At Moria camp on the Greek island of Lesbos, there is deadly violence, overcrowding, appalling sanitary conditions and now a charity says children as young as 10 are attempting suicide. The Victoria Derbyshire programme has been given rare access inside.
“We are always ready to escape, 24 hours a day we have our children ready,” says Sara Khan, originally from Afghanistan. “The violence means our little ones don’t get to sleep.” Sara explains that her family spend all day queuing for food at the camp and all night ready to run – in fear of the fights that break out constantly.
Conditions are so appalling that charities have actually left in protest.
The place smells of raw sewage, and there are around 70 people per toilet, according to medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF).
Some people live in mobile cabins, but rammed in-between them all are tents and tarpaulin sheets – homes for those who cannot obtain any official living space. The camp is also now sprawling into surrounding countryside. One tent houses 17 people – four families under one canvas.
MSF says there are currently more than 8,000 people crammed into Moria camp, which was supposed to house 3,000. A mum describes faeces on the floor of the shelter that she lives in with her tiny 12-day-old baby.
The violence in the camp is extreme. In May, hundreds of Kurdish people fled because of a huge battle largely between Arab and Kurdish men.
Ali, who has now left the camp, says when he got to Moria with his family “we found that there was already existing sectarianism and racism, whether it was between Sunnis and Shias, or Kurds, Arabs and Afghans”.
He adds that conflict between rebel groups in Syria has also landed inside the gates of the refugee camp.
“It’s like the war in Syria and even uglier. We heard about rape cases in there, sexual harassment,” he says.
Source: BBC
