ATHENS — When fires tore through the Moria camp for migrants on the Greek island of Lesbos final week, about 12,000 people were displaced and left to sleep on the perimeters of roads, in parking tons or in graveyards.
A short lived tent camp has been erected for them, with the primary arrivals trickling into the power over the weekend. And on Thursday, the police started shifting extra individuals into the camp in an effort to hurry up the method.
The brand new facility will supply quick shelter to hundreds in determined want, however rights teams say the transfer must be a short lived repair whereas Europe comes up with a extra complete answer for the hundreds of migrants and refugees arriving on the continent.
Because the police started the operation to maneuver extra individuals to the power, they had been met with some resistance. Movies shared on-line and broadcast on Greek tv confirmed some armed officers standing by as others in masks and hazmat fits as a safety in opposition to the coronavirus tried to influence migrants to maneuver into the brand new camp. Many migrants carried their meager belongings in plastic baggage or dragged strollers piled with garments.
Stelios Petsas, a authorities spokesman, mentioned at a media briefing that 1,150 migrants had been transferred throughout the police operation. About 3,000 individuals are actually within the new camp, which might host all these displaced by the fireplace, in line with Greece’s migration ministry.
Greek officers insisted that the operation to maneuver individuals into the momentary camp was being performed with the utmost care and in the most effective pursuits of these displaced by the fireplace.
Michalis Chrysochoidis, the minister for citizen safety, mentioned the migrants and refugees had been being moved “from abandonment to care, from public well being dangers and coronavirus to safety and management, from confusion to order.”
However the support group Medical doctors With out Borders expressed concern concerning the interruption of medical care throughout the transfer, saying that the Greek police had denied their workers entry to migrants as they had been being transferred.
“A lot of individuals want medical care however we can’t method them? Why are they obstructing us?” the group wrote on Twitter on Thursday. At round midday, the group mentioned it had managed to reopen its clinic.
Earlier than the fires final week, Moria was the most important refugee camp in Europe, lengthy affected by squalid situations and overcrowded tents. Since 2015, it had been stuffed with refugees and migrants who had risked their lives to cross the Aegean Sea into Greece. Many of the present group are from Afghanistan and had been ready on the island as their asylum functions are processed.
The camp was locked down after a coronavirus outbreak, prompting protests amongst residents and main some to deliberately set fireplace to the camp. Six Moria residents, all Afghan residents, have been charged with arson in reference to the fires.
Rights teams and nations on the frontline of arrivals, together with Greece, have lengthy known as for a complete Europe-wide method to the disaster, and final week’s fires have strengthened that decision. Germany agreed this week to take in more than 1,500 people displaced by the blazes.
Photos of the new facility on Lesbos present dozens of white tents emblazoned with the brand of the United Nations Refugee Company dotting a hillside close to the place the sprawling Moria camp as soon as stood.
Philippe Leclerc, the company’s consultant in Greece, said throughout a go to to Lesbos on Wednesday that the group had labored with the native authorities to erect the momentary tents.
The company “can also be advocating for long-term options, with steady European help and responsibility-sharing,” Mr. Leclerc said, including that overcrowded reception facilities on Lesbos and different Greek islands “should be decongested and their situations improved.”
In an interview on the sidelines of a convention in Athens on Wednesday, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis mentioned Europe’s migration disaster was too large for Greece to deal with alone.
“The tragic Moria fireplace introduced this to the forefront,” he mentioned. “I believe it’s clear to everybody that we are able to’t fail twice as Europe.”
