On September 8 at night the Hotspot of Moria on the island of Lesvos was set on fire and all
tends had been destroyed. The whole refugee population of about 13,000 women, men and
children were forced to flee while the Greek police hampered NGOs from bringing aid and
refugees from reaching the city of Mytilene by using tear gas. At the time of writing, they are
still homeless on the island, while the Greek authorities have started to build a new camp. The
fire happened one week after a 40-year-old Somali refugee was tested positive to Covid-19 and
the Greek authorities responded by putting the whole hotspot population in quarantine for two
weeks. Asylum seekers protested against the strict lockdown by organising a collective food
boycott action. Despite the general perception that it had rather successfully responded to the
Corona-outbreak, Greece came into the spotlight in Spring 2020 (Magra, 2020). Fears were
voiced that the virus could spread among asylum-seekers in refugee camps on the mainland
and in the hotspots on the Aegean islands.
The European Commission began to push for the relocation of unaccompanied minors
to other EU member states and for the transfer of the elderly from the hotspots on the islands
to apartments on the mainland (Resettlement EU, 2020). However, despite the transfers that
were realised, which were few in view of the overall number of people forced into the camps,
the sanitary and hygienic conditions in the overcrowded hotspots remained highly critical. Several NGOs that had provided medical assistance to asylum-seekers left the islands due to both
the Covid-19 emergency and government restrictions on non-governmental health provisions.
Following the ambivalent security-humanitarian narrative we described above, asylum-seekers
became targeted by protracted lockdown measures, purportedly designed to protect them from
the virus and, at once, avoid that they could infect the Greek population and tourists. These
measures were differentially applied. While the lockdown ended for Greek citizens on 4 May
2020, it was extended for asylum-seekers on the Greek islands until September. At the same
time, due to “health and safety” reasons, unlike Greek citizens or other foreigners in the country, asylum seekers were requested to wear masks both inside and in the premises of the
hotspots, and were subjected to a 150 Euro fine if they did not comply with the rule.
The confinement of asylum-seekers in the hotspot of Moria on the island of Lesvos was
enforced in a way that did not protect the health of those inside. As observed on 20 August,
women, men and children would still move within the hotspot and also beyond the fenced off
area frequently, just as they did before Covid-19, observed by Greek police officers who controlled the wearing of face masks. Thus, asylum-seekers were not segregated inside the hotspot
as such, even if the actual hotspot has come to greatly exceed its official perimeters: indeed,
with a population of about 13,000 people in August 2020, the hotspot as a fenced-off area has
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