At an international conference on migration near Athens last week, the government said that an overcrowded and much-criticised reception centre for illegal immigrants Lesvos would be replaced by a military unit on the eastern Aegean island.
According to sources close to Greek daily, Kathimerini, the military unit to start operating on Lesvos will be one of several that Deputy Public Safety Minister Spyros Vougias and Defense Minister Evangelos Venizelos are to agree on.
Addressing the Global Forum on Migration and Development, which concluded on Tuesday in the coastal Ahenian suburb of Vouliagmeni, Vougias said that the rights of migrants would be respected, heralding the creation of Muslim cemeteries and prayer sites.
He added that the ministry would set up committees of experts to examine migrants’ claims for asylum.
As for some 900 migrants released from the centre on Lesvos, some were reportedly given ferry tickets to Piraeus while others are expected to be transferred to reception centres on other islands, many of which are also overcrowded.
The UN refugee agency UNHCR, one of several nongovernmental organisations that had lobbied for the centre’s closure, welcomed the decision but said that new centres had to be built to accommodate a surging influx of immigrants that continue to enter Greece from Turkey.
In a related development in the central Athens district of Aghios Panteleimonas yesterday, riot police clashed with local residents and suspected members of far-right organisations who had gathered to protest against a scheduled rally in the area by members of anti-racist and human rights groups.
There were no reports of any injuries in the area which has seen a spike in tensions over the past few months as residents protested the burgeoning presence of destitute illegal immigrants in their neighbourhood.