A Greek minister has revealed that a teenage girl was nearly stoned to death inside a migrant camp on the island of Lesbos after refusing a forced marriage, describing the case as one of the most disturbing incidents she encountered during the height of Europe’s migration crisis.
Eirini Agapidaki, Greece’s Deputy Minister of Health, said the incident took place in 2019 inside the overcrowded Moria refugee camp, conditions at which at the time had spiralled into what she described as “absolute chaos.”
Originally built to accommodate around 3,000 people, the facility held as many as 20,000 in the summer of 2020, including thousands of minors.
The minister said
A mother had agreed to marry off her 15-year-old daughter to someone there. And because the girl resisted, the community organised a stoning.
She added that those involved were reportedly relatives of the girl.
The minister said she only became aware of the case after the teenager had been removed from the camp and transferred to a shelter for unaccompanied minors.
Despite the trauma she had endured, the girl later adapted well and performed strongly at school, Agapidaki noted.
Reacting to the revelations, British anti-migration activist Tommy Robinson tweeted about the incident, stating about the men who committed the horrific attack in the migrant camp
They’re likely in hotels now near you!
The account sheds renewed light on horrific conditions inside Moria, a camp which became a symbol of Europe’s migration crisis following the 2015 influx of refugees from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria via Turkey.
The camp was destroyed by fire in 2020. Three migrants initially convicted of arson were acquitted on appeal last month after a court ruled their involvement had not been proven.
Agapidaki described an environment in Moria marked by drug trafficking, human trafficking, and a lack of reliable data on vulnerable children. She said that the exploitation of minors—particularly among Afghan Hazara communities—was a recurring problem.
The minister says that reforms have improved oversight and reduced abuse.
A stricter age verification procedure has been introduced using three methods: a medical evaluation of physical development, a psychosocial assessment, and an X-ray of the applicant’s left wrist to assess skeletal maturity.
As we reported last year, authorities found that the majority of asylum seekers are lying about their age, claiming to be minors.
Under conservative Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Greece has been tightening its migration policy, with recent measures including prolonged detention and hefty fines for those entering the country illegally while accelerating the process of returning migrants to their countries of origin.
