The United Nations refugee agency has been forced to step in to save scores of “orphan” children from detention in filthy police cells on the Greek island of Kos after its complaints at the squalid conditions went unheeded.
Children who arrived by boat from Turkey without their parents or other adult relatives have been held for weeks at a time in cells smeared in faeces, alongside adult criminals, while Greek authorities determined where to relocate them. Greek officials say they are obliged to keep the children securely for their own safety as legal minors. But volunteers from a non-governmental organisation that visits prisoners at Kos’s central police station every day said they were shocked by the “medieval” conditions there.
They are provided with only one meal a day, in addition to fresh fruit and water that is supplied by charities and aid agencies, and on at least one occasion children in police detention went for two days without food. They are not allowed to go outside and are handcuffed if they are moved to a different location, several witnesses said. “It’s really filthy,” one volunteer, who asked not to be named, told The Independent. “There are bare electrical wires sticking out of the ceiling... There is shit on the floor and it is running out of the cell. They have to reach out through bars to receive their food. This is not normal in Europe.”
The UNHCR has been warning the Greek government and local authorities about the poor conditions since it developed a presence on the island in May. Hard-pressed Greek officials have been battling to cope with the influx of tens of thousands of refugees and migrants arriving by boat from Turkey, often at the rate of more than 1,000 a week.