Hundreds of refugees protested in opposition to Greece’s powerful migration insurance policies in Athens on Saturday, accusing the conservative authorities of “murdering” asylum seekers via unlawful pushbacks.
“Stop pushbacks, down with the government of murderers,” learn one of many banners on the rally in entrance of parliament. Another learn “The blood of the innocent cries out for justice.”
Some protesters carried indicators with the dates of migrant boat sinkings within the Aegean Sea.
Other demonstrators drew a hyperlink between migrant deaths at sea and the February 28 practice tragedy that left 57 lifeless and has been blamed on the federal government of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
“Mitsotakis, you have blood on your hands — dead kids at sea, dead kids on trains,” they chanted.
Since taking workplace 4 years in the past, Greece’s conservative authorities has bolstered its land and sea borders with Turkey in a bid to stem unlawful arrivals.
Police minister Takis Theodorikakos this week mentioned a contract to construct a deliberate 35-kilometer (22-mile) extension to the nation’s metal fence on the border with Turkey can be signed “in coming days.”
In the most recent incident in Greek waters, a lady and a person died earlier in March after a speedboat with practically 30 individuals on board sank close to the island of Kos.
A month earlier, a lady and a person drowned when a dinghy carrying 41 asylum seekers crashed onto a rocky coast at Lesbos island.
The European Union has mentioned it’s working with the United Nations and the African Union to prepare voluntary returns to nations of origin, and to take refugees to camps earlier than being resettled within the EU or elsewhere.
In January, European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen mentioned the EU deliberate to place in place migration offers with nations comparable to Bangladesh, Pakistan, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia and Nigeria “to improve returns… and to prevent departures.”
Greece has repatriated greater than 8,000 individuals during the last two years in cooperation with the International Organization for Migration, Migration Minister Notis Mitarachi mentioned this week.
The Greek authorities has constantly denied the accusations of pushbacks, regardless of claims on the contrary from alleged victims, rights teams and even the UN’s particular rapporteur on the human rights of migrants.
“In Greece, pushbacks at land and sea borders have become de facto general policy,” the UN’s particular rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, Felipe Gonzalez Morales, mentioned final 12 months. — Agence France-Presse
Source: www.gmanetwork.com
