Riot police stand guard as a large fire burns inside the Moria refugee camp on the northeastern Greek island of Lesbos, September 19, 2016.Michael Schwarz\/Press Association. All rights reserved.Nothing but burnt rubble remains in a
\nlarge part of Moria on the island of Lesbos. The infamous EU hotspot \u2013 aka
\ndetention centre \u2013 that so many had hoped to see vanish from the discourse of
\nmigration, has now ended up physically going up in flames instead. <\/i><\/p>\n
Our own experience from our research on
\nthe island echoes the warnings of several human rights NGOs and activists on
\nthe ground, about the inevitable escalation of episodes of violence and smaller
\nscale rioting. The more migrants were kept over ever-longer periods, in
\novercrowded and unsanitary conditions, with scarce food and no hope, the more
\noften Moria would become a breeding ground for riots and violent police
\nrepression, while inter-ethnic conflict and the rampant discrimination inherent
\nin the EU\u2019s migration management approach would spark animosity and violent
\noutbursts among detainees. <\/p>\n
It is still unclear what exactly Although it is unlikely that the truth So the important question here is: why When the counting of unaccompanied We can therefore treat this event as an It is said, for example, that a mob of It is also a result of the slow death of We suggest that the burning down of As if we knew (or even cared) where they Less than a year ago the island was [1] For a full account on what happened Riot police stand guard as a large fire burns inside the Moria refugee camp on the northeastern Greek island of Lesbos, September 19, 2016.Michael Schwarz\/Press Association. All rights reserved.Nothing but burnt rubble remains in a large part of Moria on the island of Lesbos. The infamous EU hotspot \u2013 aka detention centre \u2013 that so…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1150\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nhappened in and around Moria last Tuesday, on September 20, 2016: did
\nultra-nationalist locals burn down the hotspot, was it the migrants themselves
\nwho did it or was it the result of agent provocateur <\/em>actions?<\/em><\/p>\n
\nabout it will ever surface, the fire has already left its mark on the country\u2019s
\npublic discourse on migration. Up until this moment it seems most likely that
\nit was migrants themselves, in an act of rage, who burnt the camp \u2013 as opposed
\nto as a result of an arson attack by right wing extremists. According to most
\naccounts, a rumour started circulating on Monday evening that the Greek
\nauthorities were preparing blanket removals. This was the straw that broke the
\ncamel's back for those inside the hotspot (staying there, remember, either as
\ndetainees or because they have nowhere else to go): they put up with the
\nappalling living conditions in there, the meager and barely edible food,
\ncomplying because they hope for something to change for the better. So it
\nshouldn\u2019t come as a surprise that, when hope is obliterated, docility goes out
\nof the window.<\/p>\n
\nis it so difficult to recognise this event as an act of resistance and agency?
\nIn other words, how can we ever lift the dark, poisonous blanket that EU
\ndeterrence policies have spread over us if we do not ever acknowledge the
\nexistence of lives that are not only despairing and hating but also fighting
\nagainst this imposition? Otherwise, the emphasis is removed from the original
\nrepugnant condition of imprisonment and is instead directed towards the
\nsubject, who is axiomatically placed in a position of victimhood. The task then
\nfor us is to remove such representations and replace them in our own
\nimaginaries with ones that reflect a more realistic image. <\/p>\n
\nminors, who finally found somewhere to sleep that night, puts us at ease, we
\nforget that these same minors have been sleeping in much more dire and
\ndangerous conditions than one can ever encounter under an olive tree in Lesbos.
\nTheir crossing of borders is itself an act of defiance; their very presence
\nhere is a political \u2013 subversive even \u2013 act, as they challenge the global
\nborder regime daily (Jones, 2016).<\/p>\n
\nactual uprising of calculated agency, set in a background of highly politicized
\ndiscourses and events on the island, following the recent escalation of tension both between locals
\n(ultra-nationalists attacked an anarchist demo just days after attacking two
\nactivist women, sending one to hospital) but also between (reactionary) locals
\nand migrants. <\/p>\n
\nultra-nationalists made their way to Moria while the fire was raging, armed
\nwith knives and sticks, attacking migrants running away from the flames. This
\npolarisation within the local society can be understood as a result of the
\ngrowing frustration of part of the local population with political pressures to
\nsustain incoming migrants within the island while not allowing them to travel
\nto mainland Greece. <\/p>\n
\nlast years\u2019 humanitarian emergency spectacle. <\/em>This brought income to a
\ngreat many, but came to a halt as migrants are now locked up and can no longer
\nconsume goods or services. On the other hand, it has caused\u00a0 the island\u2019s tourist industry to nosedive:
\nonce the island of migrant-saving heroes, now the island of a hotspot prison, a
\nprison spilling over beyond the smoky and fenced grounds of Moria.<\/p>\n
\nMoria reveals our own limitations not only in imagining resistance and agency
\nbut even in recognising it when we see it. Migrants trapped in Greece for all
\nthis time became visible once again last Tuesday, through their agency and
\nresistance. However, in the public eye, migrants keep on being relegating to
\nvictims, turning the burning of a prison into a humanitarian disaster: \u201cwhere
\nwill people sleep now?<\/em>\u201d is the most frequently uttered question following
\nthese events. <\/p>\n
\nhad been sleeping up to today; under what conditions; what they had been
\neating; where they had been showering. Answers to these questions could make us
\ntoss and turn with uneasiness – or at least, it should.<\/p>\n
\ndeclared to be in humanitarian emergency, as over 600,000 new arrivals settled
\nin temporarily, bringing existing infrastructure and services to a halt. The
\nperpetual fear of lack of control due to a seemingly unmanageable flow of
\nincoming populations, cultivated so carefully by the state and the humanitarian
\nindustry that flourished in Lesbos this past year, is slowly winning over
\nlarger parts of the island\u2019s local population. <\/p>\n
\nsee \u201cA rough night: Protests for freedom, Moria on fire and fascist attacks\u201d by No border kitchen Lesvos<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"