Lesbos fires bring crisis to the boil
Fire struck again yesterday in Greece’s notoriously overcrowded refugee camp on the island of Lesbos, a day after a blaze swept through it and left thousands in need of emergency shelter. The fires caused no injuries, but renewed criticism of Europe’s migration policy.
The fires broke out inside the parts of Moria camp that had not burned in the first blaze, sending people streaming from the camp with their belongings.
Later, about 4000 migrants who had left the camp for the island’s main port of Mytilini to board ships for the mainland threw stones at police blocking the road, and officers responded with tear gas. Police said migrants also lit fires in fields near the site of the clashes.
Moria had been under a coronavirus lockdown when the first fire gutted a large section of it, and health officials said some of those who had tested positive for the virus had fled.
Civil protection authorities declared a four-month state of emergency for public health reasons on Lesbos.
Officials said the original fire was started by camp residents angered by the lockdown measures and isolation orders imposed after 35 people tested positive for Covid-19.
Aid agencies have long warned of dire conditions at Moria, where more than 12,500 people live in and around a facility built to house just over 2750. The camp – housing those fleeing violence and poverty in the Middle East, Africa and Afghanistan – has become a symbol of what critics say is Europe’s failure to humanely handle the migration and refugee situation.
Migration Minister Notis Mitarachi said the first blaze left about 3500 camp residents homeless. It destroyed administration buildings and a health facility, but only one section of the living quarters. Those left homeless will be housed in tents flown to the island, and aboard a ferry and two navy ships.
About 400 unaccompanied children and teenagers living in the camp were being flown to other facilities in northern Greece.
Aid organisations and rights groups renewed their criticism of Europe’s migration policy, which they said led to situations like the dramatic conditions of Moria.
Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Dunja Mijatovic noted similarly overcrowded conditions on other Greek islands and said the situation could degenerate there as well.
The fire showed the urgency of rethinking Europe’s approach to migration, ‘‘which has led to the overcrowded, inhumane and completely unsustainable situation in Moria and elsewhere on the Aegean islands’’, Mijatovic said.
Under a 2016 deal between the European Union and Turkey designed to stem the flow of hundreds of thousands of migrants and refugees, those arriving on Greek islands like Lesbos from the nearby Turkish coast are held there pending either deportation back to Turkey or the acceptance of their asylum claims. – AP