Fire Destroys Most of Europe’s Largest Refugee Camp on Greek Island of Lesbos

Early on, they handed rapidly via Moria camp when Europe largely tolerated the motion of migrants. However in 2016, Europe modified tack, blocking the onward motion of migrants to international locations like Germany and leaving hundreds stranded in squalid Greek camps like Moria, which quickly turned overcrowded.

Since then, Moria has been thought of an emblem of Europe’s hardening strategy to migrants within the aftermath of the 2015 disaster. Constructed for less than 3,000 residents, the camp inhabitants at occasions swelled to greater than 20,000. Residents lived largely in cramped and overcrowded tents with restricted entry to bogs, showers and well being care.

They lined up for hours for meals that was usually moldy. And so they turned enmeshed in what for a lot of migrants appeared an interminably complicated asylum utility course of, resulting in what some medical doctors deemed a psychological well being disaster on the camp.

The state of affairs has been no higher in different camps on close by Greek islands, the place, earlier than the hearth, greater than 23,000 folks have been crammed into camps constructed for simply 6,000, in response to current statistics compiled by assist teams.

The dynamic has created deep hostility between migrants and Greek islanders who, as soon as welcoming to their new neighbors, have grown more and more resentful. It has additionally led the Greek authorities to right away expel many new arrivals this 12 months, abandoning greater than 1,000 immigrants in rafts at sea.

Given these circumstances, campaigners had lengthy predicted a disaster on the camp.

“This fireplace was anticipated,” mentioned Eva Cossé, who leads analysis in Greece for Human Rights Watch, an impartial New York-based rights group. “It’s not stunning. It’s a testomony to the European Union’s negligence and Greece’s negligence.”

Human Rights Watch has been calling for the camp to be closed or its quantity of residents to be considerably diminished for years.