Brussels, 14/07/2015(Agence Europe) - On Monday 13 July, the Human Rights Watch (HRW) NGO called on the European Union to help Greece manage the humanitarian crisis on the Aegean islands and defend “the fundamental rights of refugees”.
In a press release, the NGO expresses its alarm that “Thousands of migrants and asylum seekers on Greece's Aegean islands face appalling reception and detention conditions” as the humanitarian crisis for people reaching the islands by sea intensifies. The HRW adds “Despite considerable efforts by local authorities on the islands, debt-stricken Greece is unable to meet its most basic obligations toward the people who arrive there, the vast majority of whom are fleeing violence and repression”.
In its report the HRW explains that in May 2015 it “interviewed over 100 newly arrived asylum seekers and migrants on the Greek Aegean islands of Lesbos, Chios, Samos, Leros, and Kos. All had travelled by boat from Turkey within the previous month. Most of the people interviewed, including women and children, were from Syria and Afghanistan. Twenty-four of the children, mainly boys between 15 and 17, were travelling without family members. Since May, the situation for migrants and asylum seekers has deteriorated significantly, with more than 1,000 people arriving every day”.
On 9 July in Luxembourg, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres, also flagged up the issue among European leaders with regard to this “refugee crisis” in Greece and called on the EU to provide more assistance to this country. Of the islands visited by Human Rights Watch in May, the NGO explains, “conditions were the worst on Kos. Processing often took three weeks or more due to the large number of arrivals and the lack of staff and technical capacity”. Human Rights Watch is demanding that “EU countries should agree to take generous numbers of asylum seekers from Greece”. Ministers for Home Affairs are expected to meet up again on 20 July in Brussels to finalise the modalities for redistributing 40,000 asylum seekers among themselves, 24,000 of whom will come from Italy and 16,000 from Greece. (Solenn Paulic)