Monday, September 06, 2021

Greece faces criticism a year after migrant camp fires

Issued on: 06/09/2021 -
The two-day blaze forced families with young children to flee into the surrounding towns and villages 
ANGELOS TZORTZINIS AFP

Athens (AFP)

One year after fire ripped through the notorious Moria migrant camp on the Greek island of Lesbos, the authorities say they've tackled the critical overcrowding and brought order to the chaos.

Critics counter they achieved this through a policy of forcibly pushing back would-be refugees before they can claim asylum on Greek soil -- a charge the right-leaning government elected in 2019 denies.

While Athens says the country will "never again be the gateway to Europe", its policies highlight the deep divides within the EU over migration as fears are rising of a new wave following last months' fall of Kabul to the Taliban.

The previous migration crisis in 2015 saw Moria -- built just two years earlier to hold 3,000 people -- inundated as a huge wave of migrants began arriving on small boats from nearby Turkey.

As other European states responded by shutting their borders, the bottlenecks grew -- worst of all on Lesbos, which handled most of the arrivals from the Middle East, Africa and South Asia.

As numbers at Moria ballooned to 20,000, the camp became a byword for squalor and violence, where prostitution, sexual assault, disappearances of minors, drug trafficking and fights were rife.

Then late on September 8, the first of two fires broke out, as pandemic-stoked tensions soared.

- 'Framed' -

According to witnesses, a row broke out as 200 migrants refused to quarantine after either testing positive for Covid-19 or coming into contact with someone infected.

Greek Migration Minister Notis Mitarachi said then that the fires "began with the asylum seekers".

Raw anguish is etched on the faces of migrants forced to flee from the notorious and overcrowded Moria camp
 ANGELOS TZORTZINIS AFP

The six young Afghan men jailed for 5-10 years earlier this year for arson insist they were falsely accused for ethnic reasons.

Μustafa Hosseini -- whose brother Mahdi is one -- told AFP they had been framed because they were from the Hazara minority facing persecution in Afghanistan.

The only witness was a Pashtun -- the country's dominant group.

No one died in the two-day blaze. But it sparked a chaotic exodus of 12,000 asylum seekers.

Lesbos locals, who had seen more than 450,000 migrants pass through in a year, were enraged as towns, villages and fields were again flooded -- including by children, pregnant women and disabled people forced to sleep rough for days.

The Moria blaze sparked a chaotic exodus from the camp, with 12,000 migrants forced to sleep rough for days and sparking anger of local residents 
LOUISA GOULIAMAKI AFP

Against strong local opposition, authorities set up what was meant as a temporary camp on a former army range. That flooded last winter.

Mireille Girard, the UN refugee agency's representative in Greece, acknowledged that the site has been much improved since but "is not a lasting solution".

The EU committed 276 million euros ($328 million) for Greece to build reception facilities on the five Aegean islands -- Lesbos, Leros, Kos, Samos and Chios.

A new camp on Lesbos was due to be ready before winter but work hasn't begun. Meanwhile, authorities shut two projects providing housing to vulnerable migrants on the island.

- 'Winter in tents' -


"No one should have to spend the winter in tents," Girard said. "Tents after a fire, yes, but a year later?"

Greek authorities stress that Lesbos is significantly less crowded.

Hundreds of migrants were moved to the mainland after the inferno, with many more processed since.

Migration flows are also lower, the government says.

Migration Minister Mitarachi on Friday said Greece "is no longer and will never again become the gateway to Europe".

Also on Friday, Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Dunja Mijatovic condemned Greece over a new bill to regulate deportations and return of migrants, as well as curbs on civil society organisations that help them.

Such groups say the reduced migrant flow reflects the current government's more hardline approach to even legitimate refugees.

For the tens of thousands fleeing war and hunger and who made their first landing in Greece, the country soon became a prison as other European nations closed their borders ANGELOS TZORTZINIS AFP

"One year after the catastrophic fire in Moria camp and its consequences, Greece continues standing firmly against refugees and their rights," Human Rights 360 co-founder Epaminondas Farmakis told AFP.

© 2021 AFP


From Moria's ashes, a UN logbook shows Lesbos camp trauma

Issued on: 06/09/2021 -
Only after the Moria fire did nations take action to move hundreds of unaccompanied
 minors from the squalid and dangerous conditions of the Lesbos camp 
LOUISA GOULIAMAKI AFP

Athens (AFP)

Unaccompanied children at the Moria migrant camp on Greece's Lesbos island had to deal with rats, flooding and the threat of electrocution: all carefully documented by the staff caring for them.

Daily entries written by Greek employees of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) also referred to suspicions that some older camp residents were sexually abusing vulnerable minors.

AFP discovered the details in a logbook recovered from the ashes of the camp after it was completely destroyed on September 9, 2020 following a two-day blaze.

The logbook was found in the "safe zone", an area close to the then facility's main road, separated by barbed-wire from the rest of the camp.

This was where unaccompanied minors -- with a court order requiring they be kept safe -- lived, until they could be transferred to the mainland or a European country.

The United Nations' IOM was responsible for looking after them. By their own account, they were unable to do so adequately.

The IOM declined to comment on the logbook, but its authenticity was confirmed by cross-checking with IOM documents in the public domain, and by checking it with minors who stayed at Moria during the period covered by the logbook entries: November 2018 to May 2019.

At the time, according to the UNHCR -- the UN refugee organisation -- 406 of Moria's residents were minors who had crossed unaccompanied by their parents from the Turkish coast to the Aegean island.

- 'Danger of electrocution' -


The logs, written in Greek, make frequent reference to the children's self-inflicted harm, including substance abuse.

Entries also note suspicions that older residents of the camp were sexually abusing unaccompanied girls.

On December 25, 2018, a man approached the entrance of the safe zone and accused a girl of stealing money from him.

Moria, home to more than 12,000 migrants including hundreds of unaccompanies minors, was totally destroyed on September 9, 2020 after a two-day blaze 
ANGELOS TZORTZINIS AFP

He said he had given her money, the care worker notes, "in exchange for things that can't be described".

On November 18, 2018, the duty care worker writes: "Inside the box with the mandarin oranges we found a dead rat," noting a serious problem with rats and the danger of disease they posed to both residents and staff.

The same day, rain flooded the guardroom and one of the containers where the children lived.

"Serious danger of electrocution," notes the care worker.

A few days later, November 22, 2018, rain again flooded some of the containers.

The care worker on duty suggests the children in one of those affected should move to other containers until the weather gets better.

"Danger of electrocution," he writes, underlining his warning with the pen.

The log also records frequent power cuts.

- Killed in the 'safe zone' -


"All night long, S. and H. stayed with us in IOM's room," one care worker writes in the December 1, 2018 entry -- a reference to a teenage girl and her baby, whose names have been removed to protect their identities.

"The baby was cold and crying and it must be a little sick.

"The army doctor to whom we brought it said that he does not have expertise on babies and that someone should see it tomorrow."

Because electricity is down, the workers were unable to keep the baby warm.

Unaccompanied minors are considered the most vulnerable category of persons among those fleeing war or poverty.

After the fire that destroyed Moria, EU countries rushed to take in the unaccompanied minors who until then had been stranded there.

Social workers working today with some of the boys transferred to Hamburg, northern Germany, told AFP that to recover from the trauma of their time in the camp would take months or years -- if ever.

Three months after the last entry in the logbook, on August 25, 2019, a 15-year-old boy from Afghanistan was stabbed to death in that same "safe zone".

The boy, who was on the island with his two brothers, was waiting to be transferred to Austria, where the boys should have been reunited with their parents.

© 2021 AFP

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