Fresh fires burn at Greece’s largest refugee camp Moria
A new fire broke out on Wednesday night at Greece’s largest refugee camp just a day after blazes forced thousands of refugees to flee the facility. The fires erupted in parts of the camp that had not caught fire on Tuesday night.
Greek authorities have launched an investigation to determine who started the blazes after local media reports suggested migrants had done so to protest lockdown measures enacted to contain a coronavirus outbreak at the camp.
Greek Migration Minister Notis Mitarachi backed those allegations, saying that although the initial cause of the blazes remain unknown, “what is certain is that the fire was started because of the quarantine by asylum seekers in the facility.”
“Instances of unlawful behavior such as the ones we experienced yesterday will not be left unpunished,” said Mitarachi. “Such behavior is not acceptable, and also respect for law and order is a necessary precondition for the asylum process.”
Read more: Moria refugee camp tragedy rekindles political controversy in Germany
New blazes swept across parts of the Moria refugee camp that had not caught fire the night before
Moria: a tinderbox
But critics have also taken aim at Greek authorities as well as the EU for failing to find a sustainable solution for dealing with Greece’s overcrowded migration facilities.
Prior to the fires, the Moria refugee camp hosted more than 12,000 people, four times more than its maximum intended capacity.
Erik Marquardt, a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) with Germany’s Greens, told DW that the fire represented a “political disaster” for Europe for failing to better manage the 2015 migration crisis.
“The situation we have there is a big problem. This kind of catastrophe can happen every time,” Marquardt said. “We should feel ashamed for that.”
Marquardt called on the German government to address the underlying issues at similar camps, saying it should shoulder the burden of relocating some of those displaced by the fires to Germany.
“How much more suffering is needed to actually make all the national leaders act, to make the European Commission act and to commit to relocating these people away from these camps, away from these horrible situations?” Damian Boeselager, another German MEP, told DW.
Read more: Opinion: Moria migrant camp in Greece is the EU’s flaming failure
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Hell on earth — Greece’s Moria refugee camp and its tortured history
The night it all burned down
Fire broke out in a number of spots around the Moria refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos late on the night of Tuesday, September 8. That has led authorities to suspect arson. Some in the camp have suggested locals set the fires but there are other reports that point to migrants themselves.
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Hell on earth — Greece’s Moria refugee camp and its tortured history
Into the darkness
All of the inhabitants of the hopelessly overcrowded camp managed to get to safety. According to media reports, many migrants fled into the hills and forests nearby. Some are said to have begun walking to Mytilene, the island’s capital. There have been no reports of death or injury.
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Hell on earth — Greece’s Moria refugee camp and its tortured history
Life threatening
Moria was originally designed to hold up to 2,800 people. At the time the fires broke out it held some 12,600. Living conditions in the camp were catastrophic before the fire. Looking at this photo taken in its aftermath, it is glaringly apparent that no one will be able to live there again any time soon — at least not under humane conditions.
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Hell on earth — Greece’s Moria refugee camp and its tortured history
Pixelated camp
Anyone hoping to see satellite images on Google Maps of the camp, located on the eastern shore of Lesbos, just 15 kilometers from the Turkish coast, is out of luck. The site has been pixilated. “Google itself does not pixelate satellite images,” the company told DW, referring to third-party entities that supply the satellite imagery. It is unknown why the camp has been digitally altered.
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Hell on earth — Greece’s Moria refugee camp and its tortured history
A clear image
This aerial view of the same area shows that the camp has been greatly expanded. In the earlier Google Maps image, the house with the red roof stands alone but in the more recent photo it seems to have been swallowed up by the camp.
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Hell on earth — Greece’s Moria refugee camp and its tortured history
Looking into the past
The camp is not pixelated on Google Street View. Whereas the pixilated satellite images on Google Maps are from 2020, those on Street View are from December 2011 — before there was even a camp. At the time, the only thing there was an old military barracks. It was not until October 2015 that Greece began registering asylum-seekers at the site before taking them to the mainland.
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Hell on earth — Greece’s Moria refugee camp and its tortured history
From stopover to longterm stays
When this photo was taken in October 2015, refugees only stayed at the camp for a short time. That changed drastically in March 2016, when the EU signed its so-called refugee deal with Turkey. Since then, refugees have had to endure long stays before being sent to other EU countries or being deported.
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Hell on earth — Greece’s Moria refugee camp and its tortured history
Waiting and waiting and waiting
As a result of the EU-Turkey deal, refugees are no longer allowed to travel to the Greek mainland because Turkey would then no longer be obliged to take them. But as EU states disagree over who should take how many refugees, people remain in the camp for longer and longer periods of time. The overcrowded camp is populated by many people from a wide range of nations — no wonder there are tensions.
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Hell on earth — Greece’s Moria refugee camp and its tortured history
When tensions boil over
Those tensions first erupted in September 2016, in the form of violent conflicts during which fires were set and much of the camp was destroyed. At the time, there were only 3,000 migrants in the camp. A few months later, several hundred migrants set fire to EU asylum agency containers in the camp in protest to the slow pace of asylum application processing.
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Hell on earth — Greece’s Moria refugee camp and its tortured history
Fire and death
There was another major fire at Moria in September 2019. What started as a blaze in an adjacent olive orchard quickly spread to the camp itself. Less than half an hour later, another fire broke out in the camp, killing a mother and her infant child. At the time, Moria housed some 12,000 people.
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Hell on earth — Greece’s Moria refugee camp and its tortured history
Too dangerous to visit
In August, North Rhine-Westphalia State Premiere Armin Laschet visited the camp. His state is the most populous in Germany and the politician expressed a desire to see the so-called wild section of the camp located outside its enclosed boundaries. However, that part of the visit was quickly cancelled for safety reasons as the overall mood was again tense, with many migrants chanting “Free Moria.”
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Hell on earth — Greece’s Moria refugee camp and its tortured history
Now what?
A overcrowded camp with appalling sanitation and medical conditions as well as ethnic tensions — and then the first coronavirus infections — life at the Moria refugee camp was dire before this week’s blaze. But what will happen now? Is this the end of Moria, or perhaps the moment to create new, more humane living conditions? It is devastating that no one can answer this question.
Germany offers support
However, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said the German government had already reached out to Greek authorities and offered support.
“We will not leave Greece alone with this situation — and above all — we will not leave the people in this camp alone,” said Maas. “I believe that the European Union as a whole has a responsibility.”
Other European figures backed calls for a European approach to irregular migration.
“This was a time bomb,” Jan Egeland, who heads the Norwegian Refugee Council told DW. “Now it has gone off and hopefully this is the wakeup call that the leaderships in the European capitals need.”
Read more: Moria migrants: German state offers to take in 1,000 refugees from Greece
ls/msh (AP, dpa)
Article source: https://www.dw.com/en/fresh-fires-burn-at-greece-s-largest-refugee-camp-moria/a-54874079?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf