A fire broke out in the migrant camp, leaving 13,000 homeless

 

 

A fire broke out in the migrant camp, leaving 13,000 homeless

 

 

 

 

13 000 people are homeless on the island of lesbos they've been living in the largest migrant camp in greece but then this happened last night a fire destroyed the maurya camp the only welcome news being that no one lost their lives we know already around 400 unaccompanied children are being flown to the greek mainland and germany is urging eu members to take in migrants that will see if they choose to we've also had this tweet from the president of the european commission she says we stand ready to support with member states our priority is the safety of those left without shelter but let's hear about those people who need that help amanda munoz de toro leads an organization which provides legal aid to refugees in lesbos so at the moment there are thousands of people that are just on the streets without any type of access to medical aid water food blankets they spent the whole night they just lost all of their belongings the last thing they had and there's thousands on the streets and outside the camps there's police checkpoints where people are not allowed to leave a specific area and ngos are also not allowed to access to provide aid there's people with disabilities people with suffered torture sexual violence and this experience is always very traumatizing next let's hear from the greek authorities the bbc has spoken to the greek minister of migration and asylum vulnerable people and families are being taken to a vessel that will be arriving to the port of michelini in the next few hours and then we only have around 2 000 people left without celtics we are providing emergency accommodation near the the camp in moria now unfortunately it's not a surprise there's been a disaster at this camp it's notoriously overcrowded around four times its capacity the pressure intensified last week when officials detected the first positive corona coronavirus cases there a further 34 cases were then detected and the camp was put under lockdown aid agencies had raised concerns that social distancing and good hygiene were all but impossible because of the numbers in the camp given its squalid and cramped conditions is the greek minister of migration asylum again on what led to the fire it appears it started from asylum seekers that were did not like the quarantine we found 35 positive covet 19 patients out of 2000 tests we had to take these people into a current in areas that created um disorder which led to the fires and multiple fires of course the fire brigade and the police will be investigating there will be very there will be zero tolerance for such acts of violence now thousands of people have arrived on lesbos in recent years they were placed in this camp and they couldn't leave until their asylum application was processed on the greek mainland which has proved to be a slow and bureaucratic process our population correspondent stephanie hegerty has reported from the maurya migrant camp before here she is on who's been living there and what the conditions were like the majority from afghanistan about 70 but the rest is made up of people from 70 different countries and a lot of syrians uh obviously that this is a an arrival point for people who come mostly by boat from uh turkey and we've seen uh quite an uptick towards the beginning of this year of arrivals on that route there's also a very tense situation on the island of lesvos as has been for the past few few months even before covet where some far right groups had traveled there some local pop of the local population had expressed a lot of animosity towards migrants so a really tense situation already on lesvos and this is not going to help that in any way at all well already this tragedy is being linked to some broader failures here's the international president of mexico frontier tweeting what remains of this camp is a testimony to the neglect and failure of the european union and greek migration policies they are to blame for the fire and that's echoed by any number of commentators here's the greek journalist martinez steve squidnev writing for the new york times and saying the ticking time bomb exploded devastation for 12 000 people warehoused by the eu in appalling conditions and devastation 2 for the locals who have struggled as the last greek government agreed to the inhumane open-ended warehousing of people on their island or you can read daniel howden at the refugee study centre at oxford university arguing lesbos is part of a european system of warehousing and deterring desperate people with moria as the centerpiece it creates a fearful spectacle which is then used to justify the notion that we europe are full and they are dangerous that there's no other choice well needless to say the european union and greece do not see what's happened in those terms here's the greek minister of migration and asylum again this time on the broader issue of migration into the eu we cannot have unlimited capacity to cope with migration flows greece has been asked to.