Footage emerges from Moria refugee camp showing shocking conditions
US-based internet media company BuzzFeed has published a series of photographs and videos shot by residents inside the government-run Moria refugee and migrant processing center on the eastern Aegean island of Lesvos.
The scenes of misery and squalor are also evident in a report on Deutsche Welle on Monday, which was International Migrants Day, showing footage taken by hidden camera inside the same facility.
BuzzFeed’s Ryan Broderick said in his report that a 25-year-old man from Iraq named Noor and a 27-year-old man from Syria named Ammar agreed to provide the reporter with videos from inside the fenced-in perimeter of the former army camp, which is run by the Greek military.
The footage, which Broderick also posed on his Twitter account, provides a rare glimpse at conditions inside the camp, which was originally built to accommodate some 2,000 migrants and refugees and is now home to around 6,000 people, including unaccompanied minors, children, pregnant women and disabled or elderly individuals.
Images of a shower area show a row of filthy stalls with doors hanging off their hinges, allowing little if any privacy. Many residents collect water in plastic bottles to bathe themselves rather than entering the showers, the witnesses inside the facility are quoted as saying after sending photographs of huge piles of plastic water bottled.
The toilets are so unsanitary, they add, that many residents prefer to go to the bathroom in the open air, in a part of an olive tree grove set aside for this purpose.
Streets in the camp flood in the rain and are lined with tents that may accommodate more than one family and have been strengthened to withstand winter conditions with plastic sheets.
In another video, two police officers are seen forcibly carrying a man by his arms and leg and shouting abuse at him after breaking up a fight between residents.
Several international rights groups have decried conditions at Moria for months, calling on the Greek government to ease overcrowding and improve accommodation and sanitation standards.
Squalid and cramped conditions have also led to riots and fights breaking out inside the facility.
Here's a video of a crowd of refugees shaking the barbed wire fence of #MoriaCamp chanting "Moria no good." pic.twitter.com/1x4zCbBTWd
— Ryan Broderick (@broderick) December 17, 2017
Here's a good look inside the fenced-off center of #MoriaCamp. Most walls are lined with overflowing garbage and the summer tents have been "winterized" by adding tarps made from the essentially the same material as Ikea bags. pic.twitter.com/EiofA9OJ3O
— Ryan Broderick (@broderick) December 17, 2017
