The Greek island of Lesbos has been a popular landing point for refugees fleeing the Middle East by boat. The numbers have been so great that rafts and other flotation devices are piling up on the shore.
The UK Daily Mail reports:
Piled 12ft high, the ever growing mass of rubber dinghies and life jackets abandoned on Lesbos by migrants who have risked crossing the Mediterranean by boat Shocking images have emerged of a huge pile of deflated dinghies and life-vests, left behind on the Greek island of Lesbos by the refugees and migrants who have successfully made the perilous journey across the Mediterranean.The pile of abandoned dinghies, some still intact and others worn through by the journey, which tens of thousands have already made this summer.But the crossing is notoriously perilous.Some 34 refugees, including 15 children, died this week off the coast of the southern Greek island of Farmakonisi.The UN said the accident had the largest recorded death toll from any in Greek waters since the migrant crisis began. The youngest victim was just one-year-old.Some 132 people were travelling on the wooden fishing boat when it capsized at around 3am, off the tiny island which is primarily a military base.
You can see the piles of rafts in the photos embedded in this tweet:
Rioting has also been a problem on the small Greek island:
Ben Hubbard of the New York Times notes that Lesbos has usually been a popular tourism spot:
Lesbos Turns From Vacation Island to ‘Main Point of Entry’ for MigrantsOn this vacation island ringed by the clear Aegean Sea, it is now the tourists who are the rarity.Arabic has surpassed Greek as the dominant language on the streets of Mytilene, the main port town. The beaches are festooned with orange life jackets and deflated rafts abandoned by migrants who are choosing to take their first steps into Europe here, in ever-increasing numbers.As the authorities elsewhere in Europe are shutting their borders and struggling to deal with the migration crisis, Lesbos has been overwhelmed by an increasing flow of migrants who have arrived by boat from Turkey.The humanitarian crisis the island faced this summer has diminished, partly because of streamlined registration for new arrivals and more ferries to carry migrants to mainland Greece.
Writing at Frontpage Mag, Dennis Prager takes a decidedly different view on what’s happening here:
Europe is Making a Fatal MistakeEurope means well in taking in a million refugees from the Middle East. But when good intentions trump experience and wisdom, you’re asking for trouble — in this case, civilization-threatening trouble. First, many of the children of these immigrants will not remember Assad or ISIS and will resent their likely inferior socioeconomic status and lack of full integration into European society. They will then cause havoc in Europe. Second, the economic growth and unemployment rates of the EU countries — including Germany — are not robust enough to handle a vast number of newcomers. And as the British writer Janet Daly pointed out in The Telegraph, what about “the pressures on their hospitals and GPs’ surgeries, and of shortages of housing and school places”?Third, it is as certain as night follows day that Islamic State and other terror groups will place terrorists among the refugees coming into Europe.
Featured image via YouTube.
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