More than 218,000 migrants and refugees crossed the Mediterranean to Europe in October – a monthly record and more than during the whole of 2014, the United Nations said Monday, according to the Jamaica Observer. Last week, Greek migration minister Yiannis Mouzalas said the government has ruled out mass detentions of migrants reaching Lesbos and other Greek islands, despite pressure for such camps from other European governments. A whole bunch of Afghans decided to make their way to Germany.
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Addressing his country’s parliament last week, he said he feels shame to be part of the ineffective European leadership.
The chairman of the euro currency group says financially ailing Greece needs help dealing with the huge number of migrants arriving on its shores as they flee to Europe.
The coast guard released a statement at the start of November saying it had rescued a total of 274 people, and recovered 43 bodies.
Yet neither the tragic recent deaths in the Aegean; nor the scenes of shivering migrants trudging through Balkan mud; nor the mounting chaos and squalor in asylum centers in wealthy Germany should come as any surprise. More than a dozen have died this year attempting the unsafe journey.
Indeed, when the news broke two years ago of a boat carrying hundreds of refugees sinking near the coast of Italy, their bodies lay at the bottom of what became wildly known as the “Mediterranean graveyard”.
Greece has been an exceptionally common destination for the refugees – a burden with which the country is grappling. Around 50,000 people arrive to the islands every week.
All officials stressed that the practice of a few EU countries to erect barbed wire fences at their borders trying to keep refugees out was not in line with European values.
In Athens, IFRC Secretary General Elhadj As Sy called for a loosening of travel restrictions to allow the refugees to move legally, echoing a position long held by Greece.
The direct train link was agreed last month after thousands of people, most of whom were families with small children, were forced to spent entire nights at a muddy border passage waiting to cross from Serbia to Croatia.
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On Tuesday night, four people – two children and two men – drowned trying to reach Greece. “Majority are unidentified, and that includes children”, he told Mega TV.
