UK aid worker in Greece pleads for burial of bodies of Syrian refugees

UK lawyer Yasin Din, who is working with a humanitarian aid convoy on the Greek island of Mytilene to help refugees, has appealed to the international community to pressure Greek authorities to provide a suitable place for the burial of Syrian refugees who did not survive the sea journey between Turkey and Greece.

In a video posted on YouTube, Din states that there is an estimated seventy bodies currently held in a morgue. Greek authorities, he says, claim that there is no land in which these bodies can be buried and are hence refusing to release the bodies.

Din says in the video: “It’s very, very important for anybody to have closure in their life to be able to bury those that they have loved.”

Moustafa, a Greek resident of Egyptian origin, who also appeared in the video, said: “The minimum thing that we can give to them – as humanity, as mankind, as the world, as governments, as individuals, and as people – is to preserve their dignity and bury them.”

He also voiced his frustration with the unresponsiveness of the Greek authorities, saying: “For the past month, every day we talk to the Government, we say give us coffins, we’ll buy them with our money, we’ll donate, we’ll buy a place to bury our dead. But our calls fall on deaf ears.”