On the north coast of this Greek island, activists have launched their own humanitarian operation. But the welcome is less warm at the registration centres in the south In the hills high above the north coast of Lesbos, an incongruous mass of orange surges for hundreds of metres across a craggy plateau. It could be the crater of a seething volcano. But this is not lava. On Tuesday, the number of asylum seekers to reach Europe this year passed 1 million. Nearly half of them did so via the beaches of this Greek island – and the eerie hilltop is where the residents of Lesbos have piled hundreds of thousands of their discarded orange lifejackets. Elsewhere, the islanders are building a second graveyard to house the bodies of the drowned. This silent swath of orange – 3.7 metres (12 ft) tall in places, and rolling like the sea – is just as apt a tombstone for the scale and tragedy of the European refugee crisis. Continue reading...
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