Asylum seeker

The Greek government has been holding migrants incommunicado at a secret extrajudicial before illegally expelling them back to Turkey without due process, as part of several hard-line measures to seal its border, contravening international law.

Cyprus is more than doubling the number of officials vetting asylum applications, shortening application deadlines and fast-tracking deportations as part of a new string of measures aimed at tackling a spike in migrant arrivals, the country's interior minister said Tuesday.

A total of 60 asylum seekers - over half of them children - were rescued off Turkey's Aegean coast, security sources said on March 8.

Turkish Coast Guard teams said in a statement that a group of Afghans in a rubber boat, including 33 children, were rescued while attempting to cross to Greek islands.

Greece's decision to suspend new asylum applications for a month is unlawful and shameful, Turkey's interior minister said on March 3.

"According to a statement highlighted by the UNHCR, the 1951 Geneva Convention and the EU refugee law do not allow such a decision, either," Suleyman Soylu said on Twitter.

Greece's coast guard has released footage of a Turkish patrol boat escorting a rubber dinghy packed with migrants and refugees as it tries to enter Greek waters in the eastern Aegean.
According to coast guard officials, the dinghy which appears in the footage is the same vessel that later capsized off the coast of Lesvos, killing one child.

Unknown assailants on Sunday set fire on a migrant camp at a makeshift reception area for asylum-seekers at Skala Sykamias on the northern coast of Lesvos island in the eastern Aegean.
The Stage 2 transit camp had been set up by the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) to temporarily host asylum seekers landing on the island, before their transfer to the Moria hotspot.

Despite vehement local opposition to the construction of new closed centers on the Aegean islands and Tuesday's clashes between residents and riot police, the government insists it does not intend to back down from its decision to go ahead with the plan.

The Finnish government says it has agreed to take in up to 175 asylum-seekers from camps in Cyprus, Greece, Italy and Malta "to alleviate the humanitarian situation" experienced by refugees in the Mediterranean members of the European Union.

The government has responded to intensifying demands to ease the pressure on the five eastern Aegean islands that are on the front line of the migration/refugee crisis by creating new detention facilities. It has responded to the demand for the immediate transfer of tens of thousands of asylum seekers to facilities on the mainland by planning to put them behind walls on the islands.

Greek government spokesman Stelios Petsas said the owners of the land that will be expropriated by the state to make way for the creation of closed centres for asylum seekers on the islands will be paid rent for three years.