Sweden has begun housing migrants in heated tents in wintry conditions due to a lack of available housing, despite a sharp drop in asylum seekers, the Migration Agency section chief said Friday. "The first asylum seekers have moved into the 17 temporary tents" raised in Revinge in southern Sweden, Rebecca Bichis told AFP.
Images of the camp of white tents, erected on a grassy field in the tranquil countryside, were striking, a sight unseen in the Scandinavian nation since the Balkan wars in the early 1990s when Sweden also took in many refugees. On Friday, temperatures in Revinge hovered around five degrees Celsius (41 Fahrenheit), as rain lashed the area. Around 200 people will live in the 17 tents, which sleep 12 people each, Bichis said.
So far only single men were being housed in the camp, as families with children and those with special needs were being prioritised for proper housing. The Revinge tents are a temporary solution pending the construction of a more permanent camp, Bichis said. "We don't know how long they will stay in the tents, it's impossible to predict. We are taking it from day to day," she said.
The camp has a dining hall tent and a common area tent with a television, while bathroom facilities are located in a barracks. The first 12 men who moved in late Thursday were from Afghanistan, Algeria, Iraq and Syria, Bichis said. "Some of them wanted to visit a mosque today and others wanted to go buy cigarettes so we have a minibus that was taking them where they wanted to go," she said. In the camp on Friday, the rainy weather turned the ground to mud.
Walking on wooden planks connecting the tents, most of the men were in good spirits, joking about the situation and laughing at one young man from Iraq who claimed rain water had been dripping into his bed. A heating fan ensured the tent was warm inside, but humid.
"We were told last night that it would be a long time that we stay here. How long ... we don't know," said Dheyaa Al-Ogaili, a 38-year-old elementary school teacher from Baghdad. After crossing 10 European countries in eight days, Al-Ogaili was mostly happy to have made it to Sweden, which he said was "the best". "Outside it's very cold" but "everything is working. And the staff here are very, very nice people," he said, adding he now wanted to bring his wife and three children to Sweden.