I am here since two weeks and two days. We were the first people that came here. We came here on the 19th, before the deal with Turkey. But we were 46 people who came here and to 42 they gave the registration paper to go to the city. But us four people, they left us out here and we were asking them why did they left us here and all of them don’t talked to us. Because we are black, that’s why. If we call them to talk to them, they don’t talk to us, they keep on doing that, for three days or four days. I saw a lady, she was asking questions to them about our story, then she was trying to help us. I don’t know if the police later caught her. Since that day we have never seen her no more. If we try to talk to the police, nobody wants to talk to us, we don’t know if it is because of our color or something like that.
And since yesterday, they closed here and we can’t go out and they are treating us like we are not human beings. Even today they wanted to give us food at two o´clock but we didn’t get it until four o´clock. They don’t care about us. Then if there is fighting among the people in front of the police, they let us, don’t come. The people are scared. If they really want us to stay here they should send us back to our country. Because if they take us back they take us back to Turkey and this is not a good thing. Because Turkey is not a good country, they don’t like blacks. If you are a black person in the streets, they just come to you with a gun.
When I lived there, in Turkey, I was fighting with one in my room. He came to my house with a knife and told me, if I don’t give him my money he will kill me. I gave him my money. Then the next day he came again and took all of our clothes and my passport. Here it is not good for us. We don’t know whether it is because of our color.
This bracelet that they gave us when we arrived is the proof that we came before the 19th. But we told it to the police. They said they know about it but they said they can’t do anything. The manager of the asylum here told us we have to apply for asylum in Greece so we applied and now we are waiting what will happen. Because of the asylum process, two of our friends ran away. They were scared and said they didn’t understand why they keep us here.
Foto: Ufuk Atasoy