Greece's Migrant State of Emergency

"Some people do not respect the country that is hosting them, and they strive to prove they are not looking for a passport to a better life."

"They will not leave [the island] because of the fire."

Greek government spokesman Stelios Petsas 

 

"Under the stars, I'm going to sleep under the stars like all these people here."

"[I've] nowhere to go since everything burned so we slept outside and we'll continue here."

Leonie Raymon, refugee from Cameroon

 

"In the past few days we've been living through unprecedented situations with daily fires."

"We've reached our limits. We're anxious, we feel insecure, we're fed up, we don't know how to act anymore."

Moria's municipal community leader Yiannis Mastroyannis

 

"There is a terrible reality with these fires. Many children, women, men are in these camps in absolutely terrible conditions. We want to show solidarity with Greece that lives up to European values."

French President Emmanuel Macron 

"I recognize the difficult conditions. However, nothing can become an alibi for violent reactions to health checks. And, much more, for riots of this magnitude."

"The situation in Moria cannot continue because it is a matter of public health, humanity and national security at the same time."

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis

Migrants flee from the Moria refugee camp during second a fire, on the northeastern Aegean island of Lesbos, Greece, on Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2020. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

During a huge migration wave that swamped Europe in 2015-16, with migrants from the Middle East, Africa and Asia who left the nearby Turkish coast with the intention of entering Europe by way of Greece and Italy, the camp at Moria on the Greek Island of Lesbos was set up to accommodate several thousand people. It ended up with many more than it was intended to service, becoming a sprawling squalid camp, condemned by human rights groups. For those who flooded into Greece, the intention was to move on to wealthier European countries.

Some, like Germany, the destination of many of the migrants who knew of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's willing absorption of a million migrants was their target, but the state, under growing pressure from alarmed German citizens along with violent incidents emanating from a proportion of the migrants, reversed its earlier stance. Countries of the European Union mandated to accept a share of the migrants to relieve the burden on Italy and Greece, finally felt they had reached the limits of their absorption capacity and balked at accepting additional migrants.

 

Now, in the wake of a massive fire in the largest migrant camp for asylum seekers in Europe, 12,500 migrants formerly placed under coronavirus quarantine are without shelter. Authorities were faced with a humanitarian crisis that eclipsed the one that existed prior to the fire. At the same time Greek investigators are trying to figure out whether a connection existed between the conflagration and anger on the part of the migrants over an erupting camp outbreak of coronavirus.

 

Smoke rises at the burnt camp of Moria on the island of Lesbos on Wednesday the morning after a major fire broke out.

 

According to three eyewitnesses the fire began as a protest against mandatory new quarantine measures. The blaze broke out after migrants who tested positive for the virus or were exposed, refused to go into isolation, according to a semi-official Greek news agency. Arson is being investigated as a possible cause of the blaze. Overnight, people fled the camp, as tents and shipping containers became engulfed in flames. There were no injuries or deaths reported. But police surrounded the camp attempting to ensure that the migrants remained within the vicinity of the camp.

Moria had been a site where protests, fatal fires and chronic sickness took place, filled well beyond capacity, cited by international aid groups as being unsafe and inhumane. It remained in operation not because Greece wanted to continue hosting the migrants, but because there was simply nowhere else for them to go. They kept arriving because the previous waves had succeeded in distributing themselves around Europe. And more latterly, Turkey used them as a threat to coerce Europe to fund its own refugee camps.

 

"Events in Moria last night are unthinkable but, tragically, predictable as the dire situation on the islands has gone on for far too long", the Greece country director for the International Rescue Committee -- Dimitra Kalogeropoulou noted of the residents that had fled from the fire, but are "now left with nothing". 

Refugees and migrants with their children gather on a bridge on Wednesday after the fire at the camp.

Last week officials visiting the camp had identified the first three positive cornavirus case and a testing campaign that followed detected another 35 positive cases, leading to the camp being placed under lockdown. The new Greek government devised a blueprint to close Moria and other island centres to create more permanent structures, in the face of local resistance where the new permanent structures might be placed.

 

Some asylum seekers have been gradually transferred to the mainland. Other European Union countries have agreed to accept some of the most vulnerable among the migrants, unaccompanied minors in particular, to rescue them from a camp that ended up holding ten times the number of people it was originally designed to house.

People grasp for food on Thursday, September 10 after fires destroyed the Moria migrant camp on the Greek island of Lesbos