Patel refuses to take children from Greek camps threatened by Covid-19

Priti Patel has refused pleas to accept more unaccompanied children from the notoriously overcrowded refugee camps on the Greek islands amid dire warnings of an impending humanitarian catastrophe.

The charity Médecins Sans Frontières wrote to the home secretary on 13 March asking her to “significantly increase” the number of child refugees transferred to the UK as well as “facilitate the urgent evacuation” of those with chronic and complex health conditions.

Patel did not respond. Instead the Foreign Office replied on 31 March, saying the UK would continue to support the implementation of the EU-Turkey deal, which for the past four years has aimed to prevent asylum seekers from travelling to Europe.

Vickie Hawkins, executive director of MSF UK, described the response as “shameful”, arguing that the deal was ostensibly a containment policy and an abandonment of the EU’s responsibilities towards refugees. “This cynical deal traps thousands of people – many of them children or deeply vulnerable – in squalid conditions on the Greek islands,” she said.

“The UK government must stop sacrificing basic refugee rights for the sake of its migration agenda.”

Holding facilities on all five Aegean isles, including Moria, the squalid refugee camp on Lesbos, opposite the Turkish coast, are currently six times over capacity. Humanitarian organisations have warned that a coronavirus outbreak in the camps, where social distancing is impossible for many, could prompt a public health emergency.

The European parliament’s civil liberties, justice and home affairs committee recently urged the evacuation of 42,000 people on the islands as “an urgent preventive” measure.

The Home Office was contacted for comment.

It has also emerged that charities recently asked EU countries to help “decongest” the Greek island camps ahead of a possible Covid-19 outbreak. Again, the UK government is understood to have refused to offer assistance, with MSF saying that a number of EU countries including Germany, France, Luxembourg, Finland, Belgium and Bulgaria had volunteered to help transfer 2,000 children from the islands.

Aurélie Ponthieu, MSF’s forced migration team coordinator, said: “The UK has so far not volunteered to help the children. These measures are symbolic; if these camps get the virus it’s going to be a disaster. Access to healthcare is very limited.”

The legal charity Safe Passage last week sent the Home Office a list of unaccompanied children and vulnerable adult refugees who have been legally accepted for transfer to join family in the UK, but who are now trapped on the Greek islands because of the coronavirus travel chaos.

Beth Gardiner-Smith, chief executive of Safe Passage International, said: “The government cannot now sit on its hands. We have a small window of opportunity to evacuate all those unaccompanied children and vulnerable adults who have families here in the UK waiting to receive them now at grave risk in overcrowded and unsanitary camps and settlements.

“We know children will be leaving on charter flights to the EU next week, why not to the UK too?” she added.