Greece has suspended processing of asylum functions from individuals arriving by sea from North Africa since July.
Greater than 120 refugees and migrants have been intercepted off the island of Crete, in keeping with Greek authorities, the most recent in a sequence of arrivals of individuals making perilous journeys to Europe from North Africa regardless of a suspension of asylum claims and a concerted push for harder detention guidelines.
Two boats, carrying 58 and 68 individuals and believed to have departed from Libya, had been stopped on Monday, and their passengers had been positioned beneath guard at momentary shelters. Greater than 100 different refugees and migrants arrived on Crete over the weekend after robust winds eased.
Greece’s conservative authorities final month suspended all asylum claims for migrants arriving by sea from North Africa, a transfer it argued helped deter crossings that peaked in July at greater than 2,500 in a single week.
The ban handed in parliament amid a surge in asylum seekers reaching Crete and after talks with Libya’s Benghazi-based authorities to stem the movement had been cancelled acrimoniously in July.
It additionally marked an extra hardening of Greece’s stance in the direction of refugees and migrants beneath Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’s authorities, which has constructed a fence at its northern land borders and boosted sea patrols because it got here to energy in 2019.
The federal government stays at odds with regional authorities in Crete over a plan to construct a everlasting transit facility on the island. It’s making ready draft laws that will mandate imprisonment for individuals whose asylum claims are denied and require ankle screens throughout a 30-day compliance interval earlier than deportation.
Earlier this month, at the least 26 individuals died after two boats sank off the southern Italian island of Lampedusa.
That catastrophe, additionally involving individuals travelling from Libya, was the most recent to befall refugees and migrants making the perilous Mediterranean crossing from Africa to Europe.
Rights teams and United Nations businesses have additionally documented systematic abuse against refugees and migrants in Libya, together with torture, rape and extortion. In February, Libyan authorities uncovered practically 50 our bodies from two mass graves within the nation’s southeastern desert, within the newest horror involving individuals looking for to make it to Europe by the North African nation.
For the reason that starting of this yr, 675 individuals have died within the central Mediterranean whereas attempting to make the crossing, Filippo Ungaro, a spokesperson for the UN Excessive Commissioner for Refugees in Italy, not too long ago stated.
