France achieves ‘goal’ to relocate 10,000 refugees
Greece raids squats
PARIS, Dec 18, (Agencies): France achieved its stated goal of relocating 10,000 refugees, coming mostly from Syria but also from Africa’s Sub-Saharan region, in 2019, Interior Minister Christophe Castaner said on Tuesday.
In a press statement, Castaner said that on the oneyear anniversary of the World Pact on Refugees December 17, 2018, France had lived up to a commitment made by President Emmanuel Macron in 2017 to allow 10,000 desperate refugees to come to this country, beyond the thousands who had spontaneously applied to migrate here or who had asked for asylum.
As of Tuesday, 9,783 refugees have been re-settled here, 70 percent coming from Syria and the remainder from Africa, Castaner indicated.
By the end of the year, the 10,000 quota will be met, he added. (end)
Elsewhere, police have detained at least eight people in a central Athens neighborhood after raiding three squats where occupants had been campaigning against short-term vacation rental services that have pushed up rents in the area.
The simultaneous raids occurred early Wednesday in the central Koukaki area of the capital, with police using tear gas and flash grenades to overpower the squatters.
Greece’s five-month-old conservative government has vowed to clear multiple squats in Athens that are often tied to anarchist and far-left protest groups.
Koukaki is a popular destination of tourists using services like Airbnb, helping local businesses and property owners after years of financial crisis but also adding strain on low- and middle-income families.
Meanwhile hundreds of unaccompanied children are living in “inhuman and degrading” conditions in a migrant camp on the Greek island of Lesbos, putting their mental and physical well-being at risk, an international human rights organization said Wednesday.
Human Rights Watch researchers visited the Moria camp in mid-October and interviewed 22 of the 1,061 unaccompanied children who were registered there at the time. The children they interviewed, the youngest of whom were age 14, described having little or no access to care and specialized services.
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The camp on the Aegean Sea island has a separate section for minors who arrived without adult guardians. Due to overcrowding, most of the children Human Rights Watch interviewed were living either among Moria’s general population or just outside the camp in an olive grove where migrants and refugees have set up their own tents.
“Hundreds of lone children on Lesbos are left to fend for themselves, sleeping on mats and cardboard boxes, exposed to worsening and dangerous weather conditions,” Human Rights Watch quoted its Greece researcher, Eva Cosse, as saying in a statement. “The Greek authorities need to urgently make sure these children are safe and cared for.”
The organization said most of the children interviewed reported suffering from anxiety, depression, insomnia and headaches.
Under a deal between the European Union and Turkey to stop migrant flows into Europe, those who arrive on Greek islands from the nearby Turkish coast are held in island camps pending deportation unless they successfully apply for asylum in Greece.
Only asylum-seekers considered to be in vulnerable groups are eligible to be moved to facilities on the mainland. Continued arrivals coupled with a backlog in asylum applications has led to dramatic overcrowding of the camps.
The 6-month-old Greek government has vowed to reduce the number of people in island camps by moving about 20,000 to the mainland by early next year, and to improve conditions for unaccompanied minors. But despite the transfer of several thousand from the islands, overcrowding persists, fueled by an increase in new arrivals.
On Lesbos, facilities designed for 2,840 people held 18,358 on Monday - more than six times over capacity, according to the most recent figures from the civil protection ministry. The situation is worse on the island of Samos, where the camp population is 11 times beyond capacity.