Authorities on Chios detain refugees in purpose-built cage

A cage set up by local authorities at the port of the eastern Aegean island of Chios to hold refugees has sparked a public outcry and prompted Lathra (= ‘Clandestinely’), a committee set up in solidarity to refugees on Chios, to release a scathing indictment of the island’s harbour master for ‘trampling on the most fundamental human values’.
 
‘Sirs, you are under the illusion that by fencing off the area with wires it will legalise the detention of people in these inhumane shacks. You are mistaken,” Lathra said in its announcement (link in Greek), posted on the Aplotaria.gr local website.
 
The statement said that Lathra will pursue all the necessary legal actions to stop this ‘inhumane treatment’.
 
The group said that, with their actions, local authorities are causing embarrassment to the island and are making a mockery of the laws concerning the reception of refugees and ‘trampling on fundamental human values’.
 
The group also said there are no legal grounds or justification to fence off a section of the port to detain people.
 
Before the 100m2 cage was set up, dozens, if not hundreds of refugees, were piled up along the port in a wooden shack and two kiosks of an agro tourism exhibition, due to a lack of space on the island’s temporary makeshift camp for refugees. They had access to two chemical toilets and a shower in a parking lot.
 
“Let us remind authorities that caging in people in such conditions is humiliating  and Greece has been convicted many times by the European Court for this sort of  treatment ” the statement reads.
 
Chios is one of many islands close to the Greek-Turkish sea border which has borne the brunt of waves of immigrants and refugees. Greece has been targeted by rights groups over the state of, or lack of, its detention centres to accommodate the growing numbers of refugees fleeing war-ravaged countries.

Debt-ridden Greece is the first port of call of Europe-bound refugees and it is calling for more financial aid from the EU to deal with the situation and  a reversal of the so-called Dublin agreement which stipulates that refugees are deported back to the first EU country they entered, often Italy or Greece.