One year after the Moria fire: misery as a permanent condition


Status: 08.09.2021 00:09

The notorious refugee camp in Moria burned down a year ago. The EU has made a lot of money available for the construction of a new warehouse – but nothing has happened so far.

By Verena Schälters, ARD-Studio Rome

The fire broke out in the middle of the night. In a panic, people abandoned everything in order to get to safety. In the fire in the notorious Moria refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos, almost 13,000 people became homeless in one fell swoop.

Shukran Shirzad and his wife Lida also witnessed the fire. The two are sitting in front of the tent that has been their home for almost a year. After the fire, they were placed in the makeshift camp in Kara Tepe.

Kara Tepe: Interviews not wanted

An interview with the two is impossible here. Journalists cannot move freely in the camp, they are accompanied by the police every step of the way. As soon as they see a microphone, the police intervene.

But Shukran Shirzad is ready to meet outside the camp. He and his wife are artists, he says. They have been on Lesbos for two years now. There was a kind of school in Moria, where they would have given painting lessons and designed T-shirts with their students. But the fire destroyed everything, says Shirzad: “250 pictures and 150 T-shirts, everything gone.”

Image: DIMITRIS TOSIDIS / EPA-EFE / Shutter

No future in Afghanistan

He and his wife applied for asylum twice, both times their application was rejected. But a return to Afghanistan is not an option for them. “The situation in Afghanistan is difficult because of the Taliban, for my wife, but also for me. I was a singer in Kabul, now I paint.”

He shows a video on his cell phone: Back then in Afghanistan he even took part in a casting show. But for people like him, his homeland is not a good place, says Shirzad. At least they are safe in Kara Tepe.

But the conditions in the camp are difficult – especially in winter. After all, some tents have now been replaced by containers. However, there is still hardly any electricity and no heating. And when it rains, there is a risk that the camp will be flooded – as happened often last winter.

Lots of money from the EU for a new camp

The city hall of Mytilene, the capital of Lesbos, knows about the problems. There, however, they quarrel less with the catastrophic conditions in the camp than with the location: too close to the city.

“We were against the establishment of this camp from the start,” says Mayor Stratis Kyteles. It is located in the middle of an inhabited area and clearly causes safety and hygiene problems – for the immigrants, but also for the locals.

Last March, EU Commissioner Ylva Johansson visited the island and promised the Greek government more than 155 million euros for the construction of two new camps on the islands of Lesbos and Chios. The Greek government then announced that the new camp on Lesbos would be completed by September.

Refugees should become invisible

“For that matter, the local council has decided to build a closed structure outside of the residential area,” says Kyteles. According to him, a maximum of 3000 “guests” should be accommodated there.

Basically, they want to finally get rid of the image of the refugee hotspot. Because since the refugee crisis, tourism has slumped drastically. But the EU is opposed to simply locking the refugees away in closed, prison-like facilities.

About 30 kilometers northeast of Mytilene, a gravel road leads deep into a forest area. The journey from the capital to the middle of nowhere takes around 40 minutes. At some point you reach an area that is fenced off by wire mesh. Birds circling over the area – it is the Lesvos rubbish dump.

Somewhere near the island’s garbage dump, the new warehouse should have been built long ago. But nothing can be seen yet.

New camp next to the landfill

“Behind the garbage dump. There is a ravine over there, but I don’t know the exact location,” says Christos Tsivgoulis, chairman of the small community of Komi on Lesbos, and points to the dense, untouched forest. Now at the latest it is obvious: the construction work has not even started.

Tsivgoulis hopes it stays that way. He is against even building a new camp on Lesbos: “When the migrants came in 2015, we took them in and helped them by all means, all of us. But now the people are tired, it can’t go on like this.” A solution must be found for both the refugees and the local population, he demands.

But that still seems a long way off after all these years. The reason is not only the resistance of the local authorities, but also the cumbersome bureaucracy both on the part of the EU and on the part of the Greek government

For the refugees on Lesbos, this means: They must prepare for another harsh winter in the Kara Tepe camp.



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