A BLAENAU Ffestiniog grandmother has revisited Greece’s islands to see for herself the conditions many refugees face.

Caron Dukes, who works for the Cambrian News as an advertising sales representative, has travelled back to the islands of Leros and Samos with S4C’s current affairs programme, Y Byd ar Bedwar, two years after volunteering there when thousands of refugees were fleeing across the sea from Turkey.

But the situation, she says, is no better now.

“They’ve turned Greece into a massive refugee camp and it just isn’t fair,” said Caron.

There are over 10,000 refugees currently trapped on the Greek islands - many held for months and some for more than a year - in what are supposed to be temporary reception and identification centres for those who land on Greek shores. However, many refugees refer to them as “prisons” and are concerned about conditions there.

One of those is Majida Ali, a 40-year-old journalist from Syria. She says that she fled Damascus after being persecuted by the Assad regime, and arrived on the island of Samos in April this year.

“I left prison, but I arrived in another prison,” she says. “The same uniforms, the same shouting, the same faces. No humanity, no respect, nothing.”

The refugee camp in Samos is severely overcrowded, and many refugees have to live in tents outside the camp’s boundaries, some with nothing more than blankets as a makeshift shelter.

Officially, the camp has enough space to accommodate 735 refugees, but there are currently over two thousand on the island.

Y Byd ar Bedwar will air on Tuesday at 9.30pm on S4C