Fire Destroys Greek Refugee Camp
At least three fires spread through Europe’s largest refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos earlier this month, displacing more than 12,000 migrants. Flames destroyed 80 percent of the Moria Reception and Identification Centre, designed to house no more than 3,000 residents. Thankfully, no people died during the incident.
Refugees, most of whom originate from Afghanistan, face unstable living conditions in these facilities. Many either sleep in the open air or seek shelter in nearby towns whose residents often respond negatively to their presence. With little available space in the region to house the displaced refugees, Greece has appealed to other European countries for help. Germany and France both agreed to accept refugees from Lesbos. According to the European Commission, though Greece received 75,000 asylum applications in 2019, in actuality the country has played host to thousands more undocument arrivals because of its proximity to Turkey and Syria. EU policy dictates that new arrivals stay in their country of first arrival while officials process applications, however, this makes it difficult for Greece to redistribute migrants out of its overcrowded camps in the Aegean Sea.
Accounts differ as to the cause of the fires in the Lesbos camp. Greek authorities accused protesting migrants of starting the fires in response to recently introduced health measures at the facility. 35 Moria residents had tested positive for COVID-19 a week before the fires began, prompting officials to place the camp into lockdown. Notis Mitarachi, Greece’s Minister of Migration and Asylum, stated that “incidents in Moria began with the asylum seekers because of the quarantine imposed.” International aid groups, however, warned of unsanitary conditions in the camp even before the coronavirus pandemic reached Greece. A spokesperson from the United Nations High Commission for Refugees told reporters that as early as February, Moria lacked adequate living quarters, sanitation, and medical care for its enlarged population, indicating that frustrations towards the facility’s living conditions have festered since before the imposition of quarantines.
Meanwhile, some migrants blamed the fire on locals who have repeatedly clashed with refugees around Moria. BBC Persian reporter Parham Ghobadi tweeted images of the conflagration and canisters that “far-right” Greeks allegedly used to set the fires, according to witnesses in the camp.
Humanitarian groups have criticized the Greek government for its response to the crisis, claiming that rather than helping the refugees, authorities have instead deployed riot police to prevent them from moving into the town of Mytilene. “The government’s immediate dispatch of security forces, before or without humanitarian assistance, continues their policy of framing migrants as a question of public order… and prioritising their securitisation as opposed to the provision of urgent assistance,” writes the NGO Legal Centre Lesvbos.
The Greek government will have to find a way to relocate the over 10,000 displaced migrants without further inflaming discontent amongst its citizens. While the number of refugees entering Europe has decreased since its peak in 2014, thousands remain in temporary shelters while their asylum applications move through the EU’s lengthy approval process. However, in the wake of the migrant crisis, and despite public sentiments towards immigrants having improved over the past decade, anti-immagration political parties have gained power across Europe. As such, the future of immigration on the continent remains uncertain, and the fate of the thousands of migrants caught in political limbo continues to concern humanitarian agencies worldwide.