The first registration center (Hot Spot) for refugees and migrants opened its doors on the island of Chios on Tuesday. Seventy men, women and children who had entered Greece illegally were registered and their papers confirmed.
“Executives of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees took the refugees and migrants to the refurnished building, members of Norwegian Non-governmental humanitarian organization NRC wrapped bracelets with numbers around the people’s wrists and offered them a bottle of water,” local media report. Frontex officials registered them and confirmed via the electronic database of European authorities that no “suspects of terrorism” was among them.
Video: arrival at registration center
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Refugees and migrants may stay up to 24 hours in the reception center, enjoy humanitarian conditions after a difficulty journey on a boat from the Turkish coast. then they will have to move on to the mainland. Refugees may continue their journey to Europe, unless the EU decides upcoming Thursday and Friday otherwise. The migrants will have to stay provisionally in Greece and later deported either to their countries of origin or back to Turkey.
The first Hot Spot that operates officially in Greece is located in the premises of an old factory. It is one of five in total on the neighboring islands of Lesvos, Samos, Kos and Leros. Due to residents’ residence, the registration center on the island of Kos is expected to be ready towards the weekend.
The center on Chios has a capacity to host 1,095 people. “Authorities are concerned about the upcoming summer season, when migration rises to 2,500-3,000 arrivals per day,” the media report.
Authorities have a good right to be concern. Apparently they haven’t heard of the German-led NATO Force that is expected to prohibit boats with refugees arriving in EU territory.
A propos NATO Force! How could these people arrive when Greek Defense Minister claimed this morning that “the NATO operation informally started” on Monday? OK, maybe these people have been on the island since Sunday….
PS you can easily get insane, when you report from Greece. Trust me. – example: this morning I heard on a private TV channel “refugees flow decreased, yesterday only 150 arrived on Chios, whereas it used to be 1,000 per day.” On a local website, I read “that several boats with a total 600 people arrived in the last 12 hours.”
Going on for months on Chios: Registration, NGOs, volunteers, bus-transport, Frontex, bracelets for scans, aso
These poor people – may God forgive us for the shit that we in the west are.
I don’t know what is wrong with people – bad decision after bad decision. The UK has already gone through this shit with coloured wristbands for asylum-seekers: the idea (from a contracted out private company) was that they had to wear this wristbands at all times in order to get free food. The local population (in Cardiff) indentified the people as asylum-seekers and started abusing them and threatening physical violence. The stupid ideas was stopped, after public outcry — including comments about Nazi concentration camps.
~
And now, a mere 2 weeks after the UK incidents, people repeat the same mistake?
They have them in the camp to scan them to make no mistakes when handing out food and cloths and they are doing that since months.
These wristbands are supposed to be to allow them to travel through fYRoM — not for use in camps…At least, this is what ProtoThema published.
I heard on tv that they will wear these only in the camps. as said: you can go insane when you try to report something form Greece
Let’s hope that it is only within camps.
You can find first hand information provided by German volunteers at griechenland.net but it’s all in German, enjoy!
Update on refugee flows to Greece. I also received informal reports as well as UNHCR data that the refugee flow had almost stopped. I can now confirm that it has resumed in full flood. Here are the recorded inflows by recent date (total for Greece):
11 Feb = 502
12 Feb = 123
13 Feb = 186
14 Feb = 51
15 Feb = 181
16 Feb = 1,783
17 Feb = 4,611