Greek islanders protest in Athens against overcrowding refugee camps

Residents and officials from the north Aegean Sea islands demonstrated outside the Ministry of Immigration in Athens on Tuesday demanding the government to take measures to decongest the islands from the overcrowded refugee camps.


"We won't allow Lesvos and all the islands from examples of humanity and solidarity to turn into prisons for thousands of people," Spyros Galinos, the mayor of Lesvos, told reporters.

People from the islands that have been at the forefront of the refugee crisis over the last years arrived at the port of Piraeus and headed to Klathmonos square in the center of Athens in front of the Immigration Ministry to stage their protest.

"People from Chios, Samos and Mytilene have come here to show to the minster that we cannot afford all that. It is too much to have for so long-time people coming again and again without having the adequate infrastructure, not only material infrastructure. It is the legal infrastructure and the infrastructure in terms of human resources in order to implement a policy," Manolis Vournous, mayor of Chios said.

Under the 2016 EU-Turkey agreement, refugees and migrants reaching the islands cannot travel to the mainland until their asylum bids are examined.

As a result, more than 13,000 people are crowded into islands' camps.

  [china.cn]

 6/12/17