The Council of Europe called on Greece on Thursday (31 October) to take "urgent measures" in the face of an "explosive" situation in the migrant camps of the Aegean islands and criticized a controversial law on the right to Asylum voted Thursday evening in Parliament.

At the end of a five-day visit to Lesbos and Samos camps, the most overcrowded Aegean islands, Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Dunja Mijatovic said: shocked at the horrible hygiene conditions "in which asylum seekers live.

"The picture is shocking for Europe in the 21st century," she warned during a press conference a few hours before the vote in Parliament a bill to tighten the procedure of granting asylum. "The situation of migrants, including asylum seekers, in the Greek islands is explosive" and "on the brink of disaster," she said.

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More than 34,000 people live in camps on five Greek islands with a capacity of 6,300 people.

The Commissioner called for "urgent measures to deal with the appalling conditions in which thousands of people live". "There is a flagrant lack of proper medical care in these heavily overcrowded camps that I have visited, where people wait for hours to get food and go to the bathroom, where there is," he said. she indignantly.

Living conditions have been denounced repeatedly by NGOs defending the rights of migrants and refugees. "The Greek authorities must act quickly", "human rights are not respected," lashed Dunja Mijatovic.

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For the first time since 2016, Greece has become the main entry point for asylum seekers in Europe in 2019, a problem that has taken Kyriakos Mitsotakis' right-wing government elected in July strengthening of border controls so as to guarantee the "security" of the country.

A "superficial" assessment of asylum claims pointed out

Like many international NGOs, including Amnesty, the Commissioner has expressed her reservations about certain provisions of the text voted on Thursday night on the granting of asylum. It was particularly concerned about the extension of the length of detention of asylum seekers and underlined the risk of a "superficial" assessment of asylum applications by the Greek authorities, which would jeopardize the rights of migrants and refugees.

Kyriakos Mitsotakis reaffirmed, in the Parliament gallery, before the vote of the law, Thursday evening, his will to "distinguish refugees from immigrants". "This law on asylum sends a clear message: those who know that they can not get asylum and will come to stay in our country will be sent back to their country and lose the money they have invested in their journey" continued the Greek prime minister.

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Kyriakos Mitsotakis recently said that the people who arrive in Greece today are mostly Afghans and Iraqis and that the issue is rather "migratory" and "less a refugee problem", as was the case in 2015 during the exodus of Syrians to Europe.

"The Greek authorities must overcome administrative obstacles and make effective use of available funds" to manage the situation in the islands of the Aegean, said Dunja Mijatovic.

She also called for "Europe to take on more responsibility to relocate those in Greece to other member countries so that the country where currently around 100,000 migrants and refugees reside improves its reception facilities".

With AFP