Nearly ten years after some asylum seekers were buried on a field in Kato Tritos, Greece, a group of volunteers turned the abandoned and overgrown field into a burial ground that was inaugurated on Wednesday.
MEMO reports that the volunteers spent months clearing the plot, uncovering and counting graves that had disappeared beneath tall grass over the years. They replaced the low mounds of earth in which the asylum seekers were buried with graves of cement and topped with white pebbles.
“Now I am happy, now this makes it much better,” said Sohrab Ahirzad, a volunteer from Afghanistan.
Fabiola Velasquez of Earth Medicine, a co-founder of the project said, “It touches me how difficult it could be for a human being to die tragically in a distant land far away from home.”
Lesbos was on the frontline of Europe’s refugee crisis in 2015. Syrians escaping the war and nationals of other countries landed on its beaches everyday. Its shoreline was dotted with bright orange life jackets.
Although it is just 4.4 km from the Turkish coast, hundreds of people drowned during the perilous journey on overcrowded boats.
Most of the deceased were first brought to Kato Tritos in 2015 after a local cemetery ran out of space and some never been identified.Some entire families were assumed to have perished in the sea.
One of them read “Unknown infant. Girl. 3 months. No 31.” Another read “Unknown boy, aged 7.”
Nearly 3,000 people are believed to have died or gone missing while trying to reach Greece since 2015, according to UNHCR. 799 died last year.
