Anger is mounting on the island of Lesbos.
The Greek police used tear gas on Saturday, September 12, in the face of a violent demonstration of migrants in the street since the fire at the Moria camp on the island.
While local authorities have been trying since Friday to put in place emergency solutions, with thousands of tents in a large fenced field, migrants, for their part, say their fed up with this sordid camp where they have been waiting for months, some for years, to be transferred.
The fire, apparently deliberate, has left more than 11,000 people, including thousands of children, homeless since the start of the week, sleeping in the streets or on the roads, in particularly difficult conditions.
>> To read and see also on France 24: Migrants: the Lesbos camp devastated by a huge fire
On Saturday, with tension at its height, hundreds of them, including many young men, demonstrated not far from the new temporary camp, with signs proclaiming "Freedom!"
or "We want to leave Moria".
Clashes erupted when demonstrators threw stones, police responding with tear gas.
Several people with difficulty breathing were taken by ambulance.
For several days, "thousands of people have been sleeping roughly on the hills around Moria and in the streets, and the tension between the inhabitants of the island, the asylum seekers and the police is increasing," he said on Saturday. NGO Human Rights Watch.
Thirty-five people positive for Covid-19
In recent days, many migrants have spread out in the streets, roads or fields, using what they find for shelter from the scorching sun, tree branches to hang a tarp, reeds or tall grasses for themselves. provide shelter, some finding refuge under the trees of the cemetery.
And local aid groups have struggled to provide them with food and water.
The Moria camp, the largest in Europe, long criticized by the United Nations for its overcrowding and deplorable sanitary conditions, burned in five successive fires on Tuesday evening and Wednesday.
The authorities accuse the migrants of having set on fire.
Shortly before the first fire, 35 people had tested positive for Covid-19 and were to be placed in isolation.
The provisional tent camp is expected to open on Saturday afternoon with a capacity of 3,000 people, Greek Migration Minister Notis Mitarachi said, adding that "rapid tests for the coronavirus will be carried out at the entrance".
Angry local people
Ministry spokesman Alexandros Ragavas said the most vulnerable would be the first to be relocated.
But the local population does not necessarily look favorably on the construction of new camps.
The mayor immediately said efforts to build temporary camps were "unrealistic", and residents attempted to block their construction with dams.
"
"The idea of rebuilding this kind of thing must be forgotten," the mayor of the town of Mytilene, Stratis Kytelis, told Antenna TV on Friday.
"The island's society can no longer […] for reasons of health, social cohesion and national security," he added.
Limited European aid
The images of hundreds of families on the street have prompted several European countries to offer to host a few hundred asylum seekers, particularly unaccompanied minors.
But Greece has long complained that its European partners are doing little to help it cope with the influx of migrants other than paying funds.
All efforts to establish a quota system, whereby each country would welcome some of the migrants, failed, especially in the face of opposition from right-wing governments like those in Poland or Hungary.
With AFP
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