MYTILENE, Greece – On Friday, the authorities sought to house thousands of refugees and migrants on the Greek island of Lesbos after the fires destroyed the squalid, overcrowded Moria camp, which for years symbolized the failures of European migration policy.
Soldiers set up new tents in a site near Moria’s blackened remains. The structures were air-transported by army helicopters to prevent protests by the permanent citizens of Lesbos over the widespread use of their island as a detention centre for thousands of people arriving from neighboring Turkey. .
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said the government had “acted very quickly” to build a facility.
Thousands more people fled the camp ready to sleep on the streets for the third night in makeshift shelters on the roadside in the capital of the island of Mytilene, in car parks, fields and even in a cemetery.
Greek authorities said tuesday and Wednesday fires were intentionally lit through some camp citizens angry by isolation orders issued to prevent the spread of coronavirus after 35 citizens became infected.
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Tents are expected to be lifted for another 3,000 people, out of 12,500 In Moria, in the new Kara Tepe near Mytilene, when the first migrants and refugees were to move today.
Hundreds of other people belonging to vulnerable teams were transferred to rented accommodation, a ferry sent Thursday across the island to temporarily space up to another 1,000 people while a floating hotel remained inexplicably empty.
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Previously, thousands of migrants and refugees held a brief demonstration to ask permission to leave Lesbos, which would require serious circumventment of EU rules, according to which asylum seekers arriving on greek islands from Turkey will have to remain there until they are granted refugee prestige. or deported to Turkey.
Protesters sang, danced, applauded and beat plastic water bottles in combination with a noisy but not violent demonstration. Some protesters had symptoms calling for help from Germany, a favorite destination for many arrivals in Greece. Police blocked the Road of Mytilene, from where many expected to arrive. Boarding on ferries to the mainland.
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Authorities said none of the camp’s citizens, with the exception of 406 unaccompanied adolescents and youth, would be allowed to leave the island. The unaccompanied minors were transported to mainland Greece on Wednesday.
Moria had been locked up until mid-September after the first case of the virus known in a Somali boy who had been granted asylum and had gone to Athens, but then returned to the camp.
On Friday, 200,000 immediate detection kits of the virus were moved to the island for an extensive crusade of testing that would come with asylum seekers and islanders.
The World Health Organization said Greece had requested an emergency medical team, and two of these teams, one Belgian and one Norwegian, were scheduled for Monday.
The UN refugee firm said the pandemic adds to an “already desperate situation. “
“UNHCR [the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees] has pleaded with all those who have stayed in the (camp) in the past to limit their movements until transitional responses are found,” he said.
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The opinion was largely ignored.
“We spent 3 days here without eating, without drinking. We are in situations that are not very good,” said Freddy Musamba of The Gambia.
“I need to communicate about the European Union, which has abandoned us, that it has left us here like this,” Musamba said. He asked the EU “to come and we, don’t let us. We are like abandoned children. ” We put up with things we didn’t know could happen. “
The data for this article comes from Elena Becatoros, Iliana Mier, Geir Moulson and Frank Jordans of the Associated Press.