.
If the world’s attention was distracted from the thousands of Syrian and other refugees stranded under harsh conditions in Greece, it was at least momentarily called back by the fire that raged through the Moria camp on the island of Lesbos last week. That fire is just the latest manifestation of the frustration and despair being felt by both refugees and the Greek residents of the communities hosting them, which neither the Greek government nor the European Union have been able to adequately address.
Reporting on the Moria blaze, Greek media claims that rumors of a mass deportation touched off the violence that ultimately destroyed 60 percent of the shelters at the camp, with the stress weighing down on the camp’s 5,700 residents made worse by the lack of credible information about plans for their future. That uncertainty had been fueled by the Greek government’s mismanagement of their status, with poor conditions drawing belated international attention to the plight of nearly 60,000 refugees stranded in Greece since the EU-Turkey deal and its provisions to effectively trap asylum seekers there.
In fairness to Athens, Greece has been asked to shoulder the burden since the Balkan migration route was sealed off to the north by Macedonia, Slovenia and Hungary. While the EU negotiated a multibillion Euro aid package with Turkey to keep refugees and migrants on the eastern side of the Aegean, there has been little movement in terms of sending back migrants who do not qualify for asylum. Greece, still struggling to keep up with the debt agreements it has reached with international creditors, has neither the resources nor the political will to provide asylum seekers with adequate facilities, human rights protections, or even the kind of information that would have prevented the Moria incident from taking place. Meanwhile, the number of asylum seekers crossing into Greece is again on the rise. As Erdogan’s crackdown on enemies real and imagined continues, Turkey’s agreement with Europe is becoming harder and harder for both Ankara and Brussels to defend.
Finding themselves in a bind, Greek leader Alexis Tsipras and his government has taken a panicked, any-port-in-a-storm approach. Improvising a response on the fly, Greek officials responded to the destruction at Moria by chartering passenger ferries to house those displaced by the fire. Beyond this one instance, refugees and migrants have already been living in hotels, train stations, and homeless shelters across Greece. Even the Skaramangas shipyards, a sensitive military installation which previously drew controversy for attempts by Greek officials to expropriate its owners and sell it to the Chinese, are being used for temporary housing.
The plight of those trapped in Greece has been made possible in equal measure by an ineffectual European response. Less than three percent of the 160,000 asylum seekers the EU hopes to resettle across Europe by next September have moved beyond southern Europe, and the Union’s current political climate makes further progress impossible. While Europe’s member states grumble, their burden represents just a small minority of the nearly five million Syrians alone that have been warehoused across the region. Turkey, for the sake of comparison, is currently hosting 2.5 million primarily Syrian refugees on its own.
Brussels and the European member states remain at an unresolved impasse, one that Tsipras decries for fraying European bonds on account of the xenophobia and right-wing politics that have left Greece behind while “Europe” protects itself. While Greece certainly needs more help from the rest of the European bloc, limited means do not absolve the Tsipras government of a responsibility to exercise basic decency in its approach to asylum seekers.
The current system’s failings are especially grave with respect to refugee and migrant children, an alarming number of whom are unaccompanied in their travels and face greater risks than adult counterparts. As Human Rights Watch uncovered, more than 3,300 children who have been registered in Greek camps this year are being detained in police custody out of a sheer lack of available housing. HRW found children being detained far longer than applicable statutes allow, despite official Greek claims that their detention is unavoidable. Their care – and that of refugees and migrants in general – fails to suggest that Greece has improved its approach to handling asylum seekers in recent years, with complaints dating back to well before the start of the current crisis. Lawsuits filed in European courts have even shown that a return of asylum seekers from Macedonia to substandard conditions in Greece, without recourse, violates the European Convention on Human Rights.
Greece is obviously ill-equipped to take in new refugees, and yet new arrivals are arriving in greater numbers as the EU-Turkey agreement slowly unravels. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s authoritarian government has bristled at European criticism of its heavy-handed response to last July’s abortive military coup. Even though the Union has now begun funding of a 348 million Euro pre-paid card program to help Syrians in Turkey pay for their daily needs, those who were still considering braving the Aegean voyage have come to realize that the threat of deportation from Greece was nothing but an empty threat.
If the agreement does ultimately collapse and the surge of arrivals resumes, Greece will ultimately find itself by a refugee crisis its own leaders seem ill-prepared for and the rest of the European community has been reticent to wade into. With the rise of the far right across the Continent and the fear of new arrivals already helping propel the Brexit side to victory in Britain’s recent referendum, it is highly unlikely that the Syrians, Afghans, and others currently stuck in Greece will be able to make any progress toward their final destinations. Given the poor conditions those thousands already find themselves in, it is hard to imagine how much worse the situation will get if many more suddenly arrive.
The views presented in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the views of any other organization.
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Greece's Forgotten Crisis
September 29, 2016
If the world’s attention was distracted from the thousands of Syrian and other refugees stranded under harsh conditions in Greece, it was at least momentarily called back by the fire that raged through the Moria camp on the island of Lesbos last week. That fire is just the latest manifestation of the frustration and despair being felt by both refugees and the Greek residents of the communities hosting them, which neither the Greek government nor the European Union have been able to adequately address.
Reporting on the Moria blaze, Greek media claims that rumors of a mass deportation touched off the violence that ultimately destroyed 60 percent of the shelters at the camp, with the stress weighing down on the camp’s 5,700 residents made worse by the lack of credible information about plans for their future. That uncertainty had been fueled by the Greek government’s mismanagement of their status, with poor conditions drawing belated international attention to the plight of nearly 60,000 refugees stranded in Greece since the EU-Turkey deal and its provisions to effectively trap asylum seekers there.
In fairness to Athens, Greece has been asked to shoulder the burden since the Balkan migration route was sealed off to the north by Macedonia, Slovenia and Hungary. While the EU negotiated a multibillion Euro aid package with Turkey to keep refugees and migrants on the eastern side of the Aegean, there has been little movement in terms of sending back migrants who do not qualify for asylum. Greece, still struggling to keep up with the debt agreements it has reached with international creditors, has neither the resources nor the political will to provide asylum seekers with adequate facilities, human rights protections, or even the kind of information that would have prevented the Moria incident from taking place. Meanwhile, the number of asylum seekers crossing into Greece is again on the rise. As Erdogan’s crackdown on enemies real and imagined continues, Turkey’s agreement with Europe is becoming harder and harder for both Ankara and Brussels to defend.
Finding themselves in a bind, Greek leader Alexis Tsipras and his government has taken a panicked, any-port-in-a-storm approach. Improvising a response on the fly, Greek officials responded to the destruction at Moria by chartering passenger ferries to house those displaced by the fire. Beyond this one instance, refugees and migrants have already been living in hotels, train stations, and homeless shelters across Greece. Even the Skaramangas shipyards, a sensitive military installation which previously drew controversy for attempts by Greek officials to expropriate its owners and sell it to the Chinese, are being used for temporary housing.
The plight of those trapped in Greece has been made possible in equal measure by an ineffectual European response. Less than three percent of the 160,000 asylum seekers the EU hopes to resettle across Europe by next September have moved beyond southern Europe, and the Union’s current political climate makes further progress impossible. While Europe’s member states grumble, their burden represents just a small minority of the nearly five million Syrians alone that have been warehoused across the region. Turkey, for the sake of comparison, is currently hosting 2.5 million primarily Syrian refugees on its own.
Brussels and the European member states remain at an unresolved impasse, one that Tsipras decries for fraying European bonds on account of the xenophobia and right-wing politics that have left Greece behind while “Europe” protects itself. While Greece certainly needs more help from the rest of the European bloc, limited means do not absolve the Tsipras government of a responsibility to exercise basic decency in its approach to asylum seekers.
The current system’s failings are especially grave with respect to refugee and migrant children, an alarming number of whom are unaccompanied in their travels and face greater risks than adult counterparts. As Human Rights Watch uncovered, more than 3,300 children who have been registered in Greek camps this year are being detained in police custody out of a sheer lack of available housing. HRW found children being detained far longer than applicable statutes allow, despite official Greek claims that their detention is unavoidable. Their care – and that of refugees and migrants in general – fails to suggest that Greece has improved its approach to handling asylum seekers in recent years, with complaints dating back to well before the start of the current crisis. Lawsuits filed in European courts have even shown that a return of asylum seekers from Macedonia to substandard conditions in Greece, without recourse, violates the European Convention on Human Rights.
Greece is obviously ill-equipped to take in new refugees, and yet new arrivals are arriving in greater numbers as the EU-Turkey agreement slowly unravels. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s authoritarian government has bristled at European criticism of its heavy-handed response to last July’s abortive military coup. Even though the Union has now begun funding of a 348 million Euro pre-paid card program to help Syrians in Turkey pay for their daily needs, those who were still considering braving the Aegean voyage have come to realize that the threat of deportation from Greece was nothing but an empty threat.
If the agreement does ultimately collapse and the surge of arrivals resumes, Greece will ultimately find itself by a refugee crisis its own leaders seem ill-prepared for and the rest of the European community has been reticent to wade into. With the rise of the far right across the Continent and the fear of new arrivals already helping propel the Brexit side to victory in Britain’s recent referendum, it is highly unlikely that the Syrians, Afghans, and others currently stuck in Greece will be able to make any progress toward their final destinations. Given the poor conditions those thousands already find themselves in, it is hard to imagine how much worse the situation will get if many more suddenly arrive.
The views presented in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the views of any other organization.
