• Greece. Migrants set fire to protest against crowded refugee camps, victims
  • Migrants, Greece: with 26 thousand presences reached peak since 2016
  • Migrants. Save the Children rekindles the spotlight on Greece: children live in terrible conditions
  • Greece, migrants leave Diavata: marching towards Macedonia. Vienna-Athens diplomatic clash

Share

October 31, 2019The situation of migrants in centers in the Greek islands is "explosive" and "on the verge of catastrophe". The Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, Dunja Mijatovic, said this.

"The situation of migrants, including asylum seekers, in the Greek Aegean islands has dramatically deteriorated in the last 12 months. Urgent measures are needed to address the desperate conditions in which thousands of human beings live," Mijatovic told reporters at end of a five-day visit.

In the Greek islands, between August and September, more than 18 thousand migrants arrived, 8,500 in Lesvos alone, Oxfam reports, recalling in the Moria camp, on the north-eastern Aegean island, which has a maximum capacity of 3 thousand refugees, surviving massed in 13 thousand , 42 percent of whom are children aged between 7 and 12, including nearly a thousand children and young people accompanied by adults, who arrived alone.

The refugees live, especially in areas adjacent to the camp, where new arrivals are concentrated, in "inhuman and dangerous conditions, with a shower every 230 people, a toilet every hundred, no more medical screening and vaccinations for newcomers, stresses a new report of the organization that launches an urgent appeal to the European Union for the relocation between member states and the overcoming of the 2016 EU-Turkey agreement judged as "disastrous".

Yannis Balbakakis, head of the Moria migrant center in Lesbos, resigned in September, a month ago, "I'm leaving with my head held high," he told Greek news agency Ana Mpa, "but I'm tired."