Greece has the means to help refugees on Lesbos – but does it have the will?

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Greece has the means to help refugees on Lesbos – but does it have the will?

Author: Sebastian Leape | The Guardian | 13 September 2018

A refugee stands next to a pool of mud at Moria refugee camp on the eastern Greek island of Lesbos

10-year-old child tried to commit suicide in a Greek refugee camp. Perhaps the most shocking thing about this story is that it is not new.

Routine police beatings and squalor in Moria, the largest camp on the island of Lesbos and home to about 8,000 people, have pushed the situation to breaking point.

Moria fails to meet just about every standard set by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). New arrivals are crammed into inadequate sports tents, or on to farmland where lighting has not been installed, and up to 190 refugees share one filthy toilet.

Last year, the mayor of Lesbos, Spyros Galinos, warned that the facility was starting to resemble “concentration camps, where all human dignity is denied”.

Yet Moria resides in plain sight, on a tourist island in the EU. It is full of people with the most extraordinary of life stories. Read more>>>