UN Experts Warn Greece On Migrant Detentions

UN experts on Friday urged Greece to end the "widespread" detention of migrants amid government plans to build additional pre-deportation facilities to address a steady influx of new arrivals

Athens, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 13th Dec, 2019 ) :UN experts on Friday urged Greece to end the "widespread" detention of migrants amid government plans to build additional pre-deportation facilities to address a steady influx of new arrivals.

"The use of detention remains widespread in the criminal justice and migration contexts and we urge Greece to end this policy," the organisation's Working Group on Arbitrary Detention said after a 10-day visit to police stations, prisons and other facilities.

"Detention in the context of migration must be an exceptional measure of last resort, based on an individual assessment of each migrant and for the shortest period," the group said at a news conference in Athens.

Greece in 2019 again became the main entry into Europe for migrants and refugees. The UN refugee agency recorded more than 55,000 arrivals by sea, and more than 14,000 via the land border with Turkey.

Greece's new conservative government has struggled to manage hundreds of new asylum-seeker arrivals on a daily basis from the coast of neighbouring Turkey.

Greece's migrant camps are mostly full beyond capacity, and Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis last month admitted that he had failed to persuade EU peers to accept even unaccompanied minors.

To address the problem, Mitsotakis' government last month tightened asylum provisions and announced plans to bolster border patrols and build larger, closed camp facilities to detain thousands of migrants facing deportation back to Turkey.

The UN experts said they were "seriously concerned" after finding some unaccompanied minors held in dark cells with adults from a few days to over two months.

"Detention of children in the context of migration is prohibited under international law and should be discontinued," the group said ahead of a report to be presented in September 2020.

Mitsotakis has said he had recently failed to persuade other EU states to accept around 3,000 out of about 5,000 unaccompanied migrant minors in Greece.

Part of his government plan on migration, he has said, is to provide accommodation where "they will live and be fed as dictated by their tender age".