Particularly today in a period of destabilization with a neighbor who often resorts to acts of provocation without realizing that they do not lead anywhere, only deadlock.”

Greece will continue to be “a stabilizing force” in the broader region, he said.

*****

Let us pray for all involved. And while we’re at it, add a prayer for less rhetoric and more concrete workable solutions.

—Jeff

Jeff’s Upcoming Events

Friday, May 18 @ 12:30 PM

CrimeFest

Bristol, UK

Moderating Panel titled, “Power, Corruption and Greed—Just Another Day at the Office,” with panelists Jeff Dowson, Thomas Enger, Abir Mukherjee, and Abi Silver.

Saturday, May 19 @ 2:50 PM

CrimeFest

Bristol, UK

Participating in Panel moderated by our Michael Sears titled, “Getting Personal—Private Lives of Characters,” with co-panelists Kjell Ola Dahl, Mari Hannah, and Priscilla Masters.

Dinant 1914

                                      

Dinant is unusual in the history of the Western Front in WWI as it was a scene of bloody military clashes and one of the first sites of civilian massacre.

On the 15^th August 1914, the 11^th company of the 33^rd infantry regiment received an order to repel German soldiers who were attempting to cross the bridge at Dinant. 

The German's had already taken the Citadel in a fierce and bloody fight. 

Lieutenant Charles de Gaulle went to the aid of the French soldiers retreating from the Citadel and, under fire, he was badly injured in his right leg. 

The powerful artillery of the French army opened fire and  under their cover, the Red Trousers regained control of the right bank of the Meuse and managed to retake the Citadel.

On Sunday the 23rd of August known as bloody Sunday the French were forced to pull back on to the left bank of the Meuse and the Germans took revenge.

They took 674 people and executed them - men, women and children. Another  400 residents of the town were deported to Kassel in Germany and kept their for 4 months. 

When night fell countless fires were started, over 1000 buildings more than two thirds of the town were reduced to ashes.

On the evening of  that Sunday ( August 23^rd) the few inhabitants who had remained in Dinant and and survived,  had to conceal themselves in a  town that had been completely destroyed. They hid in cellars or amongst the ruins. The rebuilding process, which started in 1918, took many, many years. For monuments of national importance the law permitted 2 options – shore up the ruins or reconstruct them identically. The citizens of Dinant chose the latter. 

The battle of those few days  took the lives of over 5000 people on both side, military and civilian.

A happy little place now- Saxophones everywhere

And the citadel overlooks the entire town

The view from the cable car shows the difficulty an attack.

And gives a lovely view of Dinant, the Meuse.

Peaceful gardens within the walls now

a Sculpture garden for the fallen

A tour of the dungeons

Madame Guillotine

  A nifty hand removal device

Dungeons!

An example of the Mastiff at war, bred for pulling cannons.

A sound and visual re enactment. Still scary.

A constant roll call of the dead.... with ages

A viewfinder shows the town as it was then...

and as it is now....

no happy end for old bores here....

As it was in WW1

This led onto a mocked up trench ...as they really were.

Dark, noisy, stinky,  very uneven underfoot. 

And puddles with authentic scents.

Some of  my fellow tourists had panic attacks.

                                                 The monument to the dead of a massacre
                    I think when the sun shines, the names light up on the floor in between.
But by the time we got there, rain was on its way. Later, we were walking through the campsite and came across one of the four cemeteries of Dinant.  It seemed that every  vault held a body marked with a date of death- 23rd August 1914.   Beside them, the next generation, and the next.

Caro Ramsay 04 05 2018

The Power of One

Michael - Thursday

NO! Not this one.

Stan and I have just finished what we very much hope are the final edits for our stand-alone thriller Dead of Night. No doubt you’ll be hearing more about the book here in due course, but for the moment I want to talk a little about the writing. This is mainly because my head is still too full of the book to talk coherently about anything else.

With this book we deliberately set out to do something different. We wanted the challenge, and we wanted to see if we could appeal to a wider audience by a change of scene and characters. So we (temporarily) shelved the Kubu series, and took on a new setting, a new protagonist, and a new writing style. Specifically, most of the book is set in South Africa with sections in Switzerland and Vietnam, and the protagonist is a woman, Crystal Nguyen, from Minnesota who was born in Vietnam and came to the US as a refugee with her parents after the Vietnam War. The feature that is common with the Kubu books is that it has a backstory relevant to modern southern Africa—in this case the poaching of rhinos and the smuggling of horns to Asia. And what can or should be done about it.

Yes, this one.

We found a lot of challenges. Could we write a female as the main character? Culturally, Crys is a Minnesotan—she grew up there—and Stan has lived there for most of his career, and I’ve visited often for extended periods. But some of her makeup is Vietnamese. That’s a culture we don’t know at all well. Could we pull that off? Oh, and did I mention that it’s written in first person? I should have mentioned it’s in first person.

From the word go we had two big problems. The one was understanding our new character—what motivated her, what her background was, how she came to be passionate about wildlife and journalism. It was a big enough issue that Stan wrote what started as a novella about her life in Minnesota and ended up as a novel in its own right. That was written in first person present. (Dead of Night is in past tense.) I’m sure you’ll learn more about that book here in the future, too. When we tried to both write her, we found it much harder than writing Kubu. Kubu appears from different perspectives in different scenes; he is consistent, but we don’t view the whole story from inside his head. It’s hard to fit two people into one head at the same time!

We realised right from the start, of course, that everything in the book has to be seen or heard about by Crys, and we realised that put constraints on how the story could be told and its style. You can’t write how anyone else feels or what he or she is thinking. Crys can only deduce that from body language and what they actually say. This was much harder than we expected, or even realised when we finished our first draft. One danger is writing third person in first person i.e. having Crys think about what we would want to narrate. She wouldn't do that. A bigger risk is that the story ends up without the emotional depth that third person narration can provide. The editor had to educate us to that, and we even toyed with rewriting the whole book in third person. (Briefly. Very briefly!)  In the end we added nearly twenty per cent to the book to address those aspects more deeply after a lot of editorial input.

In the end, we are really happy with the result. But, of course, in the final analysis, it is the readers who will decide how successful it actually is.

But I’m not sure we would want to try another first person novel, although we've learned a great deal. And learning is always fun and worthwhile, if somewhat painful on occasion. I’d certainly love to hear what other people think about the first person/third person dichotomy, and if you’ve tried writing both, which do you prefer and why? And which do you prefer reading?

In the meanwhile, back to the relative safety of the younger Kubu finding his feet in his first week in the Botswana CID...

____________________________________________

MICHAEL STANLEY EVENTS

           

We’ll be at CRIMEFEST in two weeks (May 17- 20 in Bristol) moderating panels and appearing on one with Charles and Caroline Todd. We’re greatly looking forward to that one in particular!

THURSDAY, 17 MAY

14:40 – 15.30 Panel: Climate Change: Cold Crimes and Hot Homicides

  Quentin Bates, Kjell Ola Dahl, Lilja Sigurðardóttir, Robert Wilson

  Participating Moderator: Stanley Trollip

FRIDAY, 18 MAY

16:00 – 16:50 Panel: Writing Pairs: Is Two a Crowd?

  Michael Stanley (Michael Sears & Stanley Trollip)

  Charles Todd (Charles & Caroline Todd)

  Moderator: Karen Robinson

SATURDAY, 19 MAY

14:50 – 15:40 Panel: Getting Personal – Private Lives of Characters

  Kjell Ola Dahl, Mari Hannah, Priscilla Masters, Jeffrey Siger

  Participating Moderator: Michael Sears

The mean sidewalks of London

Leye - Every other Wednesday

By Boeing720 - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

Couples who hold hands while strolling on the sidewalk. Tut, tut, tut, tut.

Here I am, walking and thinking, trying to come up with a witty dedication for my new crime thriller, and right in front of me, a criminal duo committing their great crime in full view: lovers holding hands, taking up the entire side-walk, travelling at the speed of their favourite love song.

Why do people do this? Why do they think this is ok? Have us humans not evolved beyond such criminal selfishness?

I’m left contemplating how best to deal with this abuse of societal norms. Do I cough? Do I brave the road to sidestep them? Do I ask them to ‘excuse me’? What do I do? I should not be here, stuck behind their love, unable to carry on with the frenzied pace of my life. I should not be watching their clasped fingers and hoping they’ll do the right thing and unclasp without me having to nudge to do so. But there I am, and there they are, ahead of me, holding hands, occupying the width of the side walk, and… Wait. What is this? Is that a swing I see? Hell no. No way. Now they’ve gone too far. Held hands I can bare – for a few seconds, but to swing it in my face? What effrontery!

I went for the slap-feet-hard-on-pavement routine. You know the one. Classically followed up with the ‘Oh, it’s ok’ look as they turn, see you, and quickly unclasp and form a line. A very British way of exchanging and handling micro aggression.

It’s not that I have something against people so in love they need to cling on to each other, it’s just that I have something against people who place their love above the need of other people to get from A to B at a very London speed. We walk fast. I suspect that like me, we all need to get to a toilet fast.

Handholding couples are not even the worst offenders when it comes to breaking sidewalk etiquettes. No. They are just as bad as the selfie-stickers, I’m-in-too-much-of-a-hurry jostlers, and phone map walker-checkers. And just a smidgen more annoying than the quick-shortcut-on-the-pavement bicyclist, but they are no way near as annoying as the worst offender.

The worst offenders when it comes to not using the sidewalk in an emotionally intelligent way are the parent with kids attached to both hands and spread out to take up the entire sidewalk. I think this parent should have their children taking from them. What are they teaching these kids about the way the world works? And why are they exposing such young children to so much danger? There are pyschoes out there who take sidewalk etiquettes seriously.

You’d expect that the dog walker would make my list, but nah, their dogs drag them off so fast you don’t get enough time to be upset at the length of the leash. They’re generally fine – until the canine decides to mark a spot and its electrolytes snake across the pavement ahead of you.  The dog poo bag is not enough; dog owners should carry a mop and bucket when they’re out walking their over pampered pets. Better still, the dogs should be trained not to pee in public. If I have to hold it in while stuck behind a hand holding couple, so do they.

Happy May Day and workers unite!

Wishing you a radical May Day for those of you with little anarchist hearts! Actually it's a day to celebrate all workers - and comes from the traditional spring holiday and dates from pagan times.

In France, it's celebrated with Muguet, lilies of the valley sold on many street corners and scents up the house.

The plant has long been considered a symbol of spring,  renewal and luck since the days of the Celts. However it really gained importance in France after King Charles IX of France was given a lily of the valley plant on the 1st May in 1561.  He was told it would bring him luck and being a superstitious person, he thought it would be a nice idea to give a lily of the valley plant every year on May 1st to the ladies of his court to bring more luck all round.

This became popular and a tradition for men to offer a lily of the valley bouquet to loved ones and sweethearts as a token of devotion and love.  The flowers were also made into buttonhole sprigs for boys to wear to parties in the olden days called “bals du muguet” where girls dressed in white were allowed to meet potential boyfriends without their parents being present to put a damper on things!  At the “bals de muguet” a sweet Moselle wine was served and it was said that to be happy all year one had only to drink the wine known as “May drink” on May 1st.

Cara - Tuesday en route to Paris