In the face of the terrible and life-threatening situation of the 12,500 refugees and asylum seekers on Lesbos, transform! europe, together with various NGOs and intellectuals throughout Europe and worldwide, supports this call for an immediate evacuation of Moria.
The refugees on Lesbos, ,whose only crime is to ask for international protection‘, are deprived of all access to sanitary facilities and exposed to attacks by right-wing extremists. The signatories therefore urgently demand the refugees‘ relocation to ,the various European cities ready to welcome them. The same goes for all the other camps in the Greek islands and on the continent’.
The recent fire in the Moria camp ,is the inevitable and foreseeable result of European policy which is mandating the confinement of tens of thousands of refugees in inhuman conditions on the Greek islands’. A policy whose consequences have been further exacerbated by the Greek governmnent‘s strategy to deal with the spread of the coronavirus by imposing, six months ago, ,extreme restrictions of movement‘ on the camp inhabitants’ and, most recently, ,a total sanitary lock-down whose sanitary necessity is more than problematic.’
The signatories affirm: ,This intolerable Situation, which is a disgrace to Europe, cannot continue one day more.’
View the full text of the call (English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Spanish) and add your signature here.
For background information: Watch the full webinar organised by transform! europe in March 2020 on the life-threatening situation for refugees and migrants in Greece: Greek Refugee Camps and the Covid-19 Crisis. Katerina Anastasiou, transform! europe, discusses with Gabriel Sakellaridis, Director of Amnesty International Greece, and Iasonas Apostolopoulos, activist of the civil society rescue mission Mediterranea:saving humans.