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The people of the Moria camp lived in extremely difficult conditions, explains Christina Psarra, director of Doctors Without Borders in Greece, in an interview. Access by aid organizations was also increasingly restricted.
tagesschau.de: What is the current situation in the Moria refugee camp?
Christina Psarra: Our team has been at the scene since the fires broke out. We are talking about a total disaster. There are some spots that are not affected, but otherwise everything is completely burned. More than 12,000 people are now on the streets. Until now, there is no official plan on how to deal with this. We are quite concerned because at the moment there is no place for people to go.
tagesschau.de: What do you know about the cause of the fire? Some reports say refugees started fires, others say Lesbos residents set the camp on fire from outside.
Psarra: We also get conflicting information on this. Our teams saw that there were many fires in many places at the same time. We will have to wait and see what the research shows. We still don’t know if people were injured by the fires. We are in contact with local hospitals. The Moria camp was built for 3,000 people, but there were more than 12,000. And most of them lived in tents in an open area in the mountains. Right now we don’t even know where all these people are. Some went to the mountains, others to the neighboring city of Mytilene here on Lesbos.
tagesschau.de: What is being done now to help people?
Psarra: Nothing specific is being done at this time to help people. More police were sent from Athens to Lesbos. There are rumors that a state of emergency will be declared on the island. But we don’t know what that means. We are there and we try to help. The camp burned down completely. It is not about setting up a new tent here or there. The camp must be completely rebuilt.
Limited access for aid organizations
tagesschau.de: What was the situation like before the fire?
Psarra: Our work there has been very limited lately. In early summer, we installed a 60-bed isolation room for Covid-19 cases. We had to close them by order of the authorities. Medical care in the field was poor. People lived huddled together in tents in extremely difficult conditions.
tagesschau.de: Did aid organizations have free access to the field?
Psarra: They had access, but that was becoming more and more restricted. For months we have been waiting for an action plan for a possible Covid-19 outbreak. Our clinic was closed, another clinic was not equipped. We have warned again and again and now we have the worst case scenario.
The authorities closed the clinic for patients with Covid-19
tagesschau.de: What has to happen now?
Psarra: The first thing to do is take care of people. Then, people infected with Corona must be found and quarantined. There have been 35 confirmed cases of Covid-19 there. So the situation must be fundamentally improved. People lived in the countryside for years in unworthy conditions.
tagesschau.de: What do you expect from the international community, from Brussels and from the EU?
Psarra: The most important thing now is to help people. And then it should be clear that a situation like Moria’s should not be repeated. The living conditions there were completely unacceptable. This situation was an embarrassment to all of us.
Reinhard Baumgarten conducted the interview
