Thousands still need shelter after fires
Authorities are trying to shelter thousands of refugees and migrants on the Greek island of Lesbos after fires destroyed the squalid and overcrowded Moria camp.
Soldiers yesterday set up new tents on a site near Moria’s blackened remnants. The tents were flown in by military helicopters to forestall protests by Lesbos’s permanent residents, who are angry at their island’s protracted use as a holding centre for thousands of people arriving from nearby Turkey.
Thousands of people who fled the camp prepared to sleep rough for a third night, under makeshift shelters beside the road to the island’s capital, Mytilene – in carparks, fields and even a cemetery.
Greek officials said the fires on Wednesday and Thursday were deliberately lit by a tiny number of camp residents angered by isolation orders issued to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, after 35 residents were found to be infected.
Earlier, thousands of the migrants and refugees held a brief protest demanding to be allowed to leave Lesbos. That would require severe bending of European Union rules, under which asylum seekers reaching Greece’s islands from Turkey must stay there until they are either granted refugee status or deported back to Turkey.
Authorities have said that none of the camp’s residents, except for 406 unaccompanied teenagers and children, will be allowed to leave the island. The unaccompanied minors were flown to the Greek mainland on Thursday.
Moria had been under a lockdown
until mid-September after the first virus case was identified, in a Somali man who had been granted asylum and left for Athens but later returned to the camp.
Yesterday, 200,000 rapid detection kits for the virus were flown to the island for an extensive testing drive that will include asylum seekers and residents.
Aid organisations have long warned about dire conditions in the camp, which had a capacity of just over 2750 but had more than 12,500 living in and around the facility before the fire.
‘‘Moria is a sharp reminder to all of us for what we need to change in Europe,’’ said European Commission Vice-President Margaritis Schinas, who also handles migration for the 27-nation bloc.
‘‘The clock has run out on how long Europe can live without a migration policy,’’ said Schinas, who was in Greece to discuss the Moria fire with Greek officials.
The EU’s executive commission plans to present a new ‘‘ pact for migration and asylum’’ on September 30.