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Society

More Beefing About Inhuman Conditions in Greek Refugee Centers

February 19, 2019

The Council of Europe’s Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) said thousands of migrants and refugees in Greece are living in “inhuman and degrading” conditions in detention centers and camps.

According to Germany’s Deutsche Welle, the report highlighted a “lack of doctors, medicines, food and drinking water in several camps along Turkey’s land border, in Athens, and on the Aegean islands,” resulting in numerous health problems, including scabies from dirty blankets.

Similar complaints from more than 20 human rights groups and activists about what they said were brutal conditions in Greek refugee and migrant detention centers and camps were ignored by the ruling Radical Left SYRIZA,

The CPT report said one of the worst places – after the Moria camp on Lesbos was called by the BBC “the worst in the world” – was the so-called “Hot Spot” in Fylakio on Greece’s northeastern border with Turkey, where 95 migrants are said to be living in a single room.

The CPT said migrants and refugees are being detained for extended periods of time in “dirty” conditions at border patrol stations, and also cited abuse at Moria, where there have been frequent clashes with riot police, violence and sexual assaults, human rights groups said in their indictments of the government for failing to help.

The CPT report also added that “hundreds” of unaccompanied minors are being housed in the same rooms and facilities as single men, putting them at risk of sexual violence.

In December, 2018, activists made pleas to improve conditions at detention centers and camps housing more than 15,000 refugees and migrants on islands, and said the Greek government has allowed many to pushed away.

Human Rights Watch said many who tried to unlawfully enter Greece from nearby Turkey, by a perilous sea route to the islands, or crossing a dangerous river on the northern land border, were forced back.

The group said it based its conclusions on the responses of 26 migrants in Greece as well as in Turkey, which has taken back only a relative handful under a swap deal with the European Union largely in limbo with Greece overwhelmed by asylum seekers.

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