Category Archives: Greece

Lesbos coronavirus case sparks fears for refugee camp

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Wave of anti-migrant violence has left refugees without food and medical care – and more vulnerable to disease than ever before

News of a confirmed case of Covid-19 on Lesbos has sparked fears of the impact of an outbreak at the overcrowded Moria refugee camp, where refugees live in dire conditions with appalling hygiene and little medical care.

The troubling conditions in the camp have worsened this week, and tensions on the island have seen several NGOs forced to reduce or close services over safety fears.

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EU and Turkey hold ‘frank’ talks over border opening for migrants

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Brussels agrees to rehouse up to 1,500 children as conditions in Greek camps deteriorate

EU leaders in Brussels held “frank” talks with president Recep Tayyip Erdoğanon Monday over his decision to open Turkey’s border to migrants travelling to Europe, as deteriorating conditions in Greek camps led to the bloc agreeing to rehouse up to 1,500 child refugees.

The presidents of the European commission and council, Ursula von der Leyen and Charles Michel, sought a way to save the current migration deal with Turkey during difficult discussions with Erdoğan in Brussels.

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Refugees told ‘Europe is closed’ as tensions rise at Greece-Turkey border

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Teargas fired by both sides amid political standoff over people displaced by war in Syria

The EU has told migrants in Turkey that Europe’s doors are closedas Greek and Turkish police fired teargas at their shared border amid growing tensions over the plight of Syria’s refugees.

In a blunt message, the EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said: “Don’t go to the border. The border is not open. If someone tells you that you can go because the border is open … that is not true.

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With its heavy-handed response to the border crisis, Europe is making a bad situation worse | Daniel Trilling

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Turkey’s decision not to stop migrants crossing its borders will force politicians to reveal what they plan to do with them

“April 4th, 1984. Last night to the flicks,” runs a diary entry by Winston Smith, the protagonist of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. “One very good one of a ship full of refugees being bombed somewhere in the Mediterranean. Audience much amused by shots of a great huge fat man trying to swim away […] audience shouting with laughter when he sank.” Orwell is so often reduced to cliche, but this quote has been stuck in my mind since footage was circulated online this week of a Greek coastguard boat apparently trying to capsize a migrant dinghy in the narrow strip of sea between Turkey and Greece’s Aegean islands.

Related: Turkey deploys 1,000 police at Greek border as tensions rise

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Coronavirus latest updates: Italy death toll nears 200 with almost 4,000 cases

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First cases reported in Vatican City, Peru and Serbia, while France has further 190 patients, bringing total number to 613

If you’d like to read a summary of the day’s events, here’s our coronavirus at-a-glance article from earlier this evening:

Related: Coronavirus latest: at a glance

A 15th person has died in the USA, according to a hospital in Washington state – the worst-hit in the union. EvergreenHealth Medical Center in the Seattle suburb of Kirkland has reported the state’s 12 death.

Kirkland is the site of an outbreak at a nursing facility, where at least six people have died.

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Aerial footage shows queues near Greek-Turkish border – video

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Hundreds of refugees and migrants were queuing and camping near the Turkish-Greek border on Thursday. This footage was shot from a Turkish government helicopter while the interior minister, Süleyman Soylu, was inspecting the region. Last week Turkey announced it would no longer abide by a 2016 deal with the EU to reduce illegal migration

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Germany tweets to deter Syrian refugees, fearing ‘repeat of 2015’

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Government says it will support Greece as thousands of people arrive at Turkish border

The German government – anxious about the political consequences of a “repeat of 2015” – is tolerating Greece’s decision to suspend asylum claims at its borders and has launched a social media campaign to deter Syrian refugees from embarking on a journey to central Europe.

About 12,500 people are estimated to be waiting on the Turkish side of the Greek border after the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, said on Saturday that he would open his country’s borders for refugees fleeing the nine-year war in Syria to cross over into Europe.

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Greece’s economic ‘recovery’ is for the few, not the many | Yanis Varoufakis

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Buoyed by fire sales of public assets, a tiny minority of Greeks are thriving. Everyone else is mired in hopelessness

Spring is already in the air across Greece. Even in the bleakest of times, nature’s renaissance renders hope irrepressible. But this one is proving a cruel spring for a people caught up in a decade-old crisis yielding one ritual humiliation after another.

Costas runs a small bookshop in my central Athens neighbourhood. Although jovial by constitution, he finds it difficult to hide the worry lines multiplying on his face. Fifteen years ago he put his flat up as collateral for a business loan to spruce up the bookshop. When the Greek debt crisis wreaked its havoc, it was impossible to service that loan.

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Migration: EU praises Greece as ‘shield’ after Turkey opens border

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Bloc leaders announce financial support as UN questions Athens’ suspension of asylum applications

European Union leaders have given a show of support for Athens, describing Greece as Europe’s “shield” in deterring migrants, despite questions from the UN about breaches of international refugee law.

Four EU leaders met the Greek prime minister, Kyriákos Mitsotákis, at the border town of Orestiada on Tuesday, near where Greek police have been using teargas to deter hundreds of migrants from attempting to cross from Turkey.

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Greek coastguards in altercation with migrant dinghy as Turkey opens border – video report

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Greek coastguards had been filmed pushing away a dinghy with poles and opening fire into water in an effort to block migrants from entering the country. Thousands of people have been trying to enter Greece by land and by sea after Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced Turkey would no longer stop migrants from crossing into Europe through the Turkish-Greek border

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Four years after Turkey deal, EU no closer to new asylum system

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Distracted leaders have been unable to agree on how to ease the burden on frontline states

It was said to be the moment when the European Union lost its political innocence. Nearly four years ago, in March 2016, EU leaders signed a deal with Turkey aimed at preventing asylum seekers from travelling to Europe.

The pact was “celebrated by people who are dancing on the grave of refugee protection”, said the Europe boss of Amnesty International. But the realpolitik worked: the number of people arriving on the Greek islands from Turkey dropped drastically from a peak of 7,000 a day to a few hundred, although numbers began creeping up again in 2019.

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Child dies off Lesbos in first fatality since Turkey opened border

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Four-year-old dies as crisis sparked by Turkey’s decision to open its borders continues

The first victim of the worsening crisis that has engulfed Greece following Turkey’s abrupt decision to open its borders to thousands of refugees desperate to reach Europe has been confirmed with the death of a child in waters off Lesbos.

Authorities said a four-year-old Syria boy died early on Monday when an inflatable dinghy carrying people from the Turkish coast capsized off the island. “Doctors rushed to save the child but it was too late,” a police source on Lesbos said.

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Clashes as thousands gather at Turkish border to enter Greece

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EU border agency Frontex on high alert as Turkish president keeps crossings open

Migrants trying to reach Europe have clashed violently with Greek riot police as Turkey claimed more than 76,000 people were now heading for the EU as a result of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s decision to open the Turkish side of the border.

Officers fired teargas at the migrants, some of whom threw stones and wielded metal bars as they sought to force their way into Greece at the normally quiet crossing in the north-eastern town of Kastanies.

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Erdoğan says border will stay open as Greece tries to repel influx

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Turkish leader claims 18,000 people have crossed into EU but some are met with teargas

Thousands of migrants may be in no man’s land between Turkey and Greece after Ankara opened its western borders, sparking chaotic scenes as Greek troops attempted to prevent refugees from entering Europe en masse.

Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, claimed 18,000 migrants had crossed the border, without immediately providing supporting evidence, but many appear to have been repelled by Greek border patrols firing teargas and stun grenades.

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Refugees arrive on Lesbos as Turkey opens border – video

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Three boats of refugees have landed on Lesbos in the last 24 hours as the island prepares for an influx of people after Turkey announced it was opening its borders. Meanwhile, thousands of people gathered in the Turkish city of Edirne, which borders Bulgaria and Greece

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Police and protesters clash on Greek islands over new migrant camps

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Teargas used against demonstrators on Lesbos and Chios who want migrants moved to the mainland

Clashes have broken out on the Greek islands of Lesbos and Chios, where residents tried to prevent the arrival of riot police and excavating machines to be used to build new migrant detention camps.

Police fired teargas to disperse the crowds that gathered early on Tuesday to try to prevent officers from disembarking from government-chartered ferries.

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Greece’s refugee plan is inhumane and doomed to fail. The EU must step in | Apostolis Fotiadis

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The government wants to create massive detention centres, but this is being resisted by locals and refugees alike

Since the start of the year, Greece’s reception system for migrants has imploded. A spike of arrivals over the past few months, caused by Turkey’s police operations removing refugees and asylum seekers from its western coastal cities and sending them back to the regions where they were registered, has pushed the existing accommodation to its limits.

Between September 2019 and January 2020, the Greek government transferred 14,750 people from the islands to the mainland, as 36,000 new arrivals crossed the Aegean to Greece from Turkey. While the system is unable to absorb any more people, efforts to establish additional camps in the mainland and new detention centres on the islands have met strong resistance from local communities.

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UN calls for urgent evacuation of Lesbos refugee camp

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Doctor warns of pandemic risk due to lack of healthcare in Greek camp

The UN refugee agency has called for the urgent evacuation of families and sick people from the Moria camp on Lesbos. Over the weekend boats continued to arrive on the Agean islands, sending more families into “alarming” and overcrowded conditions in the refugee camps.

The Moria camp in Lesbos has grown from a population of 5,000 last July to around 20,000, with new families arriving daily. Even the most vulnerable new arrivals can no longer find space in the official area, but have to build makeshift shelters in a rubbish-filled olive grove around the camp.

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Greece sends more riot police to Lesbos after migrant clashes

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Government calls in further reinforcements after teargas fired during island protests

Greece has rushed in extra squads of riot police to Lesbos amid warnings of potentially explosive tensions on the island following clashes between security forces and thousands of migrants and refugees.

As hundreds of mainly Afghan asylum seekers converged on Mytilene, the local capital, on Tuesday to protest against conditions in the island’s vastly overcrowded camp, the government ordered in the reinforcements.

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‘It’s national preservation’: Greece offers baby bonus to boost birthrate

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€180m-a-year scheme launched in response to projections of ageing and shrinking population

As the new year dawned, Maria Pardalakis was in the throes of labour. The clock had barely struck midnight when she delivered a healthy boy in a clinic on Crete.

With her son’s birth – the first in Greece this year – Pardalakis and her husband, Christos, became the first people eligible for a €2,000 (£1,700) government baby bonus. “It’s been a new year like no other, the best gift my wife could give me,” Christos enthused. “And, sure, the benefit will help – not just us, a lot of families.”

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