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

 

Bearing the Brunt of the Middle East's Dysfunction

"Lots of people have come [as migrant refugees to Europe through Greece]. I have been here [on Samos] the longest."
"I've lost hope that they [authorities] will say my name [to be interviewed and allowed to enter the mainland to declare refugee status]."
Ashaq Hossein, 25, Afghani migrant

"[There are two ways to curb migration to the islands]: First, more efficient guarding of our borders and, second, the immediate return of those who don't deserve international protection."
Migration and Asylum Minister Notis Mitarakis

Feelings are running high on the five Aegean islands, which are home to more than 41,000 migrants

"Here it's like a prison. The migrants aren't allowed to leave the island. They aren't free to go where they like."  
"In Samos town there are more of them than us. They are different. They change our culture."
"Samos town was full of tourists before. Many people I know, from England too, they say they won't come to the town."
Georgios, Greek bartender

"I saved people in the past and if necessary, I would do it again now. When human lives are in danger, we have to protect them."
"But we want the refugees and the immigrants to go to another place, to Greece or other parts of the EU. More people are coming and just staying on our islands. They live in tents in inhuman conditions."
Mayor Giorgos Stantzos, East Samos

Protesters in Lesbos stand in front of a Greek flag and a banner that reads: "We want our islands back, we want our lives back." Reuters

The island of Samos, a place of ancient ruins, fishing villages, muscat wine, the birthplace of the goddess Hera and the philosopher Epicurus is now host to migrant camps and a tent city. The island has a population of about 6,200 locals, and on that fabled island Greek citizens involuntarily now share their island home with 6,800 foreign migrants who live in desperate conditions. Greece did not invite these visitors; they took it upon themselves to escape their own ancestral towns and villages where violence  and oppression reign, in favour of seeking refuge in Europe.

The influx of refugees has been unstoppable since 2015, flooding Europe with millions escaping conflict, poverty and the dysfunction of their mostly Islamic homelands. They arrive with the baggage of Islam and a culture that fails to lend itself to integration with that of the indigenous heritage and culture, a jarring entry of imposition angering residents who, while not averse to aiding small numbers of refugees, are aghast at the need to somehow cope with uninvited guests whose huge presence is beyond troubling.

Migrants live in tents at the camp on the Greek island of Samos

The Greek government is under immense stress, beyond its ability to cope in the face of the European Union's lack of sympathy for their plight; one echoed in varying measure across Europe. Ongoing dysfunctional chaos and conflict in the Middle East and Turkey's malign manipulative relations with Europe has seen to it that desperate people leave their homes, their countries of birth, hoping that gambling with their lives through dangerous migrant routes will somehow offer them a link to a better future for themselves and their families. But the flood they represent is suffocating Europe.

And so they wait for permission to leave the islands of Lesbos. Chios, Leros, Kos and Samos for the Greek mainland where their hopes of assuming new lives in Europe sustain them under desperate living conditions. Where, living in crowded camps or in insubstantial tents they take to looting summer cottages of household goods to sustain themselves; mattresses, blankets, pots, windows, doors, even walls and roofs to help construct something more substantial to shield themselves from the weather.

Two young men cover their shelter with plastic sheets at a makeshift camp in Moria, Lesbos    Getty Images

Town residents are not without sympathy for the plight of the migrants. Georgios Stantzos had volunteered to rescue asylum seekers, to recover bodies when the migrant crisis was at its 2015 height, but even he finds himself drained of empathy, lashing out at the presence of migrants loitering the main square of his town. His pleas toward the government for assistance as riots took place in the camp came to nothing. Police fired tear gas on migrants protesting their living conditions.

Built initially to hold 648 people, the camp now holds over 3,000. There is no medical care available, and people live in primitive conditions. Even so, those in the camp live in conditions superior to those living in tents. Refugees from Syria are given preferential treatment to the extent that their opportunities to be allowed to travel to the mainland and declare refugee status is favoured; others languish, ignored. If one group is given priority, the others wait in vain.

Among the migrants are close to 2,000 children, 351 of them unaccompanied minors and 580 infants and toddlers. Mayor Stantzos pleaded with the Greek authorities, and they promised the camp would close and with that promise he gave his support for the establishment of a temporary new camp meant to hold 1,500 migrants five kilometers inland from town. Later, he heard the camp would be built to accommodate 7,000. "I feel betrayed", he said, speculating that the real number would be 15,000.

A number of migrants arrived on the Greek mainland recently from Lesbos   Reuters