LESBOS ISLAND, Greece: Greece sent a navy ship to the island of Lesbos Wednesday to house hundreds of migrants who landed on the island in recent days, part of the ongoing surge from Turkey, officials said.
A Greek defense ministry source said the migrants would stay on the transport ship until a new facility to accommodate them had been created on the mainland.
Some 500 people, many of them families with small children, have been stranded at the harbor since arriving from Turkey over the weekend.
Although the Greek vessel arrived at the port of Mytilene Wednesday morning, it was not until 4:00 p.m. (1600 GMT) that the first 15 migrants boarded, said an AFP photographer at the scene.
But the atmosphere at the harbor was tense as the port police and security forces tried to stop two Greek photographers and a German journalist from taking pictures, pushing them back and trying to grab their cameras.
A Greek military source said the migrants would stay on the ship, which normally had a capacity of 400, “as long as necessary.”
Astrid Castelein of the UN refugee agency on Lesbos said they and other aid groups would provide matresses and bedding, as this type of vessel was not normally meant to house people.
On Tuesday evening hundreds of migrants, earlier arrivals on Lesbos who have already filed asylum requests, headed down to the harbor in a bid to get a berth on the ship as news of its impending spread.
After a few brief scuffles, police pushed them back.
In an effort to curb the influx, which began after Ankara said last week it would no longer stop refugees from entering Europe, Athens has suspended asylum procedures and reinforced its borders.
The weekend arrivals, who have not filed asylum requests, will get a place on the boat under this new regime, Fotis Garoufalias, president of the coast guard at Mytilene, told AFP.
“The instructions are to register them, without the possibility of making an asylum request, and to take them on to the boat for them to be transferred,” he said. That process should be finished by the end of the day, he added.
The new arrivals have exacerbated an already combustible situation on the Greek islands in the Adriatic, off the Turkish coast.
Lesbos hosts more than 19,000 refugees and migrants, crammed into squalid conditions around a camp built to house fewer than 3,000, a legacy of the 2015 migration crisis.
Fed up with shouldering the burden of Europe’s over-stretched asylum system, locals have protested against the presence of the migrants on their shores, saying they threaten safety, public health and a tourism-dependent economy.
That anger has spilled over into violence in recent days, with an extremist minority accused of leading attacks on newly arrived migrants, intimidating journalists and targeting aid workers, according to several groups based on Lesbos.
Locals are also angry about the government plans to build a new migrant center on Lesbos and clashed with riot police last week.
Greek navy ship on Lesbos houses latest island migrants
https://arab.news/gxf6z
Greek navy ship on Lesbos houses latest island migrants
- A Greek defense ministry source said the migrants would stay on the transport ship until a new facility to accommodate them had been created on the mainland
- Some 500 people, many of them families with small children, have been stranded at the harbor since arriving from Turkey over the weekend
Tanzania opposition says 2,000 killed in election violence
- Opposition party Chadema’s deputy chairperson John Heche said Tanzania witnessed “mass killings of more than 2,000 people and over 5,000 injured in the space of just one week“
- The violence was carried out “with direct involvement of the state“
DAR ES SALAM: Tanzania’s main opposition party on Thursday said more than 2,000 people were killed in a week of election violence, calling for sanctions against officials it accused of crimes against humanity.
President Samia Suluhu Hassan was declared the winner of October 29 polls with 98 percent of the vote, but her government was accused of rigging the polls and overseeing a campaign of murders and abductions of her critics that sparked nationwide protests and riots.
Opposition party Chadema’s deputy chairperson John Heche told reporters that Tanzania witnessed “mass killings of more than 2,000 people and over 5,000 injured in the space of just one week.”
He said the violence was carried out “with direct involvement of the state” and that it amounted to “crimes against humanity.”
Previous opposition counts had put the deaths at more than 1,000. The government has not given a death toll.
Heche urged the international community to “impose sanctions on all individuals involved in planning and executing these acts of criminality and crimes against humanity.”
In a live online broadcast, he said those responsible should be subjected to travel bans, including restrictions on their families.
Heche also said the unrest triggered a surge of people fleeing the country, alongside “the abduction and enforced disappearance of hundreds of civilians.”
Chadema further accused security units of carrying out rapes, torture and “gruesome killings,” and of engaging in widespread looting and arbitrary arrests.
The party urged authorities to return the bodies of those killed so families could bury them.
Authorities have continued to stifle dissent, with planned protests earlier this week seeing empty streets and a significant security presence.
Hassan last week justified the killings, saying it was necessary to prevent the overthrow of the government.
“The force that was used corresponds to the situation at hand,” she said in a speech.
Hassan has formed an inquiry commission into the violence, which the opposition says includes only government loyalists, instead calling for an independent investigation.
