The infamous camp on the Greek island of of Lesbos will be closed and migrants will be moved to new, closed camps to prevent them from coming and going as well as possibly escape, reports the V4 news agency. What’s more, NGO groups failing to comply with the new rules will be banned from operating in the country, said General Alkiviadis Stefanis, the Greek government’s special coordinator for migration.
Greek prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who formed a government after his party won last July’s elections, promised that Greece would fundamentally change its migration policy. The mass of migrants, amounting to tens of thousands people crowded onto the Greek islands of Chios, Samos, and Lesbos, has proved so far to be an unmanageable problem for the country and local citizens are seething.
Things appear to be about to change, after former army chief of staff Alkiviadis Stefanis, appointed as the Greek government’s special coordinator for migration, announced at a press briefing on Wednesday that the notorious Moria camp which had come under fire from the European Council for the terrible living conditions, will be closed. The 36.400 migrants staying there will be moved to three closed camps, each capable of housing five thousand persons.
Decongesting the islands is a priority at this stage Stefanis said, adding that they plan to expand the camps on the smaller islands of Kos and Leros. Migrants will not have to opportunity to move freely outside the camps and must wait within the camp until they receive refugee protection. If they are granted asylum, they can enter the mainland, if not they will be sent back to Turkey.
Amnesty International EU condemned the proposal. For the pro-immigrant human rights group, keeping the migrants in closed camps is “simply outrageous”. The usual approach to de-congest the islands is moving the migrants to the mainland, again in open camps, but this only allows them to move north toward Macedonia and further to the EU countries, and entices additional arrivals from Turkey.
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