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Greece races to move refugees from island


likened to a 'new Lesbos'
Migration minister warns camp on Samos where hundreds of children live
in squalor is six times over capacity

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Helena Smith in Athens

Fri 22 Feb 2019 07.00 GMTLast modified on Fri 22 Feb 2019 18.05 GMT

A man peers out from behind a fence surrounding the overcrowded reception facility on the
Greek island of Samos. Photograph: Mohammad Ghannam/MSF

Greek authorities are scrambling to house almost 4,000 people crammed into an
overflowing migrant camp in Samos, as aid groups warn of a “humanitarian disaster” on
one of Europe’s forgotten frontlines.

Likening Samos to a “new Lesbos,” the country’s migration minister warned of a race
against the clock to find suitable accommodation for the ever growing number of people
trapped in a reception centre now six times over capacity.

“Samos is our biggest problem. The flows are constant and traffickers, it seems, are
always one step ahead,” Dimitris Vitsas said in an interview at his office in western
Athens. “The camp there is very overcrowded, with all the problems that this means. I
have to move at least 2,000 people from the island as soon as possible.”

As in Lesbos, which received more than 1 million people at the height of the refugee
crisis in 2015, smuggler rings have their sights on the eastern Aegean outcrop, which lies
barely a mile from the Turkish coast. Unlike other isles, however, Samos’ sole refugee
camp is within walking distance of the port capital, Vathy. Amid mounds of rubbish, its
myriad tents and makeshift shelters cascade down the hills above the town.

Every day, boatloads of new arrivals add to the build-up of humanity forced to endure
conditions that the Refugee Support Aegean group this week described as having
“reached the edge”.

Such is the pressure on the camp that more than 1,500 people are now living in
unheated tents and shelters outside the centre, according to the UNHCR, the UN
refugee agency. An estimated 24% are children, of whom 229 are reported as
unaccompanied.

That the camp has only one state-appointed medic simply compounds the situation.
Doctors play a leading role in processing asylum claims, by assessing vulnerability.

The vast majority of the 15,150 refugees currently registered on Greece’s five Aegean
islands – holding pens for arrivals since the EU struck a controversial agreement with
Turkey in March 2016 to staunch migrant flows – request asylum. Under EU rules,
claims must be handled in locales where migrants and refugees first land.

“Because there are not enough doctors, it is impossible to know how many are in need of
protection and should be transferred to the mainland,” said Vitsas, insisting that at least
two more medics would be dispatched to the island by the end of the month.

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Children stand amid a makeshift tent camp near the overcrowded reception facility on
Samos. Photograph: Louisa Gouliamaki/AFP/Getty Images

Even in the depths of winter, Samos is breathtakingly beautiful. Its lush, pine-covered
hills lend it a softness that other, more rugged isles lack. But this means little to the
increasingly desperate men, women and children who have risked their lives to get
there.
So bad are conditions that, last month, more than 500 African migrants marched into
the capital chanting: “Samos is no good.” The protest added to mounting pressure on
the leftist government in Athens to move them to the mainland.

“This is the reality,” said the UNHCR’s spokesperson in Athens, Boris Cheshirkov,
flinching as he flicked through images on his mobile phone depicting tents pitched in
areas that resembled open latrines and children roaming barefoot amid trails of rubbish.
“It is very difficult. It needs immediate attention.”

In an atmosphere that has become increasingly explosive, locals staged a 24-hour strike
earlier this month in what was described as a “dramatic appeal” for action by central
government. Xenophobic attacks and racism are on the rise.

In a separate report on Tuesday, the Council of Europe deplored conditions in Greek


police detention camps, where it said brutality against migrants and refugees was
common.

None of this is lost on Vitsas, a sharp critic of Fortress Europe. Like many on the left, the
politician believes that not enough has been done to support development or alleviate
poverty in countries from which so many are fleeing in search of better lives.

The Greek island camp where only the sick or


pregnant can leave

“Greece doesn’t need money thrown at it, what it needs is solidarity – and that means
sharing the burden and responsibility of hosting refugees,” he said, warning that if such
policies were ignored, the darker forces propelling right-wing extremism would only
stand to gain at this May’s Euro elections. “It’s vital that the EU devises a new relocation
scheme that will see all its member states, and not just first reception countries like
ours, take in asylum seekers. It’s wrong that we should only be a union when it comes to
financial matters and not when it comes to solidarity on immigration issues.”

Despite the biting cold, turbulent seas and gale force winds that have periodically swept
Greece, migratory flows have not abated over the winter. In contrast to Italy, where
there has been a significant drop in sea arrivals, numbers reaching Greek shores jumped
from 36,310 to 50,511 between 2017 and 2018, UN figures show.

Last year, arrivals across the nation’s land border with Turkey shot up by 284%. As a
result, Greek authorities are rushing to add two more transit camps to the 26 refugee
accommodation centres on the mainland.

But with its chaotic bureaucracy hard hit by Athens’ long-running economic crisis,
Vitsas argued there was only so much Greece could do to handle what is increasingly
viewed as a forgotten refugee crisis.

“All our simulation models show we cannot process more than 20,000 asylum requests
a year, or properly integrate more than 12,000 refugees into society, given 18% of our
own population remains unemployed,” he said.

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