For us here in Britain, the refugee crisis is a distant problem. Newspapers every day have another story about the crisis, another photograph of refugees arriving on the Greek islands from the Middle East. Although these stories and photographs are heartbreaking, and despite the fact that Cameron has been criticised for calling refugees in the camps in Calais a “bunch of migrants” (followed by Chris Bryant’s reminder that the majority of Parliament is in some way descended from immigrants), the refugee crisis is still to many something incomprehensible and frightening, but also far removed.
This is not so for the Greek islanders of Lesbos, Kos, Chios, Samos, Rhodes and Leros, who see thousands of refugees arriving every day and who have just been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize 2016. 39 refugees drowned off the west coast of Turkey on January 30th alone, leading a number of Greek footballers, players for AEL Larissa and Acharnaikos, to observe two minutes of silence before their game. For Greeks, the refugee crisis is on the front door. The inhabitants of these islands received 900,000 of the refugees who entered Europe last year. BBC Europe Editor Katya Adler stated recently that Europe will continue to receive around 2,000 refugees each day. Europe’s leaders continue to debate what should be done. The German Finance Minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, is proposing a plan to improve living conditions in refugee camps in an attempt to decrease the numbers of refugees seeking a new life in Europe. Europe remains, in Adler’s words, “in crisis mode over migration again.” Even in this fraught political climate, with the leaders of Europe in discussion over their next actions and Denmark imposing laws to strip refugees of their valuables, the Greek islanders continue to work on the front line.
An international group of academics has nominated the islanders for the award, and the national government has declared its support for those nominated. Matina Katsiveli, one of the founders of Solidarity Networks, the volunteer group which is expected to be nominated, said there is “reward enough in the smiles of people we help”. Photographs of people such as the Greek Army Sergeant Antonis Deligiorgis, who saved an Eritrean refugee from drowning in the sea at Rhodes, have circulated across the world. Yet we still do not see the effort of other islanders – the fishermen, for instance, who have given up their work and livelihoods to rescue people from the sea.
Academics from Oxford, Princeton, Harvard, Cornell and Copenhagen have therefore teamed up to nominate a people who have responded to the refugee crisis for the Nobel Peace Prize, despite the economic crisis they face, with compassion and speed. Whether giving up their homes to refugees or risking their own lives to help save others from the Aegean Sea, these islanders most certainly deserve the nomination, if not the Peace Prize itself.
A petition on the website Avaaz for the nomination of the islanders has garnered around 500,000 signatures already. According to the same petition, “On remote Greek islands grandmothers sung terrified little babies to sleep, spending months offering food, shelter, clothing and comfort to refugees who have risked their lives to flee war and terror.” Spyro Limneos, who works for Avaaz, said, “ The people involved in the solidarity networks organisation helped the desperate even when the government weren’t willing to recognise that there was a crisis. By opening their hearts, the islanders sent a powerful message that humanity is above races, above nation.” Surely this is reason enough for the islanders’ nomination?
The Nobel Peace Prize was established to recognise people seeking to find some humanity in a troubled world; in 1976, for example, Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan were nominated for their founding of the Community for Peace People, which tried to find reconciliation in a troubled Ireland, while last year the National Dialogue Quartet won the prize for its “decisive contribution to the building of a pluralistic democracy in Tunisia in the wake of the Jasmine Revolution of 2011.”
Honouring groups in this way shows the necessity of rewarding those who find it within themselves to work together for the sake of others, a remarkable and often unrecognised feat. Individuals are just as deserving, but nominating or awarding the prize to a group of people sends a different message, especially in today’s political crisis. It tells of the hope found when people, ordinary people, unite in a Europe divided over the refugee crisis.
