ATHENS: Greece opened a brand new holding camp for migrants on Saturday (Sep 18) on the island of Samos, near Turkey, and stated different new services would observe in coming months because it tightens migration coverage.
The minister opening the camp stated it could provide “misplaced dignity” to these in search of safety. Help teams stated the brand new facility, which is able to home asylum seekers and folks to be deported, appeared extra like a jail with its fence topped by barbed wire.
The Mediterranean nation was on the frontline of Europe’s migration disaster in 2015 and 2016 when 1,000,000 refugees fleeing warfare and poverty from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan arrived, primarily by way of Turkey.
The variety of arrivals has fallen since then, however with 1000’s of asylum-seekers nonetheless stranded in Greece, the conservative authorities that took energy in 2019 has toughened its stance on migration.
It has constructed a 40 km (25 miles) fence within the Evros area on the Turkish border and launched a European Union-wide tender this summer time to construct two services on Samos and the Lesbos islands to switch beforehand overcrowded camps.
“Now we have created a contemporary and protected new closed, managed entry centre … that can give again the misplaced dignity to folks in search of worldwide safety,” Greek Migration Minister Notis Mitarachi stated inaugurating the brand new camp.
About 450 asylum-seekers out of seven,500 who lived at one other camp will transfer to the brand new facility on Monday.
Mitarachi stated the brand new camp, which may accommodate 3,000 folks, would additionally maintain unlawful migrants to be returned or deported. He stated two different centres could be prepared on the islands of Kos and Leros in just a few months.
“For us it is a jail,” Iorgos Karagiannis, head of mission for Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), stated of the brand new camp. “It is a declaration of dangerous insurance policies which can be most popular by EU leaders reasonably than the care, the induction and ensured asylum.”
Greece has deported, returned and relocated 1000’s of migrants and refugees who’ve been stranded for years, primarily on its outlying islands within the Aegean Sea.
The variety of asylum-seekers was 42,000 in August, about half the quantity a 12 months in the past, migration ministry information confirmed.
The Taliban takeover of Afghanistan has fuelled fears of a brand new wave of refugees. Greece says it won’t enable a replay of the 2015 migrant disaster and desires a joint European response.
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