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Migrants: Amnesty, EU to stop suffering at Eastern borders

Commission should address situation in Greece, Bosnia

18 December, 14:03
(ANSA) - BELGRADE, DECEMBER 18 - Amnesty International has urged the new European Commission to address the situation of migrants and refugees facing harsh conditions in Greece and in the Balkans.

"People seeking safety through the treacherous land and sea routes between Turkey and Greece and across the Western Balkans face deadly conditions as snow and freezing temperatures descend on the region," Amnesty said today in a statement seen by ANSA.

"From the overcrowded refugee camps on the Greek Islands, to the makeshift settlements in Bosnia, where thousands of people sleep rough or in inhumane and undignified conditions, people seeking shelter face barbed wire, dangerous paths and a harsh winter," Amnesty said in the statement, released on International Migrants Day.

"European leaders now have an opportunity to draw a line under previous dangerous policies and provide people fleeing to Europe with the safety and dignity that they seek, and that the law provides," the organization added.

Amnesty International noted that the number of arrivals increased in the region in the last months, with almost 70,000 migrants and refugees reaching Greece only in 2019. The organization recalled, among the most serious problems faced by refugees in the region, the pushbacks and use of violence in the Evros region, in Greece. Additionally, "more than 40,000 people, including 13,800 children, are currently forced to live in appalling conditions on the Greek islands". Amnesty claimed also that "Croatian police continue to violently push back people trying to enter the EU through its border, resulting in a mounting humanitarian crisis in Bosnia and Herzegovina." EU leaders "must acknowledge the human cost of outsourcing migration control and refugee protection to its peripheries or even to third countries where the rights of refugees, asylum seekers and migrants are systematically endangered," Amnesty said. "Amnesty urges the EU to live up to its founding values and rethink its current policy of preventing entries at any cost, to ensure that this is the last winter refugees and migrants spend fearing for their lives in the cold," the organization concluded. (ANSA).

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