Kırklareli, a city of 92,000 people, is home to a refugee center for migrants who will be sent back to their home countries.
Advertisement
Tensions were running high among migrants on the Greek islands.
A last-minute flurry of asylum applications by migrants desperate to avoid expulsion from Greece to Turkey will likely cause a two-week “lag” in an European Union deportation plan slammed by rights groups, a Greek official said Wednesday.
Pope Francis will travel to the Greek island of Lesbos on the frontline of Europe’s refugee crisis next week, Greece announced Tuesday as a controversial European Union accord to send migrants back to Turkey stalled.
These workers have told members of the media that Syrians being held at the facility, are threatening to jump overboard if they are placed on ships back to Turkey.
Global asylum law prohibits the collective expulsion of refugees and states that each case should be treated on an individual basis.
Returned Syrians are expected to be taken initially to a camp in the southern town of Osmaniye, from where those who have the means will be allowed to settle elsewhere in Turkey among an existing Syrian migrant population of 2.8 million, Turkish officials have said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record.
Many aid and human rights organizations slammed the deal, including Doctors Without Borders, who have boycotted the facilities involved in refugee deportation due to the deal’s illegality.
The statement by the Greek Orthodox Church said a visit by the pope would be “of a few hours duration, purely humanitarian and symbolic”. It also invited Ecumenical Patriarch Vartholomaios, the spiritual leader of Orthodox Christians, to accompany the pope when he visits the Aegean island.
“I can confirm that initial contacts have been made in this regard with civil and religious authorities”, Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi said Tuesday.
But in Athens, a Greek government source denied that a date for the next transfer had ever been set.
“We risk our lives to come here, we don’t want to go back to Turkey because they are going to send us back to Pakistan”, he said.
The Church of Greece said Tuesday that visit of the leaders of the Catholic and Orthodox churches would send a “very strong signal” about the need to help refugees and protect Christians “who are cruelly suffering” in the Middle East.
On the issue, UNHCR’s Cochetel previously told the Guardian newspaper: “For four days after the 20th, the Greek police did not register any intention to seek asylum as they were no prepared [or] equipped for this, so we started providing forms to people who had declared their intention to seek asylum”.
Advertisement
Stavropoulou said the Greek asylum operation needed many more staff, with only 30 of 400 expected migration officers from other countries having arrived in Greece.
