Greece planning floating barriers
The Greek government plans to install floating barriers in the sea between its Aegean islands and the coast of Turkey to keep out migrants and refugees.
Greek Coast Guard vessels play a cat-and-mouse game with smugglers’ boats bringing asylum seekers from Turkey to islands such as Samos, Lesbos and Chios, with many boats and dinghies able to reach land.
Nearly 60,000 reached the islands by boat last year, almost double the total in 2018. That has led to severe overcrowding in migrant camps on the islands.
Greece’s defence ministry has asked contractors to bid on supplying 3km-long floating barriers, according to AP. It was not clear when or where the booms might be deployed. Humanitarian experts pointed out that along such a vast coastline, smugglers’ boats could simply steer around the barriers and may end up just diverting refugee flows to other areas.
Thousands have died at sea since the migrant crisis began in
2015, with dangerous boats overloaded with passengers unable to reach the shore.
According to information on a government procurement website, the barriers would rise
20in above the level of the sea, AP reported. The ‘‘floating protection system’’ would need ‘‘specific features for carrying out the mission of (maritime agencies) in managing the refugee crisis.’’ The booms would be deployed by the Greek military. The project, likely to prove controversial with humanitarian organisations and NGOs, has not yet been announced officially by the government.
Greece’s new centre-Right government has pledged to crack down on the number of asylum seekers trying to cross to the Aegean islands, despite humanitarian groups saying they have every right to seek refuge.
The government wants to speed up the rate of deportations of people whose asylum applications have been rejected.
Yesterday, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the prime minister, called for more help from the rest of the EU in dealing with the migration crisis.
‘‘Europe does not seem to treat our problem as a European problem,’’ he told Politique Internationale magazine.
More than 40,000 refugees and migrants are stuck in miserable conditions in camps on the Aegean islands, despite the facilities having an official capacity of just 6,200. The Moria camp on Lesbos, for instance, has a capacity for around 3000 asylum seekers but instead has held close to 20,000 in recent weeks.
– Telegraph Group