After fire guts Europe’s biggest migrant camp, Greece erects tents, other countries offer little help
By Chico Harlan and Elinda Labropoulou,
Angelos Tzortzinis AFP/Getty Images
One week after a fire razed Europe’s largest migrant camp, on the Greek island of Lesbos, few countries have offered to take in any of the 12,500 people who became homeless, and while the Greek government has quickly erected a makeshift tent camp, migrants and aid workers fear it will fall into the same squalid conditions that have symbolized the continent’s failures.
The new camp sits on a converted military practice range. It consists of hundreds of white tents, arranged in rows in the dirt. People moving in must submit to an immediate coronavirus lockdown.
“Your temporary accommodation center is ready. Kindly proceed immediately,” Greek officials wrote in a letter distributed to the migrants who have been sleeping on the side of roads or in supermarket parking lots since the Sept. 9 fire.
[Fire destroys Europe’s largest migrant camp, which had been under coronavirus lockdown]
Fatima Rezaie, 15, from Afghanistan, said her family decided to register at the new camp after seven days outdoors with little food. By the end of that period, she found worms crawling through her hair and told her father, crying, that she was ready for anything but homelessness.
She said the new camp is “better” than its predecessor, known as Moria, in part because few people have moved in yet. But the toilets, she said, were already dirty. And because there was no running water — Greek officials say they are trying to get it online within days — she hadn’t showered since the fire.
Petros Giannakouris
AP
The Greek government has erected a temporary tent camp on a converted military practice range.
Elias Marcou
Reuters
Plainclothes police officers escort four migrants suspected of playing a role in the Moria fire.
Authorities say a small number of residents who were protesting restriction related to the novel coronavirus set the fire at Moria. The camp had been under a mass quarantine since 35 migrants tested positive for the virus. Four people have been charged with arson, the Associated Press reported Wednesday.
In the meantime, authorities have lost track of some of those with previously confirmed cases of the virus. And of the first 1,000 people screened to enter the new tent camp, 39 tested positive, according to Panagiotis Arkoumaneas, the president of the board of directors of Greece’s national public health organization.
All migrants who show up at the new camp are being screened for the virus — in contrast with Moria, where health authorities had tested only a portion of the population.
So far, 1,200 people have agreed to move in, according to official figures. Greek officials warn that asylum seekers must register at the camp to continue with their hearings for legal status. On Tuesday, migration minister Notis Mitarachi said in a TV interview that “police will have to be used” if people do not go willingly to the new camp.
Greek officials say the tents are an interim solution. They have also drawn up plans for a permanent, indoor facility on the island.
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said there was “absolute certainty” a new, permanent facility would be built. “I want to send this message in all directions,” he said.
[Migrants wait in bread lines, while tourists dine on grilled octopus in Greece]
But locals are already protesting. Five years ago, at the height of the migrant crisis, many on Lesbos responded warmly to the surge of people arriving by boat. But locals have come to resent the authorities in Athens and Europe who allowed the migrant population on their island to mushroom in size, and they fiercely oppose the construction of any long-term facility.
Angelos Tzortzinis
AFP/Getty Images
Authorities are trying to persuade the migrants living on the streets since the fire to move into the new camp.
Alkis Konstantinidis
Reuters
A man builds his own makeshift shelter. Some migrants are reluctant to submit to an indefinite lockdown inside the tent camp.
Aid workers on the island say migrants concerns include a fear that Greece will struggle to build a permanent facility and that the tent camp will become a long-term solution with the same sanitary problems.
“I doubt that the conditions in the new camp will be different,” said Natasha Strachini, a lawyer with Refugee Support Aegean who represents some 60 asylum seekers on the island.
Even in the best scenario, the tent camp will be in place into the winter, potentially exposing their occupants to the elements.
Greek officials said in interviews that the temporary camp will be humane — and they have pledged to make it more suitable for the coming winter.
But for many migrants, the idea of moving into a hastily built facility — and submitting to an indefinite lockdown — is daunting.
Alkis Konstantinidis
Reuters
So far, other European countries have signaled a willingness to accept only unaccompanied minors — a small portion of the population.
One migrant, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, said he thought the new camp would be “like a prison.”
Even before the coronavirus outbreak hit the Moria camp, tensions had been high. Migrants were often stuck at the camp for more than a year. The facility was more than four times over its capacity. People at the camp waited in hours-long lines for every meal. Children shivered through the winter, suffered scabies outbreaks and developed the deep chest coughs of old men.
When the first people started testing positive for the novel coronavirus, aid workers pointed out that the camp’s residents were practically defenseless, given the overcrowding.
The Greek government is averse to transferring migrants from Lesbos to the mainland, because officials say that could trigger a potentially volatile situation, encouraging migrants in other, smaller island camps to push for the same relocation.
For years, Greece and other Mediterranean countries have been forced to host a disproportionately large share of asylum seekers, with other European countries tightening their doors.
In the aftermath of the fire, Germany stands out for its pledge to accept 1,500 people on Greek islands who have already earned refugee status. But the vast majority of people in Moria were asylum seekers, not people classified as refugees. So far, other European countries have signaled a willingness to accept only unaccompanied minors — a small portion of the population.
Petros Giannakouris
AP
A migrant holding a baby runs to avoid a small fire in a field on Lesbos on Sept. 12.
Angelos Tzortzinis
AFP/Getty Images
A migrant boy is seen after police used tear gas during clashes on Lesbos on Sept. 12.
Of the 12,500 who had been in Moria, 4,000 were children. Nearly 4 in 5 people were from Afghanistan, a group that wins some form of legal protection in Greece in 70 percent of cases.
A complicating factor is that Europe has struggled to deport Afghans who lose their asylum cases. In 2019, across the European Union, some 30,000 Afghans were ordered to leave. But only 2,300 were actually returned.
Eva Cossé, a Greece-based researcher at Human Rights Watch, said that Europe’s plans so far to help Greece were insufficient, and she noted that the effort to host unaccompanied minors were in place before the fire.
“We’re talking about several hundred kids,” she said. “But what about the rest?”
