Some 25,000 bids to slip across border
About 25,000 undocumented migrants attempted to cross into Greece in August, according to Minister of Citizens’ Protection Takis Theodorikakos.
“In the month of August alone, which has not yet ended, 25,000 irregular migrants have attempted to enter illegally across the Greek-Turkish border.”
“This is a very large number,” he said Wednesday, speaking to ANT1 TV, a day after Greece’s Council for Foreign Affairs and Defense (KYSEA) decided to further secure the borders in the Evros region.
It is obvious, he said, that “Turkey is methodically and systematically weaponizing these unfortunate people who have fled their countries.”
He stressed that Greek security authorities, primarily the Hellenic Police together with the Army, have an extremely difficult task, which is made even more difficult because a large number now attempting to come to Greece are mainly from Syria who “are being presented with dilemmas by the Turkish authorities, either to return to Syria or to be sent on to Greece.”
Crossing, he reiterated, is facilitated by the low level of the Evros River during the summer. The depth, he stressed, is not even half a meter in many places.
“It is easy to cross and find oneself on the islands that are usually in the middle of the Evros River. [Migrants] go there, they declare that they are in danger and the European authorities try to take decisions, usually the European Court of Human Rights, to have a rescue investigation procedure,” he said, stressing that “these people are not in real danger, their lives are not in any danger.”
“They are left by the organized interests and then they call for the Greek police to take them away. So I will repeat in a categorical way: The Hellenic Police will not become the boatman of smugglers of false hopes to illegal immigrants,” he said.
