Forced migration

EU-backed repatriations program aim to ease pressure on islands Migration Policy Minister Notis Mitarakis and European Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson on Thursday jointly announced the establishment of a European Union-backed program for the repatriation of 5,000 migrants from Greece to their home countries.

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.

Berlin will take in 80 to 100 children from Greek refugee camps, an official in the German capital said on Tuesday, as concern mounts about migrants amassing on the Turkish-Greek border.

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.

A European show of force to help secure Greece's borders coupled with extra EU cash for Turkey "will likely stabilize refugee flows in the short term," according to a note by risk consultancy think tank issued Thursday.

The European Commission will allocate € 700 million to Greece to tackle the flows of Syrian refugees seeking to enter Europe through Turkey. This was announced today by the chairman of the Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, at a joint press conference in Greece with Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the head of the European Council and the President of the European Parliament, BTA reported.

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.

The government has announced the creation over the next few days of a new closed camp in northern Greece for migrants that entered the country illegally since March 1, with a view to immediately deporting them back to their country of origin. 

Russia on Tuesday said that Turkey was trying to push 130,000 refugees from Syria into Greece, the Interfax news agency cited the Defense Ministry as saying.

The two thirds of these refugees - that Turkey is pushing from temporary camps in Syria - are Afghans, Iraqis and Africans, not Syrians, it added. 

[Reuters]