ATHENS: Greece said on Monday it had prevented around 600 migrants from crossing the Aegean Sea into its territorial waters from neighboring Turkey, in the largest attempted entry this year.
A spokesman for the Greek coast guard said five sail boats and four dinghies had set off from the Turkish coast early in the morning.
“Greek patrol vessels were able to quickly locate the vessels and inform the Turkish coast guard,” the spokesman told AFP.
A coast guard statement said its boats had used “visual and sound signals” to keep the asylum seekers out of Greek territorial waters.
All the vessels either headed back or were intercepted by the Turkish coast guard, he added.
“All the incidents occurred inside Turkish territorial waters” near the Greek islands of Chios and Samos, he said.
A migration ministry source said migration flows to the Greek islands in the first four months of 2022 were nearly 30 percent higher than in the same period last year.
Over 3,000 asylum seekers have arrived in Greece so far this year, including over 1,100 last month, according to data from the migration ministry.
There is also heightened migrant activity on Greece’s land border with Turkey because the water levels is low on the River Evros that divides the two countries, a border official said on Monday.
According to the latest ministry statistics, from April, there are more than 2,300 asylum seekers in camps on the Greek islands of Lesbos, Samos, Chios, Kos and Leros, all near Turkey.
New camps funded by the European Union were recently completed in Samos, Leros and Kos. Others on Lesbos and Chios are to follow.
Greece regularly blames Turkey for not taking sufficient action to curb people smugglers who send out migrants in unsafe boats and dinghies from its shores, in breach of a 2016 accord with the EU.
Greece is a member of the 27-nation bloc but Turkey is not.
Greece’s tough border controls have been dogged by accusations from rights groups that the Greek coast guard has been engaging in illegally forcing migrants to return to Turkey.
Athens has always denied that its security forces engage in illegal pushbacks.
In March, Greece’s national transparency authority said a four-month investigation found no evidence of such practices.
EU border agency Frontex has also repeatedly been accused by rights groups of illegally returning migrants across EU borders.
Frontex head Fabrice Leggeri resigned last month amid an investigation by the European anti-fraud office OLAF, reportedly into alleged mismanagement.
Greece says blocks hundreds of migrants from crossing Aegean
https://arab.news/8h75v
Greece says blocks hundreds of migrants from crossing Aegean
- Over 3,000 asylum seekers have arrived in Greece this year, including over 1,100 last month
- Greece regularly blames Turkey for not taking sufficient action to curb people smugglers
Fossils of ‘Java Man,’ first known Homo erectus, return to Indonesia
- Netherlands to repatriate more than 28,000 items in Dubois collection in 2026
- Fossils excavated in Indonesia were ‘removed against will of people’
JAKARTA: Prehistoric bones belonging to “Java Man” — the first known fossil evidence of Homo erectus — went on display at Indonesia’s National Museum on Thursday, more than 130 years after they were taken to the Netherlands during Dutch colonial rule.
The parts of the skeleton — a skull fragment, molar and thigh bone — were uncovered along the Bengawan Solo River on Java island in the late 19th century by Dutch anatomist and geologist Eugene Dubois.
The three items, and a related shell that was scratched by early Homo erectus, are the first in the planned repatriation of more than 28,000 fossils and natural history objects originating in Java and Sumatra that Dubois had removed.
“Repatriation is a national priority,” Indonesian Culture Minister Fadli Zon said during an official handover ceremony in Jakarta.
“We bear the responsibility to protect cultural heritage, restore historical narratives and ensure public access to the cultural and scientific heritage that belongs to Indonesia.”
Fossils of the Java Man, which was hand-carried in a GPS-tracked, climate-controlled suitcase with a diplomatic seal, were some of the first pieces of evidence showing links between apes and humans.
The fossils are part of the larger Dubois collection that was managed by Naturalis Biodiversity Center, a 200-year-old scientific institution in Leiden.
The rest of the collection will be transferred to Indonesia in 2026, the Dutch Embassy in Jakarta said in a statement, adding that Indonesia’s National Research and Innovation Agency will take a lead role in preserving and managing the items.
“This handover marks the beginning of the next phase. We intend to repatriate thousands of items excavated in Indonesia over 130 years ago,” said Marcel Beukeboom, general director of Naturalis Biodiversity Center.
“This fossil bears witness to an important link in human evolution, while also representing part of Indonesian history and cultural heritage,” he said.
Jakarta started to campaign for the Dutch government to return stolen Indonesian artifacts after declaring independence in 1945, but the Netherlands started to return stolen items only in small numbers in the 1970s.
Recent efforts by the Indonesian Repatriation Committee have brought back home hundreds of artifacts since 2023, bringing the number to more than 2,000 items so far.
The repatriation of the Dubois collection was first announced in September, following recommendation by the Netherlands’ Colonial Collections Committee.
“The Colonial Collections Committee has concluded … that the Dutch state never owned the Dubois collection,” the Dutch government said in a news release issued at the time.
“The committee believes that the circumstances under which the fossils were obtained means it is likely they were removed against the will of the people, resulting in an act of injustice against them.
“Fossils held spiritual and economic value for local people, who were coerced into revealing fossil sites.”
The returned fossils are now a centerpiece of “Early History,” a new permanent exhibit at the National Museum in Jakarta that opened to the public on Thursday.
It explores the history of human civilization throughout Indonesia, with displays including a replica of one of the world’s oldest cave paintings from South Sulawesi and inscriptions from the 4th-century Hindu Kutai Martadipura Kingdom in East Kalimantan.
