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Protests Escalate Against Greek Plans to Build Migrant Camps

DOW JONES & COMPANY, INC. 8:17 AM ET 2/8/2016


ATHENS--Protests against Greek government plans to build camps for refugees and other migrants escalated on Monday, raising doubts about whether Greece can assure the European Union quickly that it is doing enough to control the massive inflow of people into Europe via the Aegean Sea.

Residents on the Aegean island of Kos on Monday blockaded a Greek army camp where the government wants to build a migrant registration and screening center, known as a "hotspot," preventing construction work.

Kos locals, protesting at the site since Friday, have the support of the island's mayor, who wrote to Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on Sunday, demanding that the government abandon the planned hotspot, which he said would damage Kos's vital tourism industry.

Kos's mayor, Giorgos Kyritsis, warned that the protests could lead to bloodshed and called on Athens to remove riot police from the island.

In Athens, protesters including members of the neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn demonstrated against a transit camp for migrants near the port of Piraeus. At the same time, human-rights activists held a demonstration to show their support for migrants and refugees.

Mr. Tsipras's government is struggling to set up a string of hotspots by mid February, to show the EU that Greece is safeguarding Europe's border against uncontrolled migration. Greece has promised to build hotspots on the islands of Lesbos, Kos, Samos, Chios and Leros, all of which are receiving large numbers of refugees and migrants by boat from the nearby coast of Turkey.

So far, the hotspot on Lesbos is up and running. The other islands have accepted the construction of hotspots, but Kos, which gets more tourists than the other islands concerned, has opposed the plan from the start, arguing that a large migrant-registration center on the island will undermine the island's economy.

Further delays in setting up the hotspots could raise the chance of the EU suspending Greece from its borderless Schengen zone in coming months. EU authorities want Greece to screen those arriving, separating genuine refugees from economic migrants who don't qualify for asylum in Europe.

Greece has also promised to build two transit centers for migrants on the country's mainland, one near Athens and one in northern Greece, each with a capacity to house up to 4,000 migrants.

Work has temporarily stopped on the northern-Greek transit camp since Sunday because of a protest by locals against the camp. Mayors from nearby towns, who don't the camp in their area, are due to meet with officials from Greece's migration and defense ministries later Monday.

Greece's defense minister Panos Kammenos, who is supervising the construction of the camps, said Greece would build them despite the protests and deliver on its promises to the EU.

Mr. Kammenos said that if the northern-Greek mayors proposed another area for the camp, it could be moved later, " but there is no way we will stop work there now, because everything has to be ready by February 15."

Write to Nektaria Stamouli at [e-mail]


(END) Dow Jones Newswires
02-08-160817ET
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