Greece’s biggest migrant camp is a mental health crisis, aid groups say

Aid groups are warning of a growing safety and mental health crisis in Greece’s largest migrant camp, a combustible place where violence, attempted suicide, untreated psychological trauma, and unsanitary conditions are commonplace, even as the government takes steps to relieve dangerous overcrowding.

At the camp, called Moria, which is on the island of Lesbos, “more than 8,500 people are crammed into a site which only has the capacity to host 3,100,” the International Rescue Committee, one of the aid groups operating there, stated in a report released Tuesday.

There is only one shower for every 84 people and one toilet for every 72 people, the report said, and “the sewage system is so overwhelmed that raw sewage has been known to reach the mattresses where children sleep.”

The alarms about conditions on Lesbos came as other European countries are taking increasingly tough stands against migrants.

Migrants wash their clothes and fill bottles with water at a makeshift camp next to the Moria camp for refugees and migrants on the island of Lesbos, Greece, Sep 18, 2018. REUTERS

On Monday, Italy’s government adopted a proposal by the hard-line, anti-immigrant interior minister, Matteo Salvini, to cut the number of asylum-seekers it admits and double the amount of time the authorities can hold migrants in detention, awaiting deportation.

And on Tuesday, France refused to allow a ship operated by aid groups, carrying migrants who were rescued from the Mediterranean Sea, to dock in Marseille.

Later in the day, France and other European countries reached a deal to have the migrants on the ship land in Malta and then be relocated across Europe.

Conditions in the Moria camp have drawn condemnation for years, but the complaints have grown more urgent as the thinly spread aid workers have recounted assaults and suicide attempts even by preadolescent children. They have warned of a serious threat of major rioting.

Last week, the group Doctors Without Borders issued a statement describing “severe deterioration of health and mental health” and “frequent violence in all its forms” in the camp, where there are many people who have fled violence in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.

The week before, 19 aid groups signed a joint letter calling on the Greek government to correct “the shameful conditions” at Moria.

© 2018 New York Times News Service