Doctors, lawyers and charities are criticising the tent city newly erected on Lesvos for refugees made shelterless by the fire that incinerated the vastly overcrowded Moria camp.
A German doctor, Gerhard Traber, says “People are telling us they’re not allowed to take anything with them into the new camp, everything was being taken off them.”
The Doctors Without Borders charity said their helpers were refused access to the refugees. Lawyer Elli Kriona said the new camp is also “equipped way below standard”, without showers, for example. The worry is, she said, that the new camp would be an internment camp.
By Thursday special police had taken 3,000 refugees into the tent city. That left 9,000 still shelterless outside, camping on roadsides, squares, in fields and woods. Many are refusing to move into the new tents, saying they fear being locked in.
The German government funded emergency aid organisation THW has sent aid convoys delivering 530 tents, 12,000 sleeping bags and 1,400 field beds.
The new camp, Kara Tepe, is on the fringe of the island capital, Mytilini, and reports on its intake capacity vary from 5,000 to 8,000.
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The refugees want to move to mainland Greece and then on to other EU countries, preferably to Germany. But the EU refugee pact requires that they stay on the Greek islands until their applications for asylum have been processed.
Gerd Höhler, an Athens based German correspondent who reports for various media, writes that an extra 70 female police officers were flown to Lesvos from Athens and Thessaloniki to move the families and the action went off peacefully. Strong riot police units stayed in the background.
The Greek government is promising the people who move into Kara Tepe priority processing of their applications, Höhler writes. Many asylum applications have taken years to process, one reason being that there were not enough staff to work on them.
Michalis Chrisochoidis, Minister for Citizen Protection, has said about 6,000 applications would be through by Christmas and the remainder by Easter 2021. That would enable all applicants now waiting to leave the island.
READ MORE: Victoria-based refugee group offers support for Moria camp refugees
Höhler writes that lawyers on Lesvos complain that they have no access to the new camp, preventing their advising the asylum seekers.
From a Neos Kosmos reader in Germany