Lesvos: Visiting the Tiny Greek Island Receiving Tens of Thousands of Refugees
20th June 2015
The overcrowded makeshift camp, lacking bathrooms, food and blankets, is not how the refugees imagined Europe. But Greece is struggling to cope with the tide of boats arriving on its islands from neighbouring Turkey. Amid an economic crisis, the country has received more than 55,000 refugees since January, an almost tenfold increase on the 6,500 arrivals in the first five months of last year.
Lesvos, an island just five miles from the Turkish coast, has been bearing the brunt of the influx. More than 20,000 refugees – from Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and elsewhere – have arrived on its shores this year. With the peak season for migration set to begin, the island is already overwhelmed. Some 3,000 refugees are currently on Lesvos, according to the UN refugee agency UNHCR.
The island’s reception camp, close to the capital, Mytilene, has a capacity of 400 but now shelters more than 1,000 refugees waiting for the papers that will allow them to continue on to Athens.
Uh, excuse me? I have a question? Why are these people not being returned to Turkey? Put them in a landing craft, take them to the Turkish shore, encourage them to depart with, oh, say, cattle prods?
I see no indication that these are ethnic Greeks, so what’s the problem?
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