With Greece in the midst of dealing with coronavirus, illegal immigrants on the island of Lesvos are using the pandemic as an opportunity to defy police and lockdown laws. As reported by Greek City Times, a total of 20,084 violations have been recorded across Greece since the first day of the measures began on March 12.
However, what makes yesterday’s incident on Lesvos shocking, especially compared to the thousands of other violations recorded in Greece, is that after police had asked the illegal immigrants to go back to their accommodation, the mostly African migrants not only refused the order, but started ridiculing Greek authorities and coughing on them.
This comes as only days ago two gangs of illegal immigrants clashed in the Moria migrant camp located to the north of Mytilene, as reported by Greek City Times. It is not known why the two groups fought with each other, but the ‘battle’ took place on a private farm.
With Ristona camp on Euboea and Malakasa camp near Athens in quarantine, Lesvos that is hosting 50,000 illegal immigrants on an island of only 90,000 citizens, has not yet had a coronavirus outbreak in the many migrant camps. The constant violations of the lockdowns heighten the risk of a coronavirus outbreak that can devastate the migrant camps and then also the local people.
The first recorded coronavirus case arrived in Greece on February 26, 2020. Since then, there have been 1,735 confirmed cases, which includes 73 deaths and 78 recoveries. It is expected that as the weather begins to warm up and the curing treatment with hydroxychloroquine begins to take effect, the number of recoveries will increase as the daily increase in cases will reduce. On Sunday there was 62 new cases recorded in Greece, down from a peak of 129 cases on Thursday.