by Epaminondas Farmakis

Near the shores where Homer’s Odysseus was once washed up during his 20-year journey to reach his home, Ithaca, and his family, one witnesses not the white sails of victory, but an array of overloaded rubber rafts gradually creeping in, filled with colorful vests, which tightly hold the souls and the hopes of the refugees who look forward to a new, safer future in Europe. Indeed, at first sight, the crystal clear waters of the Mediterranean — part of a truly untouched landscape — attracting tourists from around the globe, very much resemble the paradise-like Europe they had dreamt of.
But as the overcrowded and barely inflated rafts reach the shore, paradise for the new arrivals slowly turns into an ugly reality, not much different than Dante’s Inferno. It is here, on the islands of the Northern Aegean and Dodecanese that two of EU’s major crises meet — an extreme influx of refugees according to the UNHCR more than 720,000 so far in 2015 compared to only 40,000 last year while more than 3,500 persons many children lost their lives trying to reach the supposedly open Europe fleeing their wiped-out homelands, and the financial struggle of Greece, which is on its knees and can hardly support its own citizens facing huge piles of debt and a high unemployment rate.

To read the whole article in Huffington post USA click here.