Editorial: Tears

The Prime Minister of Greece declared that the current situation with refugees and migrants cannot go on.

Foreign governments express their deep regret. European officials have hastened to visit the island of Lesvos where the Moria camp was burned down.

The European Commission has pledged to help transport 400 children and adolescents to mainland Greece but it is now too late.

Disaster has struck and thousands of people are stranded in the streets.

As the chief of Solidarity Now said the hourglass has emptied.

PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis said yesterday that the problem of managing migrant flows is primarily European.

Yet even now after the fires that destroyed the Moria refugee camp the EU stubbornly refuses to shoulder its responsibilities.

Most government display indifference while Germany and the Christian Democrats are refusing hospitality under the pretext that this would hinder joint European action.

We have seen enough crocodile tears. Yet even if they were genuine they could not wash away the responsibilities of Greek governments for the tragic situation over the last years at closed refugee and migrant reception centres.

At times indifferent, at other times weak, and at other times hiding behind the refusal of local societies to bear their portion of the burden, the competent officials had buried their heads in the sand with the hope that the problem would gradually disappear.

Instead, it exploded.

There is no more room for Greece and other EU countries to bury their heads in the sand.

One needs immediate solutions that are guided, as the PM said, by national dignity and humanitarian treatment for all the weak.