Athens announced plans to shut down several of its overcrowded migrant camps scattered across the Aegean islands and replace them with five ‘closed detention facilities’ as the embattled EU member state struggles to cope with the ongoing migrant invasion.
The facilities, which are planned to be built on the islands of Samos, Chios, Lesvos, Kos, and Leros, will have space to house between 1,000 and 5,000 people each, Greek morning newspaper Kathimerini reports.
Moria, the most infamous migrant camp on the Greek islands – perhaps the most infamous migrant camp in the entire European Union – is set to be one of the camps that’s shut down.
In October, two people were killed in Moria after migrants staying at the camp set fire to housing units and physically prevented firefighters from putting the fire out. Later the same day, the camp saw group clashes between migrants with disparate ethnoreligious identities.
Although Moria was originally designed to accommodate roughly 3,000 individuals, as of early October, the number of people living in the camp had swelled to nearly 15,000.
Earlier this month, one senior Greek government official – speaking on the condition of anonymity – said that the government had plans to transfer 5,000 migrants currently housed in camps scattered across its islands over to the mainland in the next two weeks.
Athens has also hinted that it would like to see 20,000 migrants moved to the mainland by the end of this year. As of this report, around 90,000 migrants are housed in more than 50 camps located across Greece’s mainland, its five Aegean islands, and northern frontiers.
This year alone, nearly 22,000 migrants have landed in Greece, the highest number of migrant arrivals since the height of the migrant crisis in 2015-2016, when more than a million migrants made their way into Europe mainly from the Middle East and North Africa.
Source : https://voiceofeurope.com/2019/11/greece-government-to-replace-overcrowded-asylum-centers-with-closed-detention-facilities/
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