ENEVA (Reuters) – Refugees in some sites in Greece are cramped in “sub-standard conditions” in poorly ventilated “derelict warehouses and factories”, with insufficient food, water, toilets and showers, the United Nations refugee agency said on Friday.
“We urge the Greek authorities, with the financial support provided by the European Union, to find better alternatives quickly,” UNHCR spokeswoman Melissa Fleming told a briefing.
(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Louise Ireland)
By Thomas Escritt
THE HAGUE (Reuters) – European authorities are seeking testimony from some of the hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing Middle East violence as they try to build war crimes cases linked to the conflicts in Syria and Iraq.
As witnesses to atrocities, they are invaluable to prosecutors preparing trials in European courts that will offer a way round the United Nations impasse that has prevented the setting up of an international court for Syria.
The search for evidence takes a variety of forms. Dutch and German immigration services hand out leaflets to arriving migrants, inviting them to testify. In Norway, police screen arrivals’ mobile phones for evidence of possible involvement in war crimes.
“Over the next five years you’ll see a lot of prosecutions,” said Matevz Pezdirc of the European Union’s Genocide Network, a forum that brings together police and prosecutors twice a year in The Hague to swap information about war crimes.
Some alleged perpetrators may be European citizens who have joined Islamic State; others may be militants who have traveled to Europe from Syria or Iraq, blending in with the more than 1 million migrants and refugees who streamed into the continent last year.
“You may have lots of victims or witnesses in one place, but you can’t move with a prosecution until you have a perpetrator in your jurisdiction,” Pezdirc said.
Most European countries have legislation allowing them to prosecute international crimes like genocide regardless of where in the world they happen. About 15 have units dedicated to investigating and prosecuting them.
Over the past decade, authorities in Europe have launched 1,607 international war crimes cases in domestic jurisdictions, while another 1,339 are ongoing, according to EU judicial cooperation agency Eurojust.
STRESSED WITNESSES
German police have compiled testimony from hundreds of potential witnesses to the Syria conflict, and war crimes prosecutors in Karlsruhe have questioned a few dozen of them in greater depth.
But gathering evidence is a painstaking process. Traumatized witnesses, fresh from harrowing journeys on foot and by sea, need time before they are ready to testify, and can often face only short periods of questioning each day.
“The refugees usually need time to rest and calm down before they decide to cooperate with law enforcement,” Pezdirc said.
Investigators have interviewed Yazidi Kurd refugees in Germany for evidence of alleged genocide against the ethnic and religious minority. A German citizen thought to be in Syria is the subject of a sealed arrest warrant on separate war crimes charges.
They are preparing further cases against two other suspects, one accused of torture and another of kidnapping a U.S. legal adviser near Damascus.
In France, genocide and war crimes prosecutors have a handful of investigations open into Syrian nationals, including a former Syrian colonel, once a doctor in a military hospital, who has sought asylum.
More than 4,000 European citizens are estimated to have left to fight in Syria, of whom around a third have since returned home, a Dutch think tank said earlier this year.
With both witnesses and perpetrators on their territory, European prosecutors have already brought some cases. A German citizen is on trial for war crimes after Facebook posts showed him posing alongside decapitated heads.
Last year, Swedish courts convicted a Syrian on the basis of a video showing him torturing a fellow combatant. Crimes being investigated around the continent include torture, murder, rape, crimes against humanity and genocide.
SECURITY COUNCIL SPLIT
With more than 400,000 people killed in Syria since 2011, there have been calls for perpetrators of massacres to face trials in a U.N. court, like those that followed the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s.
But division among the five veto-wielding permanent members of the U.N. Security Council – who include Syria’s ally, Russia – has stymied attempts to refer such cases to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, or set up a special tribunal.
So rights campaigners are pinning their hopes on national prosecutions, and Syria and Iraq have come to dominate the agenda of the Genocide Network, which has been operating since 2004.
“If there’s going to be justice in Syria, it’s going to be in the courts of third states,” said Stephen Rapp, a U.S. diplomat who led the prosecution of former Liberian President Charles Taylor, at a meeting of law enforcement officials in The Hague this week.
Successful trials could help to influence the wider course of the war and the migrant crisis, he said.
“If we do more to show there’s justice, that there’s hope, if we can show that this way of fighting the conflict is going to have consequences, we can reduce the refugee flow.”
(Additional reporting by Chine Labbe in Paris, Stine Jacobsen in Oslo, Jussi Rosendahl in Helsinki, Rodrigo De Miguel Roncal in Madrid; Editing by Anthony Deutsch and Mark Trevelyan)
By Phoebe Fronista
IDOMENI/EVZONI, Greece (Reuters) – They packed up their belongings and began to walk, some heading for the fields, others to a gas station, all seeking to avoid going to state-run Greek migrant camps where they fear they will end up trapped.
For months they had been living in Idomeni, a sprawling expanse of tents on Greece’s northern border with Macedonia and a symbol of human misery until police and bulldozers began clearing it on Tuesday.
More than 8,000 people, mostly Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans, had been living there, hoping to reach northern Europe like the nearly a million migrants and refugees before them. But they got stranded in Greece after borders closed down across the Balkans.
The Idomeni camp was nearly empty on Thursday but only about 2,400 people have been relocated to state-run facilities, according to police.
Instead, dozens of tents have sprung up at gas station in the town of Evzoni, some six 6 km (4 miles) away, and dozens more were being pitched in a grassy field nearby.
Diar, an 18-year-old Syrian, said he woke up on Thursday to Greek police asking him to get on a bus to an official camp, so he made his own way out of there instead.
“I’m looking for a smuggler,” he said. “Everyone here is trying to get a smuggler and move from here, by plane or by walking, or anything else.”
Greek officials have not released figures on how many people may have left on their own accord.
Aid groups say the new sites, including some in disused warehouses and industrial zones, are not fully functional. They have called on Greece, which is also grappling with its worst economic crisis in generations, to improve conditions there.
The government says there are still more than 54,000 migrants on Greek soil. Asylum requests have spiked in recent months, adding to the burden of an asylum service already criticised as slow and inefficient.
Progress has also lagged on a scheme to redistribute 160,000 asylum seekers from Greece and Italy to other EU states to alleviate pressure on the two frontline countries. Just over 1,100 people have been relocated so far.
“This is not just about survival. Sites must provide for refugees’ basic needs,” said Rowan Cody, northern Greece field coordinator for the International Rescue Committee aid group.
“Increasing desperation is already leading to spikes of violence and an increase in mental health issues. How much more can these people bear?” he asked.
One Syrian refugee who left Idomeni for the barren field in Evzoni with his wife and two daughters said he refused to go to an official camp as he had been told of overcrowding.
“There is no place for us and there is not enough food and aid and medicine. People are cramped on top of each other and, at the same time, there are same problems as the previous camp,” he said.
“I don’t want to go and get squeezed among people and in the end, we still don’t know what our fate will be.”
(Writing by Karolina Tagaris; Editing by Tom Heneghan)
By Phoebe Fronista and Fedja Grulovic
IDOMENI, Greece (Reuters) – Greek police on Tuesday started moving some of the 8,000 migrants and refugees stranded in a makeshift camp on the sealed northern border with Macedonia to state-run facilities further south.
Several busloads of people, most of them families with children, left the sprawling expanse of tents at Idomeni early on Tuesday and about a dozen more buses were lined up ready to take more, Reuters witnesses said.
At the latest tally, about 8,200 people were camped at Idomeni. At one point more than 12,000 lived there after several Balkan countries shut their borders in February, barring migrants and refugees from central and northern Europe.
Greek authorities said they planned to move individuals gradually to state-supervised facilities further south which currently have capacity of about 5,000 people. The operation is expected to last several days.
“The evacuation is progressing without any problem,” said Giorgos Kyritsis, a government spokesman for the migrant crisis. People would be relocated “ideally by the end of the week,” he said. “We haven’t put a strict deadline on it.”
A Reuters witness on the Macedonian side of the border said there was a heavy police presence in the area but no problems were reported as people with young children packed up huge bags with their belongings.
Media on the Greek side of the border were kept at a distance. Inside the Idomeni camp, police in riot gear stood guard as people from the camp boarded the buses, footage by the state broadcaster ERT showed. Some 1,100 refugees and migrants had been relocated by noon, Greek police said.
A police official said about 1,000 people were blocking the sole railway tracks linking Greece and Macedonia. Protesters demanding passage to northern Europe have for weeks blocked the route, forcing trains to divert through Bulgaria to the east. Some goods wagons have been stranded on the tracks for weeks.
The United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) urged Greece to refrain from using force during the transfer of the migrants and refugees.
“It’s important that organised movements are voluntary, non-discriminatory and based on well-informed choices by the individuals,” spokesman Adrian Edwards told a briefing in Geneva.
International charity Save the Children said it was concerned about a lack of basic services such as bathrooms and shelters in the official camps.
“Many of the children, especially lone children, have been through enough trauma already,” said Amy Frost, team leader in Greece.
“Now that the evacuation has started, it is paramount that authorities make it a priority to keep families together, and to ensure that children are being transferred to facilities where they can live in conditions that meet European and international standards for child welfare,” she said.
(Additional reporting by Angeliki Koutantou in ATHENS and Stephanie Nebehay in GENEVA; Writing by Michele Kambas and Karolina Tagaris; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)
By Dasha Afanasieva
ISTANBUL (Reuters) – The U.N.’s refugee agency said on Monday border closures in Europe to stop migrants were “inhumane”, and government efforts to stem the flow had averted the crisis only temporarily.
The border closures across the Balkans and a controversial deal between Turkey and the EU have sharply reduced the number of people crossing into Europe this year, after a million made the often perilous journey in 2015.
“There are a lot of people patting themselves on the shoulder and saying the deal worked, the people have stopped coming: but there’s more to it than that,” Melissa Fleming, spokeswoman for the UNHCR, said on the sidelines of the world’s first humanitarian summit.
“It has pushed the problem backwards and the problem is not yet solved.”
On the moves to seal borders, she added: “The sudden closure and the action by unilateral states was inhumane vis-à-vis many vulnerable people.”
Under the deal between Europe and Turkey, Ankara has agreed to take back illegal migrants from Europe in return for aid, accelerated EU accession talks and visa-free travel to the bloc.
Host country Turkey has taken in nearly 3 million refugees since the start of the Syrian civil war and spent nearly $10 billion. But aid groups say it is not a safe country for refugees.
Last week a Syrian on the Greek island of Lesbos won an appeal against a decision to forcibly return him to Turkey, successfully arguing that Turkey does not afford refugees the full protection required under the Refugee Convention, rights group Amnesty International said.
Fleming said it was not yet clear whether this would set a legal precedent.
Finalisation of the EU-Turkey deal has been held up by disagreements over Turkey’s anti-terrorism law, which Brussels wants brought in line with European standards.
Billed as the first of its kind, the United Nations summit in Istanbul aims to develop a better response to what has been called the worst humanitarian crisis since World War Two.
(Editing by David Dolan and Andrew Roche)
THENS (Reuters) – Greece will begin in the coming days to evacuate a makeshift camp on its northern border with Macedonia where thousands of migrants and refugees have been stranded in dire conditions for months, the government said on Monday.
The sprawling camp in a field near the Greek town of Idomeni sprang up in February after border shutdowns across the Balkans left the people stranded there. They had mostly been heading for Germany and other wealthier northern European countries.
The migrants, mostly from conflict zones in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, have refused to move despite having to sleep in the open in very difficult conditions or being tear-gassed by Macedonian police. They have largely ignored appeals by Greek authorities to move to organized camps set up around Greece.
Giorgos Kyritsis, a government spokesman for the migration crisis, told state TV the evacuation process would begin “tomorrow, the day after and will be completed in a week, at most 10 days”.
Asked if the government planned to remove all 8,000 people estimated to be living in the camp, Kyritsis said: “Yes. A thing like Idomeni cannot be maintained. It only serves the interests of smugglers.”
A police source said 50 riot police squads would be deployed to Idomeni for the gradual removal of the migrants starting from Tuesday evening. Some 2,000 people who have been blocking the railtrack on the border will be removed first, the source said.
The tracks have been blocked by the migrants for more than a month, forcing trains to re-route through Bulgaria further to the east. Some wagons loaded with goods have been stranded on the tracks at Idomeni for weeks.
Kyritsis said that while the government did plan to reopen the railway it was not planning a police sweep operation at the camp.
“Removing all the refugees from the disgrace which is Idomeni is in their own interest. The railtrack will open for the train to pass through normally but the fundamental thing is for the people to be transferred to where the conditions are humane.”
(Reporting by Karolina Tagaris and Theodora Arvanitidou; Editing by Gareth Jones)
HELSINKI (Reuters) – Finland tightened restrictions on giving residence permits to asylum seekers from Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia on Tuesday, saying it was now largely safe for them to return to their war-torn homes.
Authorities in Helsinki, where anti-immigration political groups have been on the rise, said security had improved to such an extent that refugees would generally not be at risk in any parts of the three countries, despite the running conflicts.
There was no immediate reaction from refugee agencies. But the statement by the Finnish Immigration Service came in the face of a string of international assessments of the scale of the ongoing bloodshed and refugee crisis.
“It will be more difficult for applicants from these countries to be granted a residence permit,” the immigration service said in a statement.
“It is currently possible for asylum seekers to return to all areas in Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia without the ongoing armed conflicts as such presenting a danger to them only because they are staying in the country.”
Asylum seekers would now only be allowed to stay if they could prove that they were individually at risk.
Somalia has been slowly recovering from more than two decades of war. But the government is still fighting an Islamist insurgency by the militant group al Shabaab, which regularly launches gun and bomb attacks in the capital Mogadishu and other cities.
Islamic State still holds key cities and vast swathes of territory in northern and western Iraq which it seized in 2014.
Despite battlefield setbacks over the past year, the militants have continued to attack civilians in areas under government control including a string of attacks last week in and around the capital that killed more than 100 people.
The Taliban launched a spring offensive in Afghanistan last month, vowing to drive out the Western-backed government in Kabul and restore strict Islamic rule.
Finland’s center-right coalition government – which includes nationalist Finns party – has tightened its immigration policies since the influx of asylum seekers last year.
Groups of self-proclaimed patriots have launched regular patrols and marches, saying they want to protect locals from immigrants.
Around 32,500 people applied for asylum in 2015 from 3,600 in 2014, with most of them coming from Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia. Numbers have come down significantly this year.
(Reporting by Jussi Rosendahl; Additional reporting by Edmund Blair in Nairobi, Stephen Kalin in Baghdad; Editing by Andrew Heavens)
GENEVA (Reuters) – People smugglers made over $5 billion from the wave of migration into southern Europe last year, a report by international crime-fighting agencies Interpol and Europol said on Tuesday.
Nine out of 10 migrants and refugees entering the European Union in 2015 relied on “facilitation services”, mainly loose networks of criminals along the routes, and the proportion was likely to be even higher this year, the report said.
About 1 million migrants entered the EU in 2015. Most paid 3,000-6,000 euros ($3,400-$6,800), so the average turnover was likely between $5 billion and $6 billion, the report said.
To launder the money and integrate it into the legitimate economy, couriers carried large amounts of cash over borders, and smugglers ran their proceeds through car dealerships, grocery stores, restaurants or transport companies.
The main organizers came from the same countries as the migrants, but often had EU residence permits or passports.
“The basic structure of migrant smuggling networks includes leaders who coordinate activities along a given route, organizers who manage activities locally through personal contacts, and opportunistic low-level facilitators who mostly assist organizers and may assist in recruitment activities,” the report said.
Corrupt officials may let vehicles through border checks or release ships for bribes, as there was so much money in the trafficking trade. About 250 smuggling “hotspots”, often at railway stations, airports or coach stations, had been identified along the routes – 170 inside the EU and 80 outside.
The report’s authors found no evidence of fighting between criminal groups, but larger criminal networks slowly took over smaller opportunistic ones, leading to an oligopoly.
In 2015, the vast majority of migrants made risky boat trips in boats across the Mediterranean from Turkey or Libya, and then traveled on by road. Around 800,000 were still in Libya waiting to travel to the EU, the report said.
But increasing border controls mean air travel is likely to become more attractive, with fraudulent documents rented out to migrants and then taken back by an accompanying facilitator, the report said.
Migrant smuggling routes could be used to smuggle drugs or guns, and there was growing concern that radicalized foreign fighters could also use them to enter the EU, it said.
But there was no concrete data yet to suggest militant groups consistently relied on or cooperated with organized crime groups, it added.
($1 = 0.8837 euros)
(Reporting by Tom Miles)
BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The number of migrants arriving in Greece dropped 90 percent in April, the European Union border agency said on Friday, a sign that an agreement with Turkey to control traffic between the two countries is working.
The agency, Frontex, said 2,700 people arrived in Greece from Turkey in April, most of them from Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq, a 90 percent decline from March.
Under the EU’s agreement with Turkey, all migrants and refugees, including Syrians, who cross to Greece illegally across the sea are sent back.
In return, the EU will take in thousands of Syrian refugees directly from Turkey and reward it with more money, early visa-free travel and faster progress in EU membership talks.
In Italy, 8,370 migrants arrived through the longer and more dangerous route from northern Africa, Frontex said. Eritreans, Egyptians and Nigerians accounted for the largest share.
There was no sign migrants were shifting from the route to Greece to the central Mediterranean route, Frontex said. The number of people arriving in Italy in April was down 13 percent from March and down by half from April 2015.
That particular statement was contested by the Norwegian Refugee Council, an Oslo-based humanitarian agency. It cited Thursday’s announcement by Italian coastguards that they had helped rescue 801 people, including many Syrians, from two boats heading from Northern Africa to Italy.
“This might be a first sign of Syrian refugees now choosing the much more dangerous route across the Mediterranean from Northern Africa to Italy, in search of protection in Europe,” said Edouard Rodier, Europe director at the council.
“If this continues, the EU-Turkey deal is not only a failure, but may also result in more deaths at sea,” he said in an statement emailed to Reuters.
(Reporting by Robert-Jan Bartunek in Brussels and Gwladys Fouche in Oslo,; editing by Philip Blenkinsop, Larry King)
BERLIN (Reuters) – Almost two-thirds of Germans think Islam does not “belong” to their country, a survey showed on Thursday, indicating changing attitudes following militant Islamist attacks in Europe and the arrival of more than a million, mostly Muslim, migrants last year.
Former German president Christian Wulff sparked controversy in 2010 when he said Islam belonged to Germany, a comment repeated by Chancellor Angela Merkel last year.
Six years ago, 49 percent of Germans agreed with Wulff and 47 percent did not.
Thursday’s poll, carried out by Infratest dimap for broadcaster WDR, showed that the mood has shifted, with 60 percent now saying that Islam does not belong to Germany. It showed 34 percent thought it did belong.
Scepticism about the religion was greatest among older people, with 71 percent over the age of 64 believing Islam does not belong to the country.
Germany is home to around four million Muslims, about five percent of the total population, and unease over the religion is on the rise, especially in the wake of deadly Islamic State attacks in Brussels and Paris.
Earlier this month members of the anti-immigration party Alternative for Germany (AfD) backed an election manifesto that says Islam is not compatible with the constitution and calls for a ban on minarets and the burqa.
Just over half of Germans are concerned that the influence of Islam in Germany will become too strong due to the influx of refugees, the Infratest dimap poll showed.
Fears about an Islamist terrorist attack in Germany are also rife, with almost three-quarters of Germans worried about the possibility.
The survey of 1,003 Germans was conducted between May 2 and May 3.
(Reporting by Michelle Martin; Editing by Toby Davis)