Category Archives: Greece

Family reunion rescue flight to bring vulnerable migrants from Athens to UK

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Exclusive: Greek PM intervenes to help 50 asylum seekers reach UK despite ban on direct flights

An unprecedented family reunion rescue flight is due to leave Athens, bringing 52 vulnerable migrants, including several minors, to join family in the UK.

The flight on Monday is the result of intense efforts by refugee families in the UK with the support of campaign group Safe Passage and the peer Alf Dubs. It was organised with collaboration from the UK and Greek governments after direct flights between Greece and the UK were suspended in March.

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Greeks marvel at Britain’s Covid chaos as their lockdown lifts after 150 deaths

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Still resilient after taking tough and early action, Greece can now look forward to a summer tourist season beginning in July

When Pavlos Pandelides realised the coronavirus pandemic was moving west, he bought a plane ticket and flew from Athens to London. He then drove north to Nottingham to collect his daughter, a student at the city’s university, before returning with her the next day to Greece. An ardent admirer of all things British, the businessman had absolutely no doubt that what he was doing was right. “The British are fighters but I could see they were underestimating this,” he said.

While Covid-19 was tearing through northern Italy, Boris Johnson was still faltering, with his government showing worrying signs of complacency. There was, said Pandelides, no time to waste. “It was more than a protective father thing. It was clear they were about to really mess up.”

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Five crew of Canadian helicopter presumed dead after crash off Greek coast

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Search and rescue mission that began after Wednesday’s crash is called off with one body and additional remains found

Five missing crew members of a Canadian navy helicopter that crashed during a Nato operation this week into the Mediterranean Sea are presumed dead.

A search and rescue mission that began on Wednesday when the aircraft with six crew on board went missing has been turned into a recovery effort, the Canadian defence ministry said in a statement on Friday.

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Greece preparing new tourism rules with EU in wake of coronavirus

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Packed pools, beaches and tour buses will not return immediately as country plans for scaled back 2020 season

Packed pools, beaches and tour buses, as well as middle seats on planes, hotel minibars and scrums at airport check-ins, may all be a thing of the past as Europe’s tourism industry attempts to reimagine the holiday in the wake of the coronavirus.

Travel will take place only under “specific new rules”, Greece’s tourism minister has said as he prepares to propose ways of salvaging the sector with his EU counterparts in the era of Covid-19 on Monday.

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Coronavirus: global death toll passes 200,000 as more countries prepare to reopen

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As WHO warns no evidence exists to suggest people can’t catch Covid-19 twice, India, Belgium and Greece among latest countries to ease lockdowns

The global toll from Covid-19 passed 200,000 on Saturday, with over 2.8 million people infected, as the WHO warned against issuing “immunity passports” because there is no evidence people who recovered from the disease are protected against a second infection.

It took more than three months after the coronavirus first emerged for deaths from the disease to pass 100,000, a grim milestone that was reached on 10 April. It took just over two weeks for that toll to double, and worldwide the number of confirmed infections is creeping towards 3 million.

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Two migrants injured after shots fired into refugee camp on Greek island of Lesbos

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The two victims were taken to hospital, police said, after the incident at the overcrowded Moria camp

Two asylum-seekers have been hospitalised with light injuries after gunshots were fired into Greece’s largest migrant camp on the eastern Aegean island of Lesbos.

The unknown assailant or assailants evaded arrest, while the two injured migrants were taken to the island’s hospital as a precaution, police said on Wednesday. No further detail was provided.

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Fire wrecks Greek refugee camp after unrest over woman’s death

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Iraqi woman, 47, dies after going to hospital with fever but testing negative for Covid-19

A fire ripped through one of Greece’s largest migrant camps, leaving widespread damage and many people homeless after the death of an Iraqi woman sparked unrest.

The blaze late on Saturday at the Vial refugee camp on Chios island destroyed the facilities of the European asylum service, a canteen, warehouse tents and many housing containers, Greek migration ministry secretary Manos Logothetis said.

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High winds kill thousands of migrating birds in ‘disaster’ over Greece

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Swallows and swifts on their annual flight from Africa to Europe have been found dead across Greece

Thousands of swallows and swifts migrating from Africa to Europe have been left dead by high winds battering Greece, bird watchers say.

The birds have been found in the streets of Athens, on apartment balconies in the capital, in the north, on Aegean islands and around a lake close to the seaport of Nauplia in the Peloponnese.

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Migrant children on Greek islands to be flown to Luxembourg

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Luxembourg to take in 11 minors after member states and Switzerland pledge to find homes for 1,600

Eleven children trapped on Greek islands will be flown to Luxembourg next week, the first of a European Union migrant relocation scheme that highlights the uncertain fate of thousands.

The group will leave Chios and Lesbos for Luxembourg as part of an EU voluntary effort to help the most vulnerable quit Greece’s desperately overcrowded refugee and migrant island camps.

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‘Coronavirus doesn’t respect barbed wire’: concern mounts for Greek camps

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Calls grow for EU countries to accept refugees as outbreaks fuel fears that virus could rampage through overcrowded facilities

The spectre of coronavirus striking severely overcrowded refugee camps in Greece has hovered menacingly for months.

International aid organisations, human rights groups and doctors have sounded the alarm. With the spread of the pandemic, calls for action to prevent impending medical catastrophe have become shriller. In Aegean islands on the frontline of the crisis, health carers speak of days gained, not won.

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‘All I think of is my brother’: UK refugee family reunions disrupted by Covid-19

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Home Office urged to ‘act urgently’ to rescue vulnerable minors and reunite them with family while flights still available

After seven months of waiting, Ahmed* had everything ready for his younger brother. Finally, 18-year-old Wahid was due to arrive from the Greek island of Samos under family reunion laws.

But on 19 March, as Covid-19 took hold across Europe, the Greek authorities called to tell him the transfer had been cancelled because of the growing restrictions on flights. Greece had suspended direct flights to the UK but indirect routes are still available.

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EU court rules three member states broke law over refugee quotas

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Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland failed to comply with 2015 programme, ECJ says

Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic broke European law when they failed to give refuge to asylum seekers arriving in southern Europe, often having fled war in Syria and Iraq, the EU’s top court has ruled.

The three central European countries now face possible fines for refusing to take a share of refugees, after EU leaders forced through mandatory quotas to relocate up to 160,000 asylum seekers at the height of the 2015 migration crisis.

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Former anti-Nazi Greek resistance fighter and MEP Manolis Glezos dies aged 97

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Former prime minister Alexis Tspiras said Glezos was a ‘symbol of a fighter’

In the pantheon of Greek politicians feted as much for fortitude as tenacity, few have stood out more than Manolis Glezos.

Tributes poured in Monday as word spread that the indefatigable Greek leftist, who as a teenager tore down the Nazi swastika flag from the Acropolis and more than seven decades later was elected as an MEP for the radical Syriza party, had died of heart failure at the age of 97.

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Fears of catastrophe as Greece puts migrant camps into lockdown

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Doctors say coronavirus outbreak could be disastrous amid ‘horrific’ conditions

As the Schengen area closed its external borders last week, in a move designed to replace the closing of member states’ national borders against imported Covid-19 infection, some internal barriers still went up in Europe. The day after the European commission’s announcement, the Greek government introduced a set of measures that would apply to the migrant camps in the Greek islands.

As of Wednesday, the camps have been locked down from 7pm to 7am. In the daytime, only one person is allowed out per family, and the police control their movements. Some camps, on the islands of Leros and Kos, have been closed entirely.

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The Greek refugees battling to prevent Covid-19 with handmade face masks

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Camp residents set up mask factory and awareness teams amid fears overcrowding and poor sanitation will spread virus

In some of the most dangerously overcrowded Greek refugee camps, it has become a race against time to raise awareness about Covid-19 and ensure an outbreak does not spread among an already vulnerable population.

In the infamous Moria camp on the island of Lesbos close to 20,000 people live in a space designed for just under 3,000.

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Erdoğan in talks with European leaders over refugee cash for Turkey

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Border issue and other matters discussed in conference call with Germany, France and UK

Turkey has pressed European leaders to make fresh cash pledges to prevent tens of thousands of refugees from leaving the country and trying to reach Europe amid a Russian-Syrian offensive in north-west Syria.

After intense bombardment in Idlib province last month, Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, encouraged thousands of refugees in the country to move on towards the Greek islands and the Baltics, in a repeat of the surge to Europe in 2015.

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Child killed in Lesbos refugee camp fire

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Blaze broke out in living container, exacerbating tensions inside the dangerously overcrowded Greek camp

A child has died in a fire in the Moria refugee camp on Lesbos, according to the Hellenic Fire service. The fire broke out in one of the living containers situated inside the camp on Monday afternoon and was fanned by strong winds, but has since been brought under control.

The child has not been named and the cause of the fire is as yet uncertain.

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Greece hopes EU-Turkey talks will ease tension over refugee crisis

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Greek PM tells the Guardian planned talks including Merkel, Macron and Erdoğan are an opportunity to ‘set the record straight’

Greece is hoping critical talks between the EU and Ankara will help ease the border crisis that has weighed heavily on the country since Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, declared he had “opened the gates” to Europe for migrants and refugees.

In an exclusive interview, the Greek prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, said planned talks between the German and French leaders on one hand, and Erdoğan on the other, on Tuesday would be an opportunity to finally “set the record straight”.

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Migrants on Greek islands to be offered €2,000 to go home

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One-month EU scheme offers more than five times usual sum in bid to ease pressure in camps

Migrants on the Greek islands are to be offered €2,000 (£1,764) per person to go home under a voluntary scheme launched by the European Union in an attempt to ease desperate conditions in camps.

The amount is more than five times the usual sum offered to migrants to help them rebuild their lives in their country of origin, under voluntary returns programmes run by the United Nations’ International Organization for Migration (IOM).

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Erdoğan likens Greek border crackdown to Nazi atrocities

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Turkish leader repeats unproven claims of killings by Greek forces and says border will stay open

Turkey’s president has likened Greece’s treatment of refugees and migrants at its borders to Nazi atrocities, reigniting tensions between Athens and Ankara before a visit by EU officials to the Greek capital.

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said alleged abuses against people who had amassed at the two nations’ land frontier were comparable to tactics employed by Hitler’s troops during the second world war.

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