The zine taking you inside Greece’s refugee kingdom

Alex King:

We’re standing on top of a crumbling concrete water tower, looking out over a cloud-covered valley in central Greece. Our guide is Borkin, a 16-year-old artist and photographer, who was forced to flee the violence in Syrian Kurdistan. He points out toward Ritsona camp – a small cluster of containers nestled among the trees below, 75km outside Athens, in the middle of nowhere. With a barbed-wire fence behind us, the limit of his world right now is not even as far as the eye can see.

After the EU shut its borders nearly two years ago, many camps were hastily constructed across Greece to house around 50,000 people who became stuck in the country, and then largely forgotten about. But young people from this camp have produced their own magazine, Ritsona Kingdom Journal, which features original writing, poetry, photography and artwork. It’s a bold statement of their diversity and creative talent – if only people would listen to what they have to say.