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Germany will receive more than 1,500 migrants who are currently on the islands of Greece after the Moria camp fire on Lesbos, where this Tuesday the police arrested five suspects of having caused the accident.
“Five young foreigners were arrested and a sixth was identified and is wanted”, The Greek Minister of Civil Protection, Michalis Chrysohoidis, said on Tuesday. The nationalities of the suspects were not released.
These arrests were made as part of the investigation into the fire that ravaged the Moria camp in Lesbos on the night of September 8 to 9, the largest in Europe, where some 12,000 migrants were in unsanitary conditions.
The minister, quoted by the Greek agency ANA, believes that “these arrests discredit the scenario” according to which “extremists” would have set the camp on fire. The Greek government had already twice accused migrants of having started the fire.
The recent multiplication of incidents between asylum seekers and insulars, including far-right sympathizers, fuels the suspicions of residents who oppose keeping migrants on Lesbos about their possible involvement in the fire.
On a visit to the island, where he said he was “moved” by this “dramatic” and “complex situation”, the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, He called on Europe to “mobilize” and “get involved” to “seriously tackle the challenge” of migration.
“I refuse to let the European Union look away from immigration” since “the borders of Greece are the borders of Europe,” he insisted.
“There is no miracle solution,” said the European leader, but “we must not resign”, and asked to create “more partnerships with third countries.”
So far, the response from European countries was discreet: 10 countries agreed to take care of 400 unaccompanied minors, including France, which will have to receive a hundred.
But Germany “guarantees that 1,553 family members” recognized as refugees by the Greek authorities, “will leave the islands” of the Aegean Sea, German Vice Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Tuesday.
“Please open the doors”
Since the fire that devastated the Moria camp – erected five years ago during the peak of the migration crisis – thousands of asylum seekers They sleep on Lesbos in intense heat on the sidewalks, in abandoned buildings or on the side of roads, with little food and access to water.
Under a tent, where all eight members of her family have lived since the fire, 21-year-old Samira Ahmedi, who arrived a year ago from Afghanistan, cannot hold back tears.
“Please”, he urges the European countries, “open the doors. We are human, we are not animals ”.
Along with her, Simine, 22, does not want to enter the new makeshift camp, quickly built by the authorities. “There is no food, no water; nobody wants to go to the new field, “he explains.
The conditions are deplorable “without shower or mattresses”, according to testimonies collected by AFP.
“The entry of asylum seekers into the new camp is not negotiable,” the Minister of Civil Protection told reporters.
Only 800 migrants have agreed to settle for now, according to the ministry.
Most of the migrants refuse to enter for fear of not being able to leave the island. For Vany Bikembo, a 25-year-old mechanic who arrived a year ago from the Democratic Republic of Congo, the makeshift camp “is a second hell”, after Moria.
“No to a concentration camp”
In the port of Mytilene, the island’s capital, some 200 island people demonstrated calmly in the afternoon against a new migrant camp near the ruins of Moria.
“The islands do not want a concentration camp, neither open nor closed,” could be read on a banner from the protesters, mostly from the communist party.
The prefect of the North Aegean, Kostas Mountzouris, one of the staunchest opponents of the government’s plan to establish a closed camp on the island, called on businessmen and professionals to demonstrate on Tuesday to call for a “normalization” of the situation and “ the removal of immigrants from the island ”.
For several months, the conservative government of Kyriakos Mitsotakis he planned to build a closed camp on Lesbos to ease congestion in Moria.
And now that that field was destroyed, the government confirmed that a camp will soon be rebuilt and called for more active participation from the European Union.
The European Commission advanced to September 23 the presentation of its long-awaited draft reform of migration policy in the EU.
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