Franco-Greek immigrant plan
Citizens’ Protection Minister Michalis Chrysochoidis and France’s Minister of Immigration and Integration Eric Besson yesterday sent a joint letter to the Spanish government, which currently holds the European Union’s rotating presidency, proposing an upgrade in the powers of the EU’s border-monitoring agency Frontex to crack down on illegal immigration.
(21.1.2010) Kathimerini English Edition
Police seek links after two migrants’ deaths
Police in Athens yesterday were seeking to determine whether there is any connection between the fatal knifing of a Pakistani man in the southern suburb of Aghios Dimitrios yesterday evening and the death of another immigrant whose body was found in a car in the same area.
(7.1.2010) Kathimerini English Edition
Four migrants drown at sea
Coast guard officials in the northeastern port of Alexandroupoli on Saturday recovered the bodies of four people, all believed to be illegal immigrants. The first two bodies, those of a young man and woman, were found washed up on a beach near the port. The other two, both men, were found on a beach in nearby Rhodope. The four drownings came just a few weeks after 10 Afghan migrants drowned off the coast of Lesvos, in the eastern Aegean, when their dinghy foundered on a rocky outcrop. Lesvos, along with Samos, Chios and Leros, receive almost daily boatloads of would-be migrants due to their proximity to the Turkish coast.
(4.1.2010) Kathimerini English Edition
Immigrant rights on agenda
The Cabinet is due to discuss this afternoon a piece of groundbreaking legislation that the government wants to introduce that would lead to the children of immigrants living in Greece legally being given Greek citizenship and foreigners gaining the right to vote in municipal elections. One of PASOK’s election pledges was that it would break with the past and allow immigrants’ children to have the right to call themselves Greek, as opposed to leaving them to fall into a bureaucratic limbo. According to recent European Union statistics, there are just over 900,000 immigrants in Greece, comprising 8.1 percent of the country’s population.
(22.12.2009) Kathimerini English Edition
Gov’t and Frontex to work more closely
Citizens’ Protection Minister Michalis Chrysochoidis yesterday presented an action plan for tackling a burgeoning problem with thousands of undocumented immigrants entering the country that foresees closer cooperation between the ministry and the European Union’s border monitoring agency Frontex, tighter border controls and the deportation of those migrants who are determined to be ineligible for asylum.
(15.12.2009) Kathimerini English Edition
Immigrant drowns off Lesvos
Coast guard officials on Lesvos yesterday recovered the body of a drowned immigrant and rescued another 26 migrants after the fishing boat in which they had been trying to reach the Aegean island from neighboring Turkey foundered amid choppy waters. A coast guard vessel was yesterday scouring the area where the boat sank for signs of another female migrant who is believed to be missing.
(12.12.2009) Kathimerini English Edition
Two trafficking rings smashed
Police on the eastern Aegean island of Samos said yesterday that they had broken two migrant-smuggling rings – one comprising three foreign nationals and a Greek and the second run by a Romanian man. According to police, both rings made a profit by selling ferry tickets for Piraeus to the migrants for between 250 and 300 euros a head. The migrants were unable to visit ferry ticket issuers themselves to buy tickets as most of them had been on the island for more than the maximum permitted stay of 30 days and thus would face deportation.
(8.12.2009) Kathimerini English Edition
Traffickers stopped
Police in Thessaloniki yesterday detained a Palestinian and an Iraqi national on charges of smuggling 12 would-be migrants into Greece from Turkey via the Evros River that runs along the two countries’ land border. According to police, one of the two suspects had collected the migrants from the banks of the Evros River. The other suspect was waiting to collect the migrants in Thessaloniki, according to police.
(5.12.2009) Kathimerini English Edition
Bid to revamp coast guard
Citizens’ Protection Minister Michalis Chrysochoidis yesterday heralded an overhaul of the country’s coast guard, pledging to boost staff and modernize infrastructure and equipment on Aegean islands to better tackle a relentless influx of illegal immigrants. Chrysochoidis pledged the creation of a new agency comprising senior officials from the coast guard and police, the function of which would be to monitor the response by island authorities to illegal immigrants.
(19.11.2009) Kathimerini English Edition
Migrant center on Lesvos shut down
As an international conference on migration opened near Athens yesterday, the government said that an overcrowded and much-criticized reception center for illegal immigrants on Lesvos would be replaced by a military unit on the eastern Aegean island. According to sources, the military unit to start operating on Lesvos will be one of several that Deputy Citizens’ Protection Minister Spyros Vougias and Defense Minister Evangelos Venizelos are to agree on.
(3.11.2009) Kathimerini English Edition
Frontex harassed
Turkish authorities late on Friday sent radar warnings to an aircraft of Frontex, the EU’s border-monitoring agency, which had been conducting a patrol in the Aegean as part of the organization’s efforts to curb the influx of illegal immigrants into Europe. The harassment of the Finnish aircraft, while it had been flying north of the island of Farmakonisi, was the eighth incident of its kind in the past two months.
(2.11.2009) Kathimerini English Edition
Frontex patrols
European Commission Vice President Jacques Barrot yesterday declared that aircraft participating in patrols organized by the European Union’s border-monitoring agency Frontex have never violated Turkish air space. Barrot was responding to a question submitted by a group of New Democracy MEPs prompted by a series of radar warnings sent to Frontex aircraft carrying out anti-migration patrols along the Greek-Turkish sea border. The agency has appealed to EU candidate member Turkey to cooperate with air and sea patrols in order to curb human trafficking.
(30.10.2009) Kathimerini English Edition
Immigrants intercepted
A group of 10 illegal immigrants were detained in Evros, northern Greece, yesterday after police chased a car being driven by their suspected smuggler. The driver managed to elude arrest. Meanwhile a prosecutor in Orestiada, near the Bulgarian border, detained four suspected smugglers and 10 would-be migrants following inspections on two vehicles.
(30.10.2009) Kathimerini English Edition
Eight immigrants drown off Lesvos
The government on Tuesday insisted on greater support from the European Union and Turkey in efforts to curb a relentless influx of undocumented migrants after eight would-be immigrants – five minors and three women – drowned off Lesvos in the eastern Aegean when their smuggling boat foundered.
(29.10.2009) Kathimerini English Edition
UNHCR expresses concern about attack at Lesvos center
The UN’s refugee agency in Greece issued a statement yesterday expressing its “great concern” about allegations that police officers beat several migrants, including a 17-year-old, at the Pagani reception center on Lesvos on Thursday. The UNHCR said that the teenager was taken to the hospital where it was established that he had bruises on his head, back, midriff and arms. The incident appears to have happened after some of the detainees protested conditions following a visit by Deputy Citizens’ Protection Minister Spyros Vougias. UNHCR said that some 700 people are being held in Pagani in conditions it described as “an insult to all meanings of human decency.” The Greek branch of the UN agency has asked for the center to be shut down.
(26.10.2009) Kathimerini English Edition
Farmakonisi patrol
Coast guard officers detained 22 undocumented immigrants who were picked up a by a patrol vessel near the tiny Dodecanese island of Farmakonisi on Saturday. The immigrants were in a small dinghy and said they had sailed into Greek waters from Turkey. Their nationalities were not made public.
(26.10.2009) Kathimerini English Edition
Probe into EU aid for migrants
Deputy Citizens’ Protection Minister Spyros Vougias yesterday heralded an investigation into the fate of several hundred thousand euros in European Union funding released to the previous conservative government for the purpose of accommodating a relentless influx of illegal immigrants into Greece from neighboring Turkey.
(24.10.2009) Kathimerini English Edition
Migrants intercepted
A group of 43 would-be migrants and two suspected smugglers were detained on the island of Evia yesterday following an inspection on an Austrian-flagged sailing boat off the island’s eastern shore, coast guard officials said. The ethnic origin of the migrants was not determined while their suspected smugglers were said to be Ukrainian.
(22.10.2009) Kathimerini English Edition
Migrants rescued
Eight immigrants who had hidden in the back of a truck on a 20-hour ferry trip to the Italian port of Ancona from Patra were detained yesterday, along with their suspected smugglers, coast guard officials said. Ferry workers released the migrants, who claimed to be Afghans, after hearing them banging on the sides of the truck as they were having trouble breathing.
(21.10.2009) Kathimerini English Edition
Frontex seeks Turkish cooperation
A senior official of the European Union’s border-monitoring agency Frontex yesterday said the organization’s efforts to curb a wave of illegal immigrants seeking to enter the bloc through Greece would be much more effective if Turkey were to cooperate.
(14.10.2009) Kathimerini English Edition
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