German state ready to take in 1,000 refugees from Moria
September 9, 2020
The German state of North Rhine-Westphalia has said it's willing in 1,000 refugees displaced from their homes in a camp in a major fire on the island of Lesbos. Foreign Minister Maas called on other EU states to help.
Image: Getty Images/AFP/M. Lagoutaris
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Germany's most-populous state of North Rhine-Westphalia will take in up to 1,000 of the migrants displaced after a fire tore through a refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos, State Premier Armin Laschet announced Wednesday.
"The pictures from Moria are disturbing. The people running from the fire have lost everything, even the roof over their heads," Laschet said in a statement.
German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas has also called for other European Union countries to take in migrants.
"With the European Commission and EU member states, we need to clarify as quickly as possible how we can support Greece. This also involved other willing countries taking in migrants in the EU."
German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer also formally offered Greece help in dealing with the crisis, but did not specify whether Germany would be willing to take in more refugees. Instead, he offered "tents, medicine and everything that they need urgently now."
Over 12,000 migrants were displaced early in the hours of Wednesday morning when the fire spread through the camp, one of the largest in Greece. The cause of the fire is not yet known.
The former EU Commissioner for Migration and Home Affairs, Dimitris Avramopoulos, told DW the situation in Moria was "dire."
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"It is a European issue," he said. "And the European Union has to stand by Greece and these were the assurances given today by the competent European commissioners."
He also admitted that situations in the camp, which has been described as over-crowded, were poor, but pointed the finger at a lack of European involvement in refugee camps.
"It has not been easy to handle this delicate situation," Avramopoulos explained. "The Greek authorities have provided whatever they could for these desperate people. But it is true to say that a number of migrants were stuck and the hotspots were overwhelmed by the big number of new arrivals."
Jan Egeland, secretary-general of the Norwegian Refugee Council and former head of United Nations humanitarian and relief efforts, said he hopes the fire will finally get EU leaders to take action to help the people who lived in the camp.
"This was a time bomb, now it has gone off and hopefully this is the wake-up call that the leaderships in the European capitals need," he told DW. "The people of Moria should have been re-located years ago.
"Remember when the banks were threatened some years back, there were meetings every week to save the banks. Let's have meetings now to save human lives," he added.
EU to transfer migrants to mainland Greece
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen wrote on Twitter that she was "deeply sorrowed" by news of the blaze.
EU Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson confirmed the bloc would finance "the immediate transfer and accommodation on the mainland of the camp's remaining 400 unaccompanied teenagers and children."
The UN estimates that there are around 4,000 children among those displaced by the blaze.
"We have been informed about reports of tensions between people in the neighboring villages and asylum seekers who were trying to reach Mytilene's town," the UN's refugee agency said in a statement.
The migrants were being held on a highway near the camp by Greek security forces.
Hell on earth — Greece's Moria refugee camp and its tortured history
The Moria refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos has burned to the ground. The situation is serious but it was already grave before fire swept through Europe's largest — and most overcrowded — refugee camp.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/P. Balaskas
The night it all burned down
Fire broke out in a number of spots around the Moria refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos late on the night of Tuesday, September 8. That has led authorities to suspect arson. Some in the camp have suggested locals set the fires but there are other reports that point to migrants themselves.
Image: Getty Images/AFP/M. Lagoutaris
Into the darkness
All of the inhabitants of the hopelessly overcrowded camp managed to get to safety. According to media reports, many migrants fled into the hills and forests nearby. Some are said to have begun walking to Mytilene, the island's capital. There have been no reports of death or injury.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/P. Balaskas
Life threatening
Moria was originally designed to hold up to 2,800 people. At the time the fires broke out it held some 12,600. Living conditions in the camp were catastrophic before the fire. Looking at this photo taken in its aftermath, it is glaringly apparent that no one will be able to live there again any time soon — at least not under humane conditions.
Image: Reuters/A. Konstantinidis
Pixelated camp
Anyone hoping to see satellite images on Google Maps of the camp, located on the eastern shore of Lesbos, just 15 kilometers from the Turkish coast, is out of luck. The site has been pixilated. "Google itself does not pixelate satellite images," the company told DW, referring to third-party entities that supply the satellite imagery. It is unknown why the camp has been digitally altered.
Image: 2020 CNES/Airbus, European Space Imaging, Maxar Technologies
A clear image
This aerial view of the same area shows that the camp has been greatly expanded. In the earlier Google Maps image, the house with the red roof stands alone but in the more recent photo it seems to have been swallowed up by the camp.
Image: DW/D. Tosidis
Looking into the past
The camp is not pixelated on Google Street View. Whereas the pixilated satellite images on Google Maps are from 2020, those on Street View are from December 2011 — before there was even a camp. At the time, the only thing there was an old military barracks. It was not until October 2015 that Greece began registering asylum-seekers at the site before taking them to the mainland.
Image: 2020 Google
From stopover to longterm stays
When this photo was taken in October 2015, refugees only stayed at the camp for a short time. That changed drastically in March 2016, when the EU signed its so-called refugee deal with Turkey. Since then, refugees have had to endure long stays before being sent to other EU countries or being deported.
Image: DW/D. Cupolo
Waiting and waiting and waiting
As a result of the EU-Turkey deal, refugees are no longer allowed to travel to the Greek mainland because Turkey would then no longer be obliged to take them. But as EU states disagree over who should take how many refugees, people remain in the camp for longer and longer periods of time. The overcrowded camp is populated by many people from a wide range of nations — no wonder there are tensions.
Image: DW/D. Cupolo
When tensions boil over
Those tensions first erupted in September 2016, in the form of violent conflicts during which fires were set and much of the camp was destroyed. At the time, there were only 3,000 migrants in the camp. A few months later, several hundred migrants set fire to EU asylum agency containers in the camp in protest to the slow pace of asylum application processing.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/M. Schwarz
Fire and death
There was another major fire at Moria in September 2019. What started as a blaze in an adjacent olive orchard quickly spread to the camp itself. Less than half an hour later, another fire broke out in the camp, killing a mother and her infant child. At the time, Moria housed some 12,000 people.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo
Too dangerous to visit
In August, North Rhine-Westphalia State Premiere Armin Laschet visited the camp. His state is the most populous in Germany and the politician expressed a desire to see the so-called wild section of the camp located outside its enclosed boundaries. However, that part of the visit was quickly cancelled for safety reasons as the overall mood was again tense, with many migrants chanting "Free Moria."
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/D. Hülsmeier
Now what?
A overcrowded camp with appalling sanitation and medical conditions as well as ethnic tensions — and then the first coronavirus infections — life at the Moria refugee camp was dire before this week's blaze. But what will happen now? Is this the end of Moria, or perhaps the moment to create new, more humane living conditions? It is devastating that no one can answer this question.
