Refugee crisis

Hundreds of desperate Rohingya Muslims are still pouring over the Myanmar border into Bangladesh every week, bringing harrowing accounts of torture and murder, six months after a military crackdown sparked the massive refugee crisis.

There is an irony to the phrase "European refugee crisis." If you are in Africa, the Middle East or South Asia, you know that the refugee crisis is felt most acutely in countries neighboring those in conflict. Now is the time for Europeans to address the seriousness of the issues we face. Greece is a good place to start, since it has been in the eye of the storm.

During a trilateral summit between Greece, Cyprus and Jordan in Nicosia on Tuesday, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras appealed to the international community to support countries that host large numbers of refugees as they are the ones that have the greatest humanitarian needs. 

Greece, Jordan and Cyprus called for more effective support to countries on the frontline of the Middle East refugee crisis on Tuesday and pledged to deepen cooperation on a host of issues from water management to protection of artefacts.

A court in northern Greece has sentenced 23 people to prison terms ranging from eight to 1,489 years for smuggling Iraqi and Syrian refugees into the country from the Turkish border in 2015 and 2016.

 In a bid to avert a rerun of the refugee crisis of 2015, when Greece was overwhelmed by a deluge of migrants from Turkey, the government is planning to amend a law governing the process of granting asylum to refugees with a bill expected to go to Parliament next week, Ekathimerini reported.

In a bid to avert a rerun of the refugee crisis of 2015, when Greece was overwhelmed by a deluge of migrants from Turkey, the government is planning to amend a law governing the process of granting asylum to refugees with a bill expected to go to Parliament next week.

At least 6700 representatives of the Rohingya minority were killed in the first month of the Myanmar armed forces' crackdowns, which began at the end of August, said Doctors without Borders.

Given the refugee crisis and the steady increase in the Muslim population, the EU is likely to face three scenarios that will determine its future, RIA Novosti contributor Igor Gashkov writes, adding that none of them could prevent inevitable ethnic, cultural and religious changes on the Old Continent.

There were months in 2015 when the eastern Aegean island of Lesvos received up to 6,000 arrivals of migrants and refugees a day. The refugee crisis was the leading news item at the time and harrowing images of those landings traveled across the globe.