Tag: greece
Citing Humanitarian Nightmare, Aid Agencies Are Pulling From Europe’s Refugee Prisons

Citing Humanitarian Nightmare, Aid Agencies Are Pulling From Europe’s Refugee Prisons

This article originally appeared on Alternet.

“We will not allow our assistance to be instrumentalized for a mass expulsion operation,” declared Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) official Marie Elisabeth Ingres this week, joining the chorus of major humanitarian institutions pulling their operations from Greek island refugee “hotpots” that have been transformed into nightmarish prisons. “[W]e refuse to be part of a system that has no regard for the humanitarian or protection needs of asylum seekers and migrants.”

As ever-increasing numbers of war and poverty survivors reach Greek islands, the land masses have become ground zero for a newly escalated European Union crackdown, which decrees: “All new irregular migrants crossing from Turkey into Greek islands as from 20 March 2016 will be returned to Turkey.” Before being subject to mass expulsion, refugees are being forcibly held in “hotspots” that were created under a separate EU agreement last year.

The United Nations Refugee Agency wrote Tuesday that, since the deal went into effect, 934 people had arrived in Lesvos alone and are “being held at a closed registration and temporary accommodation site in Moria on the east of the island.” Numerous humanitarian organizations testify that the sanitation and public health conditions at this location are dismal.

The UN agency said it has, until now, “been supporting the authorities in the so-called ‘hotspots’ on the Greek islands, where refugees and migrants were received, assisted, and registered. Under the new provisions, these sites have now become detention facilities. Accordingly, and in line with our policy on opposing mandatory detention, we have suspended some of our activities at all closed centers on the islands. This includes provision of transport to and from these sites.”

Now, other organizations that have been providing critical humanitarian support for the people at Moria—from medical care to hygiene assistance to daily essentials—say they can no longer do so in good conscience.

In a statement released Thursday, the humanitarian NGO Oxfam announced it is suspending all aid operations in the Moria camp to “protest to the suspension of migrants’ rights by the EU and Turkey.” This is the same location that MSF is also withdrawing from.

Giovanni Riccardi Candiani, country representative for Oxfam in Greece, rebuked the detention of people “who committed no crime and who have risked their lives in search of security and a better future.” He added: “Our withdrawal from Moria is a tragic testament of how the migration crisis is gradually developing into a moral crisis in Europe.”

Citing similar concerns, NGOs are pulling from “hotspots” at numerous Greek islands. Save the Children announced Wednesday that it has suspended all activities on Lesvos, Chios, Samos, Kos and Leros “related to supporting basic services at all detention centers on the Greek islands due to extreme concerns that newly-arrived vulnerable children and their families are in danger of unlawful and unjustified custody for sustained periods of time.”

“We already know that among those being detained are unaccompanied children who are particularly vulnerable as they require specialist support and protection which they cannot receive in their current environment, and we remind authorities that the detention of children is unlawful and never in their best interests,” said Janti Soeripto, interim CEO the international non-governmental organization.

Meanwhile, the Norwegian Refugee Council announced that it is halting activities at the Vial “hotspot” in Chios, noting that, as of March 20, location “has changed from an open registration facility into a closed detention center.”

The horrific treatment of refugees and migrants, meanwhile, does not stop at the makeshift prisons. Those deported to Turkey face a country where Iraqis and Afghans, by law, cannot receive refugee status—and are therefore subject to forcible deportations.

According to Amnesty International, the very day that the EU refugee crackdown was announced, roughly 30 Afghan asylum seekers were deported to Afghanistan by Turkish authorities. “The ink wasn’t even dry on the EU-Turkey deal when several dozen Afghans were forced back to a country where their lives could be in danger,” said John Dalhuisen, Amnesty International’s director for Europe and Central Asia.

Meanwhile, in perhaps the most cynical aspect of the EU deal, Syrian refugees are cast as bargaining chips to be traded with Turkey, currently home to an estimated 1.9 million refugees. “For every Syrian being returned to Turkey from Greek islands, another Syrian will be resettled from Turkey to the EU,” the agreement states. It is not clear what this resettlement to the EU will look like, and reports are emerging that caps have been set extremely low.

Meanwhile, humanitarian crises are breaking out at the Athens port of Piraeus in Greece—a country whose people and public infrastructure have been ravaged by EU-enforced austerity policies. Human Rights Watch reports that thousands of asylum-seekers and migrants at the port face “appalling conditions as the crisis for people trapped in Greece due to border closures intensifies.”

Eva Cossé, Greece specialist at HRW, said: “The suffering in Piraeus is a direct consequence of Europe’s failure to respond in a legal and compassionate way to the crisis on its shores.”

“I’m diabetic, my leg was amputated because of the diabetes,” Muhammad, a 60-year-old Syrian man in a wheelchair, told HRW researchers at Piraeus. “All day and all night I’m sitting in my wheelchair.” Muhammed reportedly explained that he and his family have applied with the EU for relocation to Sweden, to join relatives there. “If they tell me to go to to Turkey, I’ll go to Syria,” he said. “I’d rather die in my land. We’re Kurds, we don’t feel safe in Turkey.”

Sarah Lazare is a staff writer for AlterNet. A former staff writer for Common Dreams, she coedited the book About Face: Military Resisters Turn Against War. Follow her on Twitter at @sarahlazare.

Photo: Migrants and refugees stand by a fence at a makeshift camp at the Greek-Macedonian border near the village of Idomeni, Greece, March 27, 2016. REUTERS/Marko Djurica

Migrants Scuffle With Hungary Police; Dead Toddler’s Image Shocks Europe

Migrants Scuffle With Hungary Police; Dead Toddler’s Image Shocks Europe

By Marton Dunai and Ece Toksabay

BICSKE, Hungary/MUGLA, Turkey (Reuters) — Migrants forced from a train in Hungary scuffled with helmeted riot police and some clung to railway tracks on Thursday, as politicians across Europe struggled to respond to public opinion appalled by images of a drowned 3-year-old boy.

France and Germany said European countries must be required to accept their shares of refugees, proposing what would potentially be the biggest change to the continent’s asylum rules since World War II.

Europe’s worst refugee crisis since the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s has strained the European Union’s asylum system to the breaking point, dividing its 28 nations and feeding the rise of right-wing populists.

Hundreds of thousands of refugees from wars in the Middle East, along with economic migrants fleeing poverty in Africa and Asia, have braved the Mediterranean Sea and land routes across the Balkans to reach the European Union. Thousands have died at sea and scores have perished on land.

Nearly all first reach the EU’s southern and eastern edges before pressing on for richer and more generous countries further north and west, above all Germany, which has emphasized its moral duty to accept those fleeing genuine peril.

Accusing some European countries of failing to “assume their moral burdens,” French President Francois Hollande said he had agreed with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on “a permanent and obligatory mechanism” to allocate refugees across the bloc.

“I believe that today what exists is no longer enough,” he said. “So we will need to go further.”

Merkel said Germany was prepared to accept more refugees per capita than its neighbors, but others must do their part with “quotas and rules that are fair and take into account what is possible in each country.”

She also acknowledged that laws requiring refugees to apply for asylum in the first EU country where they arrive were “not working any more.” Germany has caused confusion among its neighbors by announcing it will accept applications from Syrians regardless of where they enter the EU.

Politicians across the continent acknowledged the impact on Thursday of images of a 3-year-old boy in a red T-shirt and tiny sneakers face down in the surf of a Turkish beach, which gave a haunting human face to the tragedy of thousands dead at sea.

“He had a name: Alyan Kurdi. Urgent action required — A Europe-wide mobilization is urgent,” French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said on Twitter.

The boy’s 5-year-old brother Galip and 35-year-old mother Rehan were also among 12 people who died when two boats carrying 23 capsized while trying to reach a Greek island.

‘Let This Be The Last’

His father Abdullah Kurdi, who was rescued barely conscious, collapsed in tears after emerging from a morgue where the bodies were held.

“The things that happened to us here, in the country where we took refuge to escape war in our homeland, we want the whole world to see this,” Abdullah told reporters.

“We want the world’s attention on us, so that they can prevent the same from happening to others. Let this be the last,” he said.

Hungary has emerged as the primary entry point for those reaching the EU overland across the Balkans, and its right-wing government has become one of the most vocal on the continent opposing large-scale immigration.

Thursday brought a days-long stand-off to a pitch as Hungarian authorities who refused to let migrants board trains for Germany for days finally allowed hundreds onto a train bound for the Austrian frontier — only to halt it at Bicske, a town outside Budapest with an immigration registration center.

Hundreds of exhausted people had crammed aboard, clinging to doors and squeezing their children through open carriage windows. When the train was halted, most refused to get off.

Police cleared one carriage, while five more stood at the station in the heat. Fearing detention, some migrants banged on windows chanting “No camp! No camp!”

One group pushed back dozens of riot police guarding a stairwell to fight their way back on board. One family — a man, his wife, and their toddler — made their way along the track next to the train and lay down in protest. It took a dozen riot police wrestling with the man to get them up again.

“We need water,” said a Syrian man still on the train who gave his name as Midu. “Respect the humans in here; no respect for the humans. We want to go to Germany, not here,” he said in English.

Opposing Positions

Hollande’s announcement of an agreement with Merkel on a mandatory system to allocate refugees would transform the asylum rules for the 28-member EU, which operates common frontiers but requires countries to process refugees separately.

The major EU states have taken sharply opposing positions on how far to open their doors, symbolized most prominently by Germany and Britain.

Germany, led strongly on the issue by Merkel, plans to receive 800,000 refugees this year and has budgeted billions in additional welfare spending for them.

“As one of the world’s richest countries, with good infrastructure, a viable welfare state and a solid budget surplus, we are in a position to rise to the occasion,” German Labor and Social Affairs Minister Andrea Nahles said at a briefing ahead of a G20 meeting in Turkey on Thursday.

Britain, by contrast, has set up a program to allow in vulnerable Syrians that has admitted just 216. It has also granted asylum to around 5,000 Syrians who managed to reach British shores since the war began four years ago, but Prime Minister David Cameron has opposed mandatory EU refugee quotas.

“There isn’t a solution to this problem that’s simply about taking people,” he said in televised comments on Thursday.

His hardline stance has come under fire even from within his own Conservative Party: “We cannot be the generation that fails this test of humanity. We must do all we can,” tweeted Conservative member of parliament Nicola Blackwood.

Other EU states are also likely to strongly resist a system that would require them to take in large numbers of refugees.

But Austria’s foreign minister, whose country is also a popular destination for the refugees, backed the quota system idea and called for a greater sense of urgency over the crisis.

“It’s unfathomable that during the financial crisis it was possible to meet all the time and find a common solution, and with this refugee crisis nothing is happening for weeks or months,” Sebastian Kurz told Reuters.

Hungary’s right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban described the crisis as a problem for Germany — which had offered to admit the refugees — not for Europe as a whole.

Europeans were “full of fear because they see that the European leaders … are not able to control the situation,” he added.

Lawmakers in Budapest were debating raft of amendments to Hungary’s migration laws that the ruling party said would cut illegal border crossings to “zero.” They provide for holding zones on the country’s southern border with Serbia, where construction crews are completing a 3.5-meter-high fence.

In an opinion piece for Germany’s Frankfurt Allgemeine Zeitung, Orban wrote that his country was being “overrun” with refugees. He noted that most were Muslims, while “Europe and European culture have Christian roots.”

(Additional reporting by Krisztina Than and Sandor Peto; Writing by Matt Robinson and Peter Graff; Editing by Gareth Jones)

Photo: Migrants storm into a train at the Keleti train station in Budapest, Hungary, September 3, 2015 as Hungarian police withdrew from the gates after two days of blocking their entry. REUTERS/Laszlo Balogh

Greek Leftists Put On Brave Face As Poll Shows Conservatives Pulling Ahead

Greek Leftists Put On Brave Face As Poll Shows Conservatives Pulling Ahead

By Angeliki Koutantou

ATHENS (Reuters) — Former Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras’s leftist Syriza party said on Thursday it remained confident of winning an outright victory in a Sept. 20 election despite an opinion poll that showed its main conservative rival edging ahead.

Just a few weeks ago, a Syriza victory in the snap election had appeared almost certain as Greeks lauded the charismatic and youthful Tsipras for waging a bruising battle against European and International Monetary Fund creditors over austerity cuts.

But opinion polls over the past week have shown the New Democracy party run by interim leader Vangelis Meimarakis catching up quickly, with one showing it even overtaking Syriza, suggesting a surprisingly tight contest for the vote.

A senior Syriza official played down New Democracy’s sudden spurt of momentum, reiterating his party’s ambition to win an absolute majority in parliament — the hope that propelled Tsipras to call the snap vote after clinching a bailout deal.

“Our objective continues to be an outright majority in parliament and in this case we would want to team up with the Independent Greeks,” Panos Skourletis, a former energy minister and close aide to Tsipras, told Mega TV, referring to Syriza’s former right-wing coalition ally.

He reiterated Syriza’s stance against an alliance with New Democracy. By contrast, the conservatives have said they are open to a broad alliance to help steer Greece through its worst post-war economic crisis.

According to the GPO poll published on Wednesday, Syriza’s stance is not backed by most Greeks — 59 percent of respondents preferred a coalition administration over a one-party government.

The poll also showed Syriza set to win 25 percent of votes, just behind New Democracy on 25.3 percent. More than one in 10 voters remained undecided, meaning the final outcome is far from certain.

MEIMARAKIS SURPRISES

But the biggest surprise in the poll was that Meimarakis, 61, a centrist figure within New Democracy who only took the conservative party’s reins in July and has since tried to unite its various factions, was deemed more popular than Tsipras.

He was shown with 44.3 percent approval ratings, compared to Tsipras’s 41.9 percent — a major reversal for the leftist leader, who had enjoyed ratings of up to 70 percent while he battled foreign creditors over a new bailout program.

Tsipras ultimately backed down and accepted a bailout and tough austerity policies in exchange for aid under the threat of a Greek exit from the euro, but only after shutting banks for three weeks and imposing capital controls to stop Greeks rushing to withdraw their bank deposits.

Polls now show most Greeks disapproved of how Tsipras, 41, managed the negotiations with creditors and of the final outcome — a bailout considered tougher than the previous two that has included a new round of punitive taxes and spending cuts.

Meimarakis, on the other hand, has benefited from keeping a low profile and is seen as a safer option among many Greeks disillusioned with their political choices, pollsters say.

“When it comes to undecided voters and they are asked who can solve most of Greece’s problems, Meimarakis is favored,” said one pollster, who declined to be named because the findings had not been published yet.

Syriza was favored for tackling corruption and tax evasion but on other issues such as the economy and immigration, Meimarakis was preferred, the pollster said.

Meimarakis, a former speaker of parliament, has focused his election campaign on an offensive against Tsipras and asking voters to consider the cost of the three-week bank shutdown and subsequent downward economic spiral under the leftist leader.

“I’m addressing the citizens who voted for Syriza, or abstained, telling them that they voted in protest but that the cost for that was really high. Is it really worth voting for Syriza again?” Meimarakis said during a campaign stop in Crete late on Wednesday.

“In seven months, the Syriza government has made things much more difficult for Greeks, in every sector.”

(Writing by Deepa Babington; Editing by Gareth Jones)

Photo: People make their way next to Greek national flags and a European Union flag in Athens, August 27, 2015. REUTERS/Alkis Konstantinidis