Lesbos, Greece – After days of fire reduced Europe’s largest refugee camp to embers, flames are erupting around the erupted remains of Moria.
Fire engines run back and forth on the Greek mountain to contain the new fire, weaving between the surrounding roads and families lurking on olive groves.
The air smells of burnt plastic and smoke. People are screaming and children are crying all around.
Thousands of people are trapped between those smoking camps that they can’t return to, and police lines that don’t allow them to enter the nearby town of Mytilin.
Confusion prevails on these roads around the camp. People wonder why the fire started, how long they have to stay on the streets and what will happen next.
Ahmed Sadia said earlier clashes between refugees and police prevented some from escaping the fire. [Moira Lavelle/Al Jazeera]
“We are here and we don’t know anything,” Ahmed Saadiya, 29, an asylum seeker from Afghanistan, told Al Jazeera. “We’ll have to wait for some people here to help.”
Sadia was sleeping in a container with her wife and three young children when the fire broke out early Wednesday morning.
They heard people screaming about the fire, but initially, they were stopped by police throwing tear gas when they tried to flee. As the flames grew they were able to run through the streets.
Greek government Maintains The fire was started by shelter seekers in response to coronavirus lockdown and tests.
The Moria refugee camp has been under extended lockdown since March. Last week, after 35 residents tested positive for COVID-19, it was placed in a fairly strict lockdown.
Prime Minister Kiriakos Mitsotakis in a statement on Wednesday Said: “I recognize difficult situations. However, nothing can be alibi for violent reactions to health checks. And, more so for storms of this intensity.”
Pamela Kanda, a 28-year-old asylum seeker from the Democratic Republic of Congo, can’t understand why she’s stuck on the road between the camp and the city, and why she’s not allowed to take food or lure for two years. Old baby.
“They don’t want anyone to pass,” he said. “They don’t tell us anything.”
Her phone has run out of battery, she has nowhere to charge, and so she has no source of information from the outside world. He does not know what will happen next.
Near the same olive grove, the family of 16-year-old Tamadur al-Baro also has no access to food or water. S.She picks up a child’s cousin to bug on the nape of her neck and show a thick white stain from a Syrian bomb. Their motto is coming to an end.
“Where are the organizations to help? No food, nothing? Why?” She asks. “No one came for help. We’ll die, we’ll stay on the road, it’s not a problem for them.”
Between heat and hunger, big worries about coronavirus loom.
Of the 35 Moria camp residents diagnosed with the disease, only eight are located and quarantined.
Here, people are socially unable to distance themselves, and have no access to water or sanitary products.
So far, a few practical solutions have been suggested For the 13,000 inhabitants of the former Moria.
About 3,500,000 asylum seekers will be housed in commercial passenger ships and two boat lanes, and the rest will be given tents in different areas on the island, Immigration Minister Notis Mitarkis said.
Asylum seekers have been stranded on the street between the former Moria camp and Mytilene town, prevented from exiting the police line. [Moira Lavelle/Al Jazeera] [Daylife]
By Friday afternoon, people had moved from the road next to East Camp to an area next to a farm where new tents were set up.
Not sure where they would be sent, others who had been told to move to the tent area refused to leave the crowd on the side of the road.
In the long run, Mitaraki has been adamant that the government will move forward with the planned construction of a closed detention center on the island – a move residents and aid organizations have opposed for months.
“We really condemn any move in this kind of closed setting,” Christina Guzara, general director of Doctrinaire Border Borders (known by its French early MSF) in Greece, told Al Jazeera.
“It was because of this approach to closing the camp that we got to this point. They can’t make it out of ashes, the only thing that caused so much pain.”
Many refugees in Lesbos had never heard of plans to build a closed camp.
“I don’t know what the government will do,” said Mohammad Zaher, 42, who sought refuge in Afghanistan.
“Will they make Moria again or not? Where will we be?”
The poison has been without food and water for more than two days.
But for now, worries about his future worry him more than hunger: “Food is not important to us, the future is important to us,” he said. “The future of the children is important to us.”
Refugees and migrants sleep on the road following the September 10, 2020 fire at the Moria camp on the Greek island of Lesbos. [Alkis Konstantinidis/Reuters]
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