BRUSSELS (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 12th September, 2020) The sudden disruption of Greece's overstretched capacity to accommodate irregular migrants following a series of fires in the Moria camp on the Lesbos island shed a new light on the fellow EU member states' old reluctance to share the burden by actions, not words.
The first blaze broke out in Moria late on Tuesday and several others followed throughout Wednesday. The fire rapidly destroyed more than 60 percent of the buildings and tents of the camp, forcing the 12,700 residents to seek refuge on the beaches or further out of the camp.
At that point, Moria was already locked down as 35 residents were diagnosed with COVID-19 after just 2,000 tests conducted. This means that the infected people are now mixed with all the others.
The Greek authorities declared a four-month state of emergency on Lesbos.
Many in Greece, including officials in the government, believe that the fires were a result of deliberate arson, either by Lesbos local population fed up by the unceasing arrival of illegal migrants or by migrants themselves as a means to pressure the Greek government to speed up their relocation to mainland.
Migrants arrived and continue to arrive in Greece on dinghies, rafts and other small boats not fit for a cross-sea passage, mainly from Turkey, where the Turkish coast guard knowingly let them cross the short sea distance to the Greek islands, Lesbos being the largest. That is where the refugees and irregular migrants are regrouped, waiting for their files to be processed.
Numerous NGOs have pinpointed the European Union's responsibility to respond more efficiently to the problem of uncontrollable illegal migration via the Mediterranean. In five years since the onset of the infamous 2015 migration crisis, when asylum seekers from around the world were given a green light for entry by the European leaders and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in particular, between 800,000 and 1 million illegal migrants have landed on Lesbos on their way to Europe. Many have remained stranded in overcrowded facilities across the Greek islands as the processing of their files was delayed.
This was an issue even before the coronavirus pandemic, but it only exacerbated amid the fresh crisis. Social distancing and adequate hygiene are virtually impossible in the overcrowded camps, some of which accommodate two, three or even four times their intended capacity. Moria, for example, was originally designed to host 3,000 people. Episodes of violent unrest initiated by its residents, including unaccompanied minors, had become a normality.
Delays in the processing of their asylum applications, the reluctance of the Greek authorities to relocate them to the mainland, the constantly changing EU regulations, which now allow deportation and on-demand background checks, and the dire living conditions in most of the camps have gradually made the environment in them truly explosive.
"There will be an inquiry on the origin of the fires in the Moria camp, but I am afraid the migrants have understood that the only way to unblock the situation and attract attention from the EU was to set fire to their own camp," Thierry Mariani, a French lawmaker in the European Parliament from the rightist National Front party, told Sputnik.
EU BEEFING UP ASYLUM PROCEDURES
Recalling how France and Germany rushed to offer to jointly accommodate 400 unaccompanied minors who were among the Moria residents, Mariani also pointed to how Merkel, while delivering a statement alongside French President Emmanuel Macron, "carefully added that the camp in Moria should be reconstructed and that Germany would help finance the reconstruction."
"[Merkel] knows how unpopular her policy of open arms since 2015 is with the German population and even in her own party, the Christian-Democratic Union [CDU]," the lawmaker said.
In France's experience, many newcomers lie about their background in the asylum application in order to qualify for fast-track approval schemes, such as the one for minors. This prompted the French Constitutional Court to let the authorities check the veracity of the underage migrants' declared age, including via tests on the bones, subject to their consent.
"It appears that some 70 percent of these 'minors' are in fact adults of 18 and more. The lawyers and NGOs that help them will dissuade them to accept these tests, to be sure they are allowed to remain in France, at a very high cost for the French taxpayers," Mariani said.
According to the lawmaker, the European Parliament is currently deciding on putting together a budget of whopping 22.6 billion Euros ($26.7 billion) for the assistance to migrants between 2021 and 2027. But nations individually do not seem so eager to assist the migrants via tangible means such as actually accommodating them, thus sharing the burden with Greece.
EUROPE RELUCTANT TO SHARE MIGRATION BURDEN WITH GREECE
"The EU member Greece is quite able to accommodate 13,000 migrants itself. In order to avoid overcrowded camps and extreme humanitarian situations, it is necessary to stop illegal migration at the EU's external borders and to repatriate illegal migrants immediately. The [German] Federal government should actively support Greece," Alice Weidel, the head of the parliamentary faction of Germany's far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, told Sputnik.
The AfD fears that if the German government does not react firmly, the fatal signal will be that whoever makes it to Greece will sooner or later make it to Germany with its attractive welfare state. This arouses false hopes among the millions who are sitting on packed suitcases in Turkey and elsewhere, and thus confronts Greece, in particular, with ever more difficult problems.
"Arson and deliberate destruction must not be rewarded with a free ticket to the German welfare system. The German citizens and the German solidarity community cannot be expected to have to take in and care for people who have blackmailed their access to our country with violence and breaches of law," Weidel said.
In the meantime, the Greens, Die Linke and other leftist parties are criticizing Germany's federal government for the "overly strict" migration policy, put forward by Interior Minister Horst Seehofer. A group of 16 CDU lawmakers wrote a letter to Seehofer, asking that he authorize the admission of 5,000 Moria residents in Germany.
The German government is pushing above all in favor of a European solution to share the migratory inflow fairly among all 27 member states. As it has been the case continuously since 2015, not all European countries assent with this.
LACK OF HUMAN-CENTRIC MIGRATION POLICIES
"There is no question as to the cause of this fire: it is the years-long orchestration of human suffering and violence produced by European and Greek migration policies that are to blame," Doctors Without Borders (MSF) field coordinator in Lesbos Marco Sandrone told Sputnik.
According to the humanitarian advocate, what Greece should do now is immediately adopt an emergency response plan and evacuate Moria camp residents to a safe place either on the mainland or in other EU countries. MSF stands ready to assist, Sandrone told Sputnik.
"We can only hope the same system of inhumane containment will not be reborn from the ashes of Moria," the official said.
Fierce political debates have unfolded, in the meantime, across the European countries as to whether or not take in migrants from Lesbos.
Conservative parties and those on the far-right spectrum are expectedly opposed to it, while the left call for welcoming the migrants who were left without a shelter following the fires, albeit the discourse mainly applies to unaccompanied children and families with children.
In Austria, for example, the head of The Greens party, Vice-Chancellor Werner Kogler, told Der Standard daily that "If Germany's Chancellor Merkel and France's President Macron and even Bavarian Prime Minister [Markus] Soder take in children, then Austria can, too."
As the debates have gone vocal, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has called on all parties concerned to "exercise restraint and refrain from actions or rhetoric that could heighten tensions."
According to the agency, the incident in Moria has denuded the "long-standing need to take action to improve living conditions, alleviate overcrowding, improve security, infrastructure and access to services" in all reception facilities on the Greek islands.
"To respond to pressing protection needs of asylum seekers in Greece, UNHCR continues to advocate for more support including from European countries and EU institutions, such as through expedited relocations of unaccompanied children and other vulnerable people," UNHCR spokeswoman Shabia Mantoo said.
The agency welcomed plans by EU countries to relocate unaccompanied minors and families with children from Greece.
