Greece on Saturday opened two new closed camps for asylum seekers on the islands of Leros and Kos, a model criticized by human rights defenders for the strict controls imposed there.
“
A new era is beginning,
” Migration Minister Notis Mitarachi said when announcing the opening of these two new camps.
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The new secure camps, surrounded by barbed wire, equipped with surveillance cameras and magnetic gates where asylum seekers must present electronic badges and their fingerprints to be able to enter, are closed at night.
Asylum seekers can go out during the day but must return in the evening.
These new installations, which Greece has undertaken to set up with funds from the European Union, are called upon to replace the old squalid camps where thousands of migrants were crowded in unsanitary conditions.
"
We are freeing our islands from the problem of migrants and its consequences,
" added the Minister.
"
The images of the years 2015-2019 are now a thing of the past
".
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The first secure camp of this type was opened in September on the island of Samos, after the dismantling of the old camp, a veritable slum, which had housed nearly 7,000 asylum seekers at the height of the migration crisis between 2015 and 1016. Greece had been the main gateway through which more than a million asylum seekers, mostly Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans, arrived in Europe in 2015.
According to UN estimates, some 96,000 refugees and asylum seekers are currently on Greek territory.
