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Greece to move refugees from island camps to mainland Vulnerable refugees to be moved from 'squalid' camps on Greek islands
(about 4 hours later)
Greece is poised to transfer thousands of refugees from overcrowded camps on its Aegean islands amid escalating tensions in the facilities and protests from irate locals. Greece is poised to transfer thousands of refugees from overcrowded camps on its Aegean islands to the mainland amid escalating tensions in the facilities and protests from irate locals.
The leftist-led government said unaccompanied minors, the old and infirm would be among the first to be moved as concerns mounted over the viability of a landmark EU-Turkey deal to stem migrant flows. The leftist-led government said unaccompanied minors, the elderly and infirm would be among the first to be moved as concerns mounted over the future of a landmark EU-Turkey deal to stem migrant flows.
“The situation on the islands is difficult and needs to be relieved,” deputy minister for European affairs, Nikos Xydakis, told the Guardian. “Accommodation on the mainland will be more suitable. We will start with transfers of those who are most vulnerable always in the sphere of implementing and protecting the EU-Turkey agreement.” “The situation on the islands is difficult and needs to be relieved,” deputy minister for European affairs Nikos Xydakis told the Guardian. “Accommodation on the mainland will be more suitable. We will start with transfers of those who are most vulnerable, always in the sphere of implementing and protecting the EU-Turkey agreement.”
The operation, expected to be put into motion this week, comes as Ankara warns the pact will not hold if Brussels fails to honour its pledge to allow Turks visa-free travel to the bloc. In a fiery speech before the newly reconvened parliament at the weekend, Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan gave his clearest signal yet that the six-month-old agreement was in danger of collapse because of continued stalling of visa liberalisation. Under the plan, Turkey’s 80-million strong population was to be given access to Europe’s border-free Schengen travel area in October. The operation, expected to be put into motion this week, came as Ankara warned the pact would not hold if Brussels failed to honour its pledge to allow Turks visa-free travel to the bloc.
In a fiery speech before the newly reconvened parliament at the weekend, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan gave his clearest signal yet that the six-month-old agreement was in danger of collapse because of slow progress over visa liberalisation. Under the plan, Turkey’s 80-million-strong population was to be given access to Europe’s border-free Schengen travel area in October.
“This stance is a declaration that the European Union does not wish to keep the promise it made to Turkey,” he told MPs.
Refugee flows, although rising again, have dropped by 90% since the deal was signed. At the height of the crisis, more than 7,000 men, women and children made the perilous sea crossing from Turkey to the Greek isle of Lesbos in a single day.
Racheting up the pressure, Erdoğan said the EU had to decide, once and for all, if it wanted to act on Turkey’s decades-long bid to become a member. “If the EU is going to make Turkey a full member, we are ready. But they should know we have come to the end of the game. There is no need to beat around the bush or engage in diplomatic acrobatics.”
Western diplomats in the Greek capital raised the spectre of chaos if the agreement collapsed. “If it does, there will be an influx of a million or more and this country is totally unprepared,” one European ambassador confided. “Athens will be overwhelmed, [as will] the mainland, people will be forced to live in fields, there will be scenes we’ll never have imagined.”
More than 60,000 refugees and migrants are in Greece after a succession of Balkan and eastern European states closed their borders earlier this year. They are being accommodated in conditions denounced as deplorable by human rights groups. Brawls between detainees, forced to wait months for their asylum applications to be processed, are commonplace.
Recently more than 4,000 people at the Moria camp in Lesbos – the island that has borne the brunt of the inflows – were evacuated after frustrated inmates set fire to the vastly overcrowded facility. In a letter passed to the Guardian from the heads of 141 families held at Ellinikon, a makeshift camp established in Athens’s former international airport, inmates described scenes of insufferable squalor, saying infectious diseases were rife because of conditions.
“There are rats, insects and reptiles including snakes everywhere in the camp,” they wrote adding that in the winter many fell ill to pneumonia and in the summer heat exhaustion. “Unclean water has caused diarrhoea and nausea. The longer we stay here, the worse conditions have got, and now most people are suffering from mental illnesses, depression and other diseases.”
About 14,000 refugees are now trapped on Greek islands with Turkish coastguard data showing the number of migrants caught trying to make the sea crossing more than doubling in September.
Acknowledging that camp conditions were far from ideal, Xydakis blamed the backlog in asylum applications on the EU’s failure to dispatch promised staff and push ahead with an agreed relocation scheme to other parts of the continent.
“We were promised 400 experts in asylum procedures but so far only have around 29 on the islands. We are continuing to recruit and look for more staff but it is not easy,” he said. “The deal is not only in the hands of Turkey but Europe … some EU states are not respecting but neglecting their responsibilities.”
In the three months since Britain voted to leave the EU, the bloc had become ever more fractious, with central European and Balkan members increasingly pursuing their own agenda. “In the post-Brexit debate of how Europe will work, ‘flexible solidarity’ has become the new key phrase,” he said. “If, in so many EU summits it has been agreed that the refugee crisis is a European problem then the solution to resolve it should be collective … allowing Greece to become [a holding pen for refugees] is absolutely unacceptable.”