Greece starts migrants move
2,000 rescued
IDOMENI, Greece, May 24, (Agencies): Greece sent in police and bulldozers on Tuesday to knock down tents and relocate hundreds of migrants who had been stranded for months in a squalid, makeshift camp on the border with Macedonia.
Several busloads of people, most of them families with children, left the sprawling expanse of tents at Idomeni to move to state-run centres further south. Buses were lined up ready to take more, Reuters witnesses said.
By the latest count at least 8,000 people were camped at Idomeni in difficult, overcrowded conditions with poor sanitation, ignoring previous calls by the government to leave. As many as 12,000, mainly Syrians, Afghans and Iraqis, were stuck there at one point after Balkan countries shut their borders in February, barring them from crossing to central and northern Europe.
Greece was the main entry point for more than a million migrants who made it to Europe last year, mostly after perilous sea crossings. New arrivals there have slowed sharply since the European Union struck a deal with Turkey to get it to curb the flow, but the government says there are still more than 54,000 migrants on Greek soil.
It plans to move people gradually to state-supervised facilities which currently have a capacity of about 5,000. About 1,500 people had been relocated by late afternoon, police said.
A Reuters witness on the Macedonian side of the border said there was a heavy police presence in the area, but no problems were reported as people with young children packed up huge bags with their belongings.
Media on the Greek side of the border were kept at a distance. Inside the Idomeni camp, police in riot gear stood guard as people boarded the buses, state TV footage showed.
But at the Oreokastro camp near the city of Thessaloniki, migrants already there shouted at new arrivals not to get off the buses because of conditions there, a Reuters witness said.
Meanwhile, the European Union should keep its promises or Turkey will cancel agreements with the bloc, including a deal to take back migrants, Turkey foreign minister said on Tuesday.
“It’s not realistic to treat Turkey this way after it took such important steps. We can put aside all the agreements we signed, and this is no threat or bluff,” Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told state-run broadcaster TRT Haber.
Cavusoglu added he would discuss visa-free travel for Turks to Europe with the deputy head of the European Commission, Frans Timmermans, this weekend.
Cavusoglu
ROME:
Around 2,000 migrants seeking to reach Europe were plucked to safety from unseaworthy boats in the Mediterranean in 15 operations off the coast of Libya Monday, the Italian coastguard service said.
Two Italian naval vessels rescued more than 500 people while two Doctors Without Borders (MSF) boats took another 788 migrants.
An Irish navy boat rescued hundreds more as did a passing cargo ship, according to the coastguard.
They did not give the nationalities of those saved, but most of the migrants who undertake the perilous journey in overcrowded vessels come from sub-Saharan Africa.
ISTANBUL:
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The surge of migration to Europe is enormously positive for EU economies in the long term, the director general of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said, praising improved efforts by European nations to integrate migrants into the economy.
Over one million migrants, many refugees escaping conflict in Syria and other states, arrived in Europe in 2015 and almost 200,000 have arrived so far this year by land and sea routes.
The influx has caused concern in some conservative EU societies, boosting right-wing parties, and also prompted the bloc to negotiate a controversial deal with key transit country Turkey to stem the flow of migrants.
But with labour shortages in ageing EU societies, IOM director general William Lacy Swing said migration have a positive economic effect on Europe.
“In general it is positive, because migrants bring a lot of motivation,” Swing told AFP at the World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul.