The Samos camp is in the mountains, in really rough terrain. Different parts of the camp are located on different plateaus, which means there literally isn’t any way to take over more space. The camp was meant to hold 280 people but more than a thousand people are there now. The Greek government has been saying that it’ll build an extension for ages but, so far, nothing has happened. It’s claustrophobic. With that kind of overcrowding, it’s easy to see why tensions run high in the camp.



The camp is dirty and unhygienic and the food is poor quality. After Greece passed controversial legislation in April, people aren’t allowed to leave the camp for 25 days after they arrive. This creates a lot of pent-up frustration. And people are facing serious uncertainty. With the new EU-Turkey accord, they don’t know if they’ll be sent back to Turkey. They aren’t given any information about claiming asylum. They’re stuck.



“There’s tension between nationalities that, in my opinion, is fueled by European policy”



This isn’t the first time there’s been conflicts in Samos, there was another fight two weeks ago. The fight yesterday was between groups of different nationalities. I heard rumours that it was about how men in one group were looking at women in another [Editor’s note: FRANCE 24 also heard this from other sources. Human Rights Watch has criticized the hotspots for failing to house single women in separate areas from young, unrelated men].



But there is already a high rate of tension between different nationalities here fueled by European policy. The Afghans are angry at the Syrians because they say they get preferential treatment. It’s true that, currently, Syrians and Iraqis are accepted as refugees, while Afghans are not-- even though Afghanistan has essentially been at war for the past 30 years.



In turn, the Syrians say that the influx of Afghans is what has made Europe want to shut its borders.





“When you lock people up, it isn’t surprising that things become violent”



When the fight broke out, many people fled into lower parts of the camp or sought refuge in the forest. Luckily, no women or children were injured.



The police and firefighters had to intervene. Now, they say they are going to double the number of policemen on-site. Honestly, when you lock people up, it isn’t surprising that things become violent. What we really need to do is to put proper structures in place at both the national and EU level to treat their applications fairly and in a reasonable amount of time.







Clement Perrin is head of the MSF (Doctors without Borders) mission in Greece.A day earlier, similar clashes , this time between Pakistanis and Afghans, broke out in another “hotspot” on the island of Lesbos. More than 70 people were injured in these clashes and hundreds were left without homes when tents were burned down.An estimated 50,000 migrants are stranded in Greece after several Balkan countries closed their borders in February.In March, Turkey and the EU signed a controversial agreement allowing European countries to deport failed asylum seekers to Turkey. While their claims were being processed, asylum seekers are to be detained in closed centres called “hotspots”, which are run by the Greek Migration Policy Ministry as well as the European border force Frontex and the European Asylum Support Office (EASO).Poor conditions in the hotspots, coupled with stress, creates a volatile situation , according to rights group Human Rights Watch.“Lack of police protection, overcrowding, and unsanitary conditions create an atmosphere of chaos and insecurity in Greece’s razor wire-fenced island camps”, said Bill Frelick, refugee rights director at Human Rights Watch in a report published on May 19.