Palestinian refugees from Syria sheltered in Thermopolis camp in Greece continue to sound distress signals over the exacerbated humanitarian condition they have been subjected to.

In statements emailed to AGPS, activists quoted the refugees as stating that they have been enduring medical neglect and poor hygiene, along with the lack of relief assistance and the propagation of poisonous reptiles in the makeshift tents they have been locked up in.

Palestinian refugees and hundreds of other migrants trapped in the camp have appealed to the Greek authorities and international human rights institutions to urgently work on securing their right to psycho-physical protection and access to vital facilities.

Conditions on such Greek islands as Lesbos, Samos, Chios, Kos and Leros, where hundreds of Palestinian refugees have been stranded, are squalid. Life on those islands, hosting the notorious “hotspots” (as the migrant camps on those islands are called), has just gone unbearable. More than 40,000 people are currently living in these shantytowns, which were built to hold a few thousand.

Since Greece’s conservative New Democracy party came to power last summer, the government has decided to push ahead with a punitive, hard-right asylum policy focused on deterring people from arriving on the Aegean islands in the first place.