Samos: Where Europe lost its values and moral responsibility

A new prison-like camp on the Greek island of Samos marks a dangerous turn of European migration policy.

As you read this, refugees and migrants on the Greek island of Samos are being transferred against their will from a makeshift camp to a new, prison-like centre. The new so-called “closed controlled access” camp is intended to house up to 3,000 people and includes an in-house detention facility for 900. The isolated facility, located far from any town, is surrounded by three rows of fencing topped with military-grade barbed wire and is equipped with a sophisticated surveillance system.

The Greek and European authorities present this new camp as a humanitarian success story. It is the opposite: a state-imposed segregation of people who are being denied their right to seek asylum, medical care and human dignity. These are families and individuals whose only purported “crime” is seeking protection, safety, refugee status and a better life in Europe.

Repressive migration policies in Europe criminalise, humiliate, and punish refugees and people on the move, rather than uphold their rights under international law. To mask the cruelty of these policies, a whole new lexicon of sanitised language has been coined to describe illegal, restrictive, and inhumane conditions aimed at deterring would-be asylum claimants and refugees.