A day after a fire broke out near a migrant camp on Samos that houses some 4,600 people, 13 migrants were detained on the island. Also on Wednesday, police arrested six people in connection with the Moria fires from last week. Lockdowns remain in place on at least two of the five Greek Aegean islands.
Greece's President Katerina Sakellaropoulou has met with two of the three famous 'Lesbos grandmas' on the Aegean island. The president paid tribute to the three women during a tour of the northeast Aegean to check in on the status of the refugee situation there.
Following a fire at a migrant camp on the island of Samos, the Greek government has announced that it intends to close the camp by the end of the year.
Scores of asylum seekers were left homeless when two fires tore through a migrant camp on the Greek island of Samos, a migration ministry official said Monday.
The civil liberties commission of the European Parliament has called on the EU to take immediate action to prevent an outbreak of Covid-19 among refugees and migrants in the overcrowded camps on the Greek islands.
Cruises across Europe have been suspended because of the coronavirus emergency. Migrant sea rescue organization Sea-Watch wants the empty cruise ships to be used to evacuate migrants from the Greek islands.
Migrants camps on the Greek islands have been put on lockdown for at least two weeks to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus. No volunteers will be allowed in the camps, and school classes for migrant children have been suspended.
Several Greek islands, including Lesbos, have launched a labor stoppage following "extremely aggressive" clashes between police and anti-refugee protesters. Locals continue to call for an end to migrant camps.
Out of protest against government plans to build a network of detention camps on the Greek Aegean islands to replace overcrowded existing ones, hundreds of islanders on Thursday demonstrated in central Athens. They announced legal challenges and obstruction of the construction of the new facilities.
UNHCR is appealing to Greek authorities to increase efforts to put an end to "alarming" overcrowding and precarious conditions for migrants staying on the Greek islands of Lesbos, Chios, Samos, Kos, and Leros.
In Vathy, in the overcrowded migrant camp on the Greek island of Samos, news agencies are reporting that riots have broken out. Fires were started and the police were met with stones and protests when they arrived to break up the unrest.
Greece is living a new migrant crisis. The number of people arriving, mainly on the islands close to Turkey, has more than doubled since July. The reception facilities on these islands are now massively overcrowded and conditions are deteriorating for the migrants and also for the islanders. John Laurenson sent this Postcard from Samos.