For many of those who live on the Greek Aegean island of Samos, it is obvious that the locals do not want more refugees, no new camps and want to live independently, as it was before the migrant crisis in 2015.
“We do not want Samos and other Aegean islands to become so-called warehouses for people.”
Just a stone’s throw from his village of Mitilini in the arid region of Zervu, more than one hundred containers have already been placed in a fence with barbed fences to become a new closed camp.
In an attempt to cope with overcrowding in Samos and other Aegean islands, where about 38,000 asylum seekers in Europe are squeezing into facilities that are designed for only 6,200 people, while the government plans to replace them with “closed camps”.
Also, work in other places was postponed, on Samos – off the coast of Turkey near Izmir – one of the closed camps for 1200 people is almost ready, a local source said.
But the villagers and their local representatives want nothing, instead they demand that all migrants simply leave.
“There is no more space on Samos, migrants are forced to leave the island,” said the 62-year-old local representative Ftinojannis.
Lesvos, Chios and Samos were major tourist centers, but in 2015 a stream of refugees fleeing the war in Syria and beyond fell on their shores, risking their lives and health to get to Europe and security.
In accordance with the EU agreement with Turkey in 2016 on the management of migrant flows, the Greek islands became large refugee processing centers, which outraged many locals who no longer feel safe due to the flow of migrants.