Kouroublis: Closed borders made refugee camp a Dachau

By Vasiliki Mitsiniotou

ATHENS

Visiting the Idomeni refugee camp at the northern Greek border Friday, Greek Interior Minister Panagiotis Kouroublis compared it to a Nazi concentration camp.

“I do not hesitate to say that this is a modern Dachau, [as a] result of the closed-borders logic,” he said.

"We believed in a Europe of open borders, a Europe which has constantly in mind that the blood that was shed due to nationalism should not be shed again. Today, unfortunately, Europe sees a peculiar nationalism awaking again against persecuted peoples,” he added.

Kouroublis met with members of the UN refugee agency and Doctors Without Borders and spoke with refugees and police about camp conditions and the problems that need to be addressed.

He then announced that measures will be taken to improve the camp’s sanitation and safety conditions. “We are here to convince refugees and immigrants to move to accommodation sites where conditions are better and let them know that if borders open up again they will not lose their turn to cross,” he said.

Due to the closed-border policy imposed by Austria and Balkan countries earlier this month, a bottleneck at Idomeni, on the border with Macedonia, has created a humanitarian crisis.

At the transit camp of Idomeni, more than 12,000 people remain, hoping to cross the border soon despite a lack of adequate shelter and torrential rains. Late Thursday night, tension broke at the camp when a man accused of trying to rape a seven-year-old girl was assaulted by other refugees.

However, there was actually no rape attempt, according to the police, who spoke to everyone involved in the incident, and the parents did not press charges.

Over 46,000 refugees are currently “trapped” in Greece, unable to continue their journey into Europe, according to recent Interior Ministry data.

At the same time, the refugee influx is continuing. The Ariadni ferry carrying 638 refugees and migrants from two islands in the eastern Aegean Sea docked at the port of Piraeus early Friday, while two more ferries with 84 people in total are expected later in the day.

According to the Piraeus Port Authority, the number of refugees and migrants hosted in the port’s passenger stations and other facilities on Thursday rose to 4,500.

The huge refugee influx and the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Greece has spurred activists all over Europe. Volunteers from the Safe Passage-Stop Wars initiative placed a banner on the Acropolis in Athens Friday, demanding open borders and safe passage to refugees and an end to war.