Refugee crisis: Greece finds a legacy for its Olympics by housing refugees in empty stadiums
They have been squatting in Victoria Square, in the heart of Athens, for months: a fraction of the tens of thousands of refugees flooding into Greece from Turkey, hoping to move on to Austria and Germany but blocked here.
Victoria square at downtown Athens - named after Queen Victoria of the UK
But now the Greek government’s immigration minister, Ioannis Mouzalas, has hit on a solution that, with hindsight, looks obvious.
Athens Olympic Stadium, extensively refurbished for the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, has distinctive twin roofs covering the stands on each side and was designed by Santiago Calatrava
He has opened up one of the many stadiums on which Greece lavished vast sums for the 2004 Olympics and which – with the exception of the striking football stadium, refashioned for the Games by Santiago Calatrava – have been quietly rusting away unused ever since. They have been glaring symbols of the reckless extravagance of those pre-bust years, but also of the inertia and rigidity of successive governments in failing to put them to any profitable purpose.
The Athens Olympic Indoor Hall that was used for gymnastics events during the 2004 Summer Olympics now houses refugees
In recent days, some 400 to 500 refugees were ferried by bus to the Galatis Indoor Olympic Hall in the city, used for table tennis and gymnastics in 2004, while hundreds more were transferred to the former Olympic hockey stadium.
Aerial view of Olympic complex in Athens
A Greek immigration official said,
“I ask residents to be patient… Victoria Square will be cleared. We are trying to reduce the pressure on the population so that it will maintain the stance of solidarity it has shown until now.”
View of part of central Athens and some of the city's southern suburbs
Given the scale of the influx, other venues may also be opened up and dusted down for the new arrivals. One contender is the Olympic village, 20 kilometres north-west of the city. Although another symbol of how thoroughly Greece’s brave new aspirations curdled after the crash, it is a large grid of neat cement homes, designed to house 10,000 people.
The Athens Olympic Village
(All images - credit: Wikimedia Commons under Creative Commons licence)
