Liz Fekete
As refugees and migrants die in Greece’s ‘hotspots’, military camps and in transit, the EU, the UNHCR and Greek institutions must be held to account.
Camps in Greece in January 2017 (Picture credit: Giorgos Kosmopoulos @GiorgosKosmop)
When the European Commission announced, in September 2015, a plan to create hotspots to fingerprint, screen and register refugees arriving in Greece and Italy, many of the larger humanitarian agencies welcomed the development, hopeful that at last some official framework for reception had been agreed. Eighteen months later, and a year after the EU-Turkey deal turned reception into detention, the situation on the Greek islands and in northern Greece remains dire for those refugees who have not been moved out of flimsy tents into prefabricated heated containers or formal housing. In the face of the Arctic blast and unusually strong snowfalls, hotspots have become death traps and refugees are fighting for survival.
These hotspots are not only places of great misery, but they are zones where truth and transparency are in very short supply. The IRR has been trying to ascertain the circumstances in which thirteen refugees and migrants died since April 2016 in Greece, with six of these deaths occurring in hotspots. In only one of these cases are we in a position to provide the full name of the deceased; the only available identifier is nationality. At least six of the dead were refugees from Syria, including Syrian Kurds, three were from Afghanistan. Five of the dead were living at the hotspot at Moria, on the Greek island of Lesbos where over 3,000 refugees are accommodated, well above stated capacity. Those who died here did so because the heaters and gas canisters they had obtained in order to keep warm or cook food were faulty, or used in dangerous situations.
Camps in Greece in January 2017 (Picture credit: Giorgos Kosmopoulos @GiorgosKosmop)
An Iraqi man died of a cardiac arrest at a hotspot in Samos (refugee population around 1,800 in a place designed for less than half that number). Since the Idomeni makeshift migrant camp close to the Macedonian border was cleared by police in May 2016, sub-standard government refugee camps lacking basic amenities have been set up, with three of the dead living in such facilities around Thessaloniki. The oldest to die was a grandmother of 66, the youngest a two-month-old baby. There are three children amongst the dead. The remaining two deaths we have recorded were of men who died of hypothermia after having crossed from Turkey via the river Evros. It’s likely that they made the perilous crossing in order to avoid being detained in the hotspots on the Greek islands. Autopsy results are shrouded in secrecy. Nevertheless, the facts speak for themselves. Overcrowded, unprotected and dangerous conditions are all symptoms of institutional neglect. The simple truth is that the securitisation of asylum policy has come at the expense of refugee protection, as well as basic human rights.
Here is the list of the deceased:
Continue reading “(Institute of Race Relations) “No one accepts responsibility:” thirteen refugees dead in Greece”
