Safe haven to “hug” the mountain of the gods, in the centers of Olympus Petra found Gezinti Kurds from northern Iraq and Syria, who were trapped in the Greece-Macedonia border, border closures.
Hundreds Gezinti, who escaped from Iraq and ISIS (the Daesh, as they call themselves), agreed to the transfer to the reception center (the Old Psychiatric Hospital Olympus Stone) and is now waiting for the next ‘step’ in their travel, application relocation or family reunification, which will bring them to a country in northern Europe.
This is an area at the foot of Olympus, who previously worked as a sanatorium and then to a mental hospital, which closed years ago due to the phenomenon of institutionalization of patients and with a view to their better integration into society.
“We came here to get away from the problems in Idomeni” said ANA-MPA young Tarek, from northern Iraq, explaining that shortly before they leave there, tensions were high. Declares’ safe and happy “that is Petra Olympus, but calls for” better services “and greater presence of volunteers and NGOs in order to provide more assistance to refugees.
“In Idomeni there were many quarrels and problems,” he says of his part, Hawass Khalaf, who declares himself happy to be free from the mud flats of the informal settlement in Greece-Macedonia border. He asks, however, to improve living conditions in the center of Petra Olympus, in particular as regards the provision of medical assistance.
As noted telegram ANA-MPA, in Petra reception center are military doctor and one nurse from the local echelon of the Red Cross, and since the beginning of the center’s operation is active there and the Non-Profit Organization CYCI (The Liberation of Christian and Yazidi Children of Iraq), whose members support the Gezinti Christians and Kurds, who accepted the ISIS hard hit in northern Iraq, the bloody events of 2014.
Altogether 965 Gezinti have found shelter in tents that have been set carefully the green surroundings of Petra Olympus mountain, which runs from April 11. Many of them have felt the brutality of ISIS on their skin when in August 2014 the jihadists marched from mount Singkal, killing all the men who found in their path and taking as hostages women, children and elderly.
Newsroom Athens 9.84 Source ANA-MPA