European migrant crisis: Greek island of Lesbos running out of space to bury asylum seekers

Updated

The Greek island of Lesbos has assumed notoriety as the main gateway into Europe for thousands of desperate asylum seekers, but as the lives lost in the risky Aegean Sea crossing relentlessly rise, the island has a new challenge: finding space to bury the dead.

Key points Asylum seeker crisis leaves Lesbos with no space to form makeshift cemeteries

Bodies are now being placed in refrigerated containers

Nearly 200,000 asylum seekers arrived in Lesbos in October alone

Nearly 500 people have died trying to cross the Aegean Sea from neighbouring Turkey this year, many of them in the narrow, but treacherous, stretch separating Lesbos from Turkey.

At least 80 drowned in October alone, many of them children.

The bodies of another five people including a woman and two children were recovered early on Wednesday, the Greek coastguard said.

Local municipal and church authorities this week declared the island's cemetery was full, leaving them no option but to store dozens of bodies in a refrigerated container.

"We hope that the authorities will be able to find a solution quickly," Effi Latsoudi, a member of a local asylum seeker support group, said.

The local bishop this week said efforts to create a new burial ground could take years.

"It could take two to three years" to release a property near the island hospital suitable for this purpose, Bishop Iakovos said.

Lesbos mayor Spyros Galinos said he would take up the issue with prime minister Alexis Tsipras when he visits the island on Thursday.

"We have a problem with the morgue and the cemetery but it is in the process of being resolved," the mayor said.

Lesbos on the frontlines

Mr Tsipras said he was "ashamed" to be part of a European leadership that had failed to stop the sinkings, which now occur nearly every day.

"We have to discourage these people from embarking on these journeys of death," he said during a joint press conference with visiting European Parliament chief Martin Schulz.

"The human sacrifice that shames European civilisation must stop," he said as the first asylum seekers to be relocated from Greece under an EU plan to share out the arrivals among member states were flown out to Luxembourg.

Lesbos lies on the frontline of a massive migration wave that has swept over Europe, with more than 700,000 people crossing the Mediterranean in search of sanctuary this year.

Of the 218,000 migrants and refugees who took to the sea in October, 210,000 landed in Greece, mostly in Lesbos.

At the local morgue — which is also full to capacity — coroner Thodoris Noussios is at his wit's end.

"This morning we received five more bodies. This tragedy must stop," he sighs.

More than 50 bodies are currently being kept in the morgue and a 12-metre refrigerated container outside the hospital that was supplied by private donors, Mr Noussios said.

"The bodies will stay here until identification is complete," he said.

Agios Panteleimonas cemetery is the final resting place for 80 refugees and migrants who could not be identified for their families to be contacted.

"In the case of people who are identified, we ask their families to tell us where they wish the body to be buried, in Greece or in their country of origin," the coroner said.

"It is a procedure that can require a lot of time," he said.

Lesbos authorities on Tuesday called a three-day period of mourning in the memory of those who drowned trying to reach the island.

Local authorities face an additional challenge this week as a four-day strike by sailors has prevented thousands of asylum seekers from sailing to the mainland.

AFP

Topics: refugees, death, unrest-conflict-and-war, greece, european-union

First posted