Tag Archives: Greece

Tensions boil over in overcrowded Greek migrant camp

Refugees and migrants make their way at the Souda municipality-run camp, on the island of Chios, Greece

ATHENS (Reuters) – Tensions were high on the Greek island of Chios on Friday after unknown individuals hurled rocks and petrol bombs at a makeshift camp for refugees and migrants, setting facilities on fire, police sources and aid organizations said.

Video footage showed people struggling to put out the flames with blankets. Women and children were evacuated and camped outside a tavern in an incident which erupted overnight Thursday.

It was the second night running of incidents at the facility, a makeshift camp run by the local municipality of the Aegean island. There were incidents on Wednesday when individuals let off fireworks from the camp and outsiders threw stones into the camp.

“Both incidents together have destroyed the places to sleep for some 100 men women and children. Today there was a third incident where …. stones were thrown and one Syrian man was seriously injured to his head and had to be hospitalized,” said Roland Schoenbauer, spokesman for UNHCR Greece.

According to police, there are more than 1,000 refugees and migrants in the Souda Camp on Chios.

Under a European Union deal with Turkey, migrants and refugees arriving after March 20 are to be held in centers set up on five Aegean islands, including Chios, and sent back if their asylum applications are not accepted.

Tensions have boiled over at overcrowded camps on Greece’s islands as the slow processing of asylum requests adds to frustration over living conditions.

“Tensions are not completely new, but the situation is seriously concerning us, because it has deteriorated seriously. The tensions are linked to the overcrowding of the sites,” Schoenbauer said, saying the perpetrators of the incidents should be found and brought to justice.

More than 3,000 migrants and refugees are currently in Chios. The state facilities have a capacity for 1,100 people.

The situation could be eased if authorities improved security around the camp and stepped up efforts to find refugee and migrants alternative accommodation, Schoenbauer told Reuters.

In September, thousands of people fled a migrant camp on the Greek island of Lesbos after fire swept through tents and cabins during violence among residents.

(Reporting by Lefteris Papadimas and Michele Kambas, writing by Renee Maltezou Editing by Jeremy Gaunt)

Refugees languish in Greek limbo as alarm grows in Brussels

Anis, 4, from Syria (C) is bathed by his mother, as others wash their clothes and shoes, at the Souda municipality-run camp for refugees and migrants on the island of Chios, Greece

By Karolina Tagaris

ATHENS (Reuters) – Seven months after the European Union and Turkey struck an agreement to turn back the tide of Syrians fleeing west, no refugees have been sent back from Greece, and Brussels is losing its patience as overcrowded camps grow violent.

The agreement reached in March was designed to reduce the number of migrants crossing into Europe from Turkey, after more than a million people arrived in Europe last year, most reaching Greek islands by boat and continuing by land to Germany.

Under the deal, the European Union declared Turkey “a safe third country”, meaning those who make the crossing can be returned there, even if found to have fled Syria or other countries as refugees deserving protection. Turkey agreed to take them back, in return for a range of EU concessions.

At around the same time, Balkan countries along the land route north closed their borders, so that migrants who once poured across Greece to reach other parts of Europe are now trapped there and prevented from pressing on.

For the most part, the goal of stemming the tide has been achieved so far. Only 17,000 people, around half of them Syrians, have made the hazardous sea crossing from Turkey since the deal was signed, a tiny fraction of hundreds of thousands that arrived the previous year to pass through Greece.

But for the deal to continue to work for the longer term, European officials and experts say refugees will have to be sent back to Turkey. As long as those crossing are still able to stay in Greece, there is a risk that more will decide to come.

“There’s the deterrence effect. If it’s proven that people are being turned back, it can force people to think twice about even trying,” said James Ker-Lindsay, an expert on southern Europe at the London School of Economics.

Only about 700 people who arrived since the deal was signed – just four percent of the total – have gone back to Turkey, and none was ordered back after being recognized as a refugee.

Of those who returned, most were economic migrants from countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh who left without seeking asylum in Greece. Around 70 people who did claim asylum in Greece gave up on the process and asked to leave before it was over. The rest are still in Greece, prey for smugglers who offer to take them to northern Europe.

Some 61,000 migrants are still scattered across Greece, including 15,900 in overcrowded island camps that have grown violent as the delays mount, with around 2,500 more arriving each month. The camps are now holding three times as many people as they held when the deal was signed, and twice as many as they were built for.

The EU blames the delays on Greek inefficiency.

“The goal of ensuring returns … has mostly been hampered by the slow pace of processing of asylum applications at first instance by the Greek Asylum Service and of processing of appeals by the newly-established Greek Appeals Authority,” the EU Commission said in a progress report.

“Further efforts are urgently needed by the Greek administration to build a substantially increased and sustained capacity to return arriving migrants, which is considered to be the key deterrent factor for irregular migrants and smugglers.”

Athens says it is simply overwhelmed and cannot speed up the painstaking process of evaluating claims. It has asked the EU to send more staff, but European officials say that would not help without more effort from Greece to improve its system.

Interviews with asylum-seekers and officials involved in the process suggest Greek staff are indeed stretched, but red tape, inefficiency, the lack of a unified plan across refugee camps and a lengthy appeals process are also to blame.

Refugees and migrants line up for food distribution at the Moria migrant camp on the island of Lesbos, Greece

Refugees and migrants line up for food distribution at the Moria migrant camp on the island of Lesbos, Greece October 6, 2016. REUTERS/Alkis Konstantinidis/File Photo

UNLUCKY

Amir, Walaa and their two young children fled from the Syrian city of Homs to Turkey and reached a beach on the Greek island of Chios in March. They say they came ashore the day before the deal with Turkey, but their arrival was not recorded by police until the next day, exposing them to the new rules.

“We were unlucky,” Walaa said, smiling weakly. Her two brothers had taken just two weeks to reach Germany from Greece before the land border was shut. Her husband Amir added: “We were in the boat and (German Chancellor Angela) Merkel and Turkey were finishing the deal.”

Their asylum case should be easier to process than many: they have their passports and do not need to prove their identity. But they are still months from an answer.

In their first weeks in Greece they were given a number: 10,624. Each day, they rose from their tent in the dusty remains of a castle moat, and walked to a notice board, looking anxiously for it.

If posted, it meant they should walk or catch a bus to the island’s main camp, a few miles (km) away, and queue there at the processing center, a few prefabricated containers arranged inside an abandoned aluminum factory.

They spent four months in the tent before their number finally was posted the first time, summoning them to a meeting to establish their identity, where authorities finally sat them down to ask for their names and fingerprints.

Six months after they arrived, they were finally told the date of their first actual interview: Dec. 6. They were finally given the right to leave the camp and relocate to Athens while they wait for their case to be heard. Now they live at a grimy, abandoned Athens school where smugglers roam, offering passage to northern Europe for $1,000.

“We wait. Every day we just wait. Why, I don’t know,” Walaa said, gazing at the floor. She and her husband asked that their surnames not be published to protect relatives back in Syria.

Humanitarian groups on the ground say poor coordination slows things down on the islands, a conclusion backed up by the EU Commission report, which urged Greece to develop unified management for the camps.

The camps are typically run by local municipalities or the central government, while screening and interviews are carried out primarily by officials from EU border agency Frontex and the European Asylum Support Office (EASO).

Asylum-seekers say they receive contradictory information and are confounded by a lack of interpreters. One camp used a loud-hailer to call people to appointments; if they didn’t hear it, they missed their turn.

Frontex and EASO officials go to unusual lengths to confirm an identity or check an asylum seeker’s story. Someone who has no documentation and professes to be from Syria, for example, will be asked to name streets, identify landmarks or pick out Syrian coins from a handful of different currencies.

A CRUEL BUREAUCRACY

The long waits and squalor of some camps have turned frustration into violence. On Chios and the island of Lesbos in recent days, asylum-seekers attacked EASO’s offices to protest against delays. Interviews there have yet to resume.

EASO has deployed 202 staff in Greece and has called for 100 more, but EU member states have yet to respond, EASO spokesman Jean-Pierre Schembri said. Greece has repeatedly asked for more.

The Greek legal system allows for an elaborate appeals process, which the EU says is too slow. Greece responded in June by sending more judges to replace civil servants and staff of either the U.N. refugee agency or Greek human rights commission, who had previously sat on appeals panels.

The new boards appear to be moving only slightly faster: they made 35 decisions in their first month, compared with 72 made by the old boards in the first three months of the deal, the EU Commission report said. The report did not specify what decisions had been reached.

The most contentious part of the process is determining whether those with valid asylum cases can safely be returned to Turkey, the heart of the March deal. The new appeals boards have dealt with at least three such cases as of Sept. 18, and at least one is challenging the decision at Greece’s highest court, according to the EU report.

Reuters could not find a board member willing to comment publicly on the process.

“A wrong decision might send someone back to serious harm,” said Giorgos Kosmopoulos, an Amnesty International researcher and former Greece director. “It’s about quality not quantity.”

(Additional reporting by Gabriela Baczynska in Brussels; editing by Peter Graff)

Protesters attack EU asylum offices on Greece’s Lesbos

Migrant camp in Greece

ATHENS (Reuters) – Asylum-seekers attacked the premises of the European Asylum Support Office (EASO) on the island of Lesbos on Monday, protesting against delays in dealing with asylum claims, Greek and EU authorities said.

About 70 people, most from Pakistan and Bangladesh, threw rocks and burning blankets at EASO containers inside the Moria migrant camp, damaging three of those, a Greek police spokesman for the island said.

EASO Spokesman Jean-Pierre Schembri said protesters had hurled petrol bombs while interviews with asylum-seekers were taking place. EASO staff had evacuated the camp.

“They burned our offices this morning … The process will not resume for the time being,” he said. “We have to evaluate security issues and in our view we need more presence of Greece police to be in place.”

More than 15,000 asylum-seekers are living in overcrowded camps on Greek islands close to Turkey, stranded by a European deal with Ankara to seal the main route into the continent for a million refugees and migrants last year.

Asylum-seekers wait for weeks or months for their claims to be processed.

There are nearly 6,000 asylum-seekers on Lesbos alone, nearly double the capacity its two camps can handle. Violence and protests at the conditions there are frequent.

(Reporting by Karolina Tagaris; Editing by Toby Chopra)

Thousands flee fire at Greek migrant camp as tensions flare

Migrants stand among the remains of a burned tent at the Moria migrant camp, after a fire that ripped through tents and destroyed containers during violence among residents, on the island of Lesbos, Greece,

By Karolina Tagaris

ATHENS (Reuters) – Thousands of people fled a migrant camp on the Greek island of Lesbos on Monday night after fire swept through tents and housing cabins during violence among residents, police said.

The fire was over by mid-day on Tuesday at the Moria camp which houses the 5,700 migrants on the island and many people had returned, though children had been transferred to other facilities, police said.

No casualties were reported from the fire and its cause was not clear.

The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, linked the fire to poor living conditions and a sense of insecurity among many of the residents.

Refugees and migrants on Lesbos are stranded there by a European Union deal with Turkey preventing them going beyond the island until their asylum claims have been processed. Those who do not qualify will be deported to Turkey.

Tensions have boiled over at overcrowded camps on Greece’s islands as the slow processing of asylum requests adds to frustration over tough living conditions.

Greek media said the clashes on Monday erupted among residents following a rumor that hundreds of people would be deported.

Roland Schoenbauer, UNHCR’s spokesman in Greece, said people were “sick of waiting” in the camps. “They don’t know when their asylum claims will be processed. Some people feel they don’t have enough information,” he said.

A police official in Athens said two riot police squads had been deployed to the island.

Nearly 60 percent of the Moria camp, including tents and metal-roofed cabins, had been destroyed by the fire, a police official said. Work was underway on Tuesday to set up new tents, Police Minister Nikos Toskas said.

At least nine people were arrested on accusations of damaging property and causing unrest and were expected to appear before a prosecutor, a police official in Athens said.

The remains of a burned tent at the Moria migrant camp, after a fire that ripped through tents and destroyed containers during violence among residents, on the island of Lesbos, Greece,

The remains of a burned tent at the Moria migrant camp, after a fire that ripped through tents and destroyed containers during violence among residents, on the island of Lesbos, Greece, September 20, 2016. REUTERS/Giorgos Moutafis

OVERCROWDING

Panos Navrozidis, Greece director of aid agency International Rescue Committee, said the camp had been operating at over-capacity for months, with people crammed into the facility with limited access to water, and in conditions that do not meet humanitarian standards.

He criticized the system to process claims as “opaque and inconsistent” and said preferential treatment based on nationality led to tensions within the community.

Thousands have applied for asylum and the wait is long, ranging from weeks to months. Just over 500 people have been deported to Turkey since March but none of those who have requested asylum were among those, Greece says.

Despite a slowdown in arrivals from Turkey compared to last year, more than 13,500 migrants and refugees are now living on eastern Aegean islands, nearly double a capacity of 7,450.

“The situation is difficult,” Christiana Kalogirou, prefect of the north Aegean region, told Greek TV. “There is a great need for decongestion of the islands … in the future things could become much more difficult,” she said.

Including those on the islands, there are 60,000 migrants and refugees stranded in Greece, mostly Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans who made risky journeys in flimsy inflatable boats.

(Additional reporting Renee Maltezou; Editing by Richard Balmforth)

Migrant arrivals to Greek islands jump to highest in weeks

A rescue boat of the Spanish NGO Proactiva approaches an overcrowded wooden vessel with migrants from Eritrea, off the Libyan coast in Mediterranean Sea

ATHENS (Reuters) – More than 460 migrants and refugees arrived on Greek islands from Turkey on Tuesday, the highest in several weeks, despite a European Union deal with Ankara agreed in March to close off that route.

Greek authorities recorded 462 new arrivals between Monday and Tuesday morning, up from 149 the previous day. Most entered through the Aegean islands of Lesbos and Kos.

The numbers are small compared to the number of those trying to reach Italy from Africa — some 6,500 migrants were saved off the Libyan coast on Monday, the Italian coast guard said — and far fewer than the thousands a day arriving in Greece last summer.

Daily arrivals fluctuate, ranging from a couple of hundred migrants and refugees a day to just tens, but indicate a steady inflow five months after the deal with Turkey was agreed. Under the accord, those who cross to Greece without documents from March 20 will be sent back to Turkey unless they apply for asylum and their claim is accepted.

The United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) said it recorded a rise in arrivals toward the end of August but it was too early to say if there had been a change in trends.

“So far it doesn’t look like that but we are following the situation very closely,” UNHCR spokesman William Spindler told a U.N. briefing in Geneva.

According to UNHCR, an average 100 people a day arrived on Greek islands from Turkey in August, up from 60 in July. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) said 2,808 people arrived in Greece through August 28, the largest monthly number since April.

IOM spokesman Joel Millman said the number of arrivals had been climbing in recent weeks and there were also signs of more migrants and refugees leaving Turkey for Bulgaria.

So far under the deal, just 482 people have been deported to Turkey but none had applied for asylum, Greece says. No rejected asylum seekers have been sent back.

That has pushed the number of migrants and refugees on Greece’s islands to 12,120 from 5,538 in March. Most are Syrians, Afghans and Iraqis, living in overcrowded camps.

More than 163,000 migrants and refugees have arrived in Greece by sea this year, UNHCR says. In 2015, it was the main gateway into Europe for over 1 million people fleeing war and conflict in the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

This summer has seen a sharp rise in mostly African migrants and refugees trying to reach Italy from the north African coast.

(Reporting by Karolina Tagaris in Athens and Tom Miles in Geneva; Editing by Alexandra Hudson)

Shackled remains at ancient Greek site tell tale of intrigue

Skeletal remains, with iron shackles on their wrists, are laid in a row at the ancient Falyron Delta cemetery in Athens, Greece,

By Deborah Kyvrikosaios

ATHENS (Reuters) – At least 80 skeletons lie in a mass grave in an ancient Greek cemetery, their wrists clamped by iron shackles.

They are the victims, say archaeologists, of a mass execution. But who they were, how they got there and why they appear to have been buried with a measure of respect – that all remains a mystery.

They were found earlier this year in part of the Falyron Delta necropolis – a large ancient cemetery unearthed during the construction of a national opera house and library between downtown Athens and the port of Piraeus.

Few people have been able to get in to have a close look.

But on a rare tour of the site, archaeologists carefully showed Reuters the skeletons, some lying in a long neat row in the dug-out sandy ground, others piled on top of each other, arms and legs twisted with their jaws hanging open.

“They have been executed, all in the same manner. But they have been buried with respect,” Dr. Stella Chryssoulaki, head of excavations, said.

“They are all tied at the hands with handcuffs and most of them are very very young and in a very good state of health when they were executed.”

The experts hope DNA testing and research by anthropologists will uncover exactly how the rows of people died. Whatever happened was violent – most had their arms bound above their heads, the wrists tied together.

But the orderly way they have been buried suggest these were more than slaves or common criminals.

COUP PLOT?

The cemetery dates from between the 8th and 5th century BC.

“It is a period of great unrest for Athenian society, a period where aristocrats, nobles, are battling with each other for power,” said Chryssoulaki.

One of the strongest theories is that they were supporters of Cylon, an Athenian noble and Olympic champion who staged an attempted coup in Athens in 632 BC with the help of his father-in–law, the tyrant of Megara.

The coup failed and Cylon hid in a temple of the Acropolis. He managed to escape, but the people who backed him were killed.

“Perhaps with the DNA tests that we will do on these skeletons we may confirm or not this hypothesis that these deceased, these young people could be … part of a coup … an attempt by a noble to take power by force,” said Chryssoulaki.

More than 1,500 bodies lie in the whole cemetery, some infants laid to rest in ceramic pots, other adults burned on funeral pyres or buried in stone coffins. One casket is made from a wooden boat.

Unlike Athens’ renowned ancient Kerameikos cemetery, the last resting place of many prominent ancient Greeks, these appear to be the inhabitants of regular neighborhoods.

The dig is within a 170,000 sq m landscaped park, shadowed by the vast new modern library and opera house buildings being built by the Stavros Niarchos philanthropic foundation.

High-rise apartments dot the skyline to the north while a noisy motorway snakes by the site’s east side.

Chryssoulaki wants to see a museum built on the spot, as a monument to the daily lives of Athenians from another era.

“A cemetery is a first and last photograph in antiquity of those people that pass from life to death,” she said.

(Editing by Michele Kambas and Andrew Heavens)

EU proposes new asylum rules to stop migrants crossing Europe

Migrants who will be returned to Turkey demonstrate inside the Moria registration centre on the Greek island of Lesbos,

By Gabriela Baczynska

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The European Commission proposed more unified EU asylum rules on Wednesday, in a bid to stop people waiting for refugee status moving around the bloc and disrupting its passport-free zone.

In an unprecedented wave of migration last year, 1.3 million people reached the EU and most ignored legal restrictions, trekking from the Mediterranean coast to apply for asylum in wealthy Germany, prompting some EU countries to suspend the Schengen system that allows free passage between most EU states.

“The changes will create a genuine common asylum procedure,” said EU Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos. “At the same time, we set clear obligations and duties for asylum seekers to prevent secondary movements and abuse of procedures.”

The proposal would standardize refugee reception facilities across the bloc and unify the level of state support they can get, setting common rules on residence permits, travel papers, access to jobs, schools, social welfare and healthcare.

It would grant prospective refugees swifter rights to work but also put more obligations on them, meaning if they do not effectively cooperate with the authorities or head to an EU state of their choice rather than staying put, their asylum application could be jeopardized.

The five-year waiting period after which refugees are eligible for long-term residence would be restarted if they move from their designated country, the Commission said.

The plan, which will now be reviewed by national governments and the European Parliament, comes after the Commission proposed in May a system for distributing asylum seekers around the bloc, an idea that angered eastern EU states which refuse to take in refugees.

Only 3,056 people have so far been relocated under the scheme that was meant for 160,000 people, the Commission said. Hungary and Slovakia have challenged the quotas for receiving asylum-seekers in the courts.

Asked whether Brussels would punish countries, that also include Poland and the Czech Republic, for not complying with the relocation quotas, Avramopoulos said: “Were not here to punish, we are here to persuade. But if this persuasion doesn’t succeed, then yes, we’re thinking of doing that. But we’re not there yet.”

SAFE LIST

Last year’s record arrivals triggered bitter political disputes in the EU, where the wealthier states that ended up hosting most of the people accused the newer members in the east of showing no solidarity.

A deal with Turkey in March has since cut the arrivals to Greece to a trickle but has prompted concerns about human rights.

Unlike the Turkey route, however, which mainly brought Syrians and other people with a strong cases for asylum into Europe, the bloc is now worried over a rise in arrivals from Africa through Libya. Most people on that route do not qualify for asylum and, under the EU rules, should be sent back.

The Commission wants to draw up lists of “safe countries” outside the bloc, which would help EU states return people, after Athens’ refusal to recognize Turkey as such a place hindered deportations from the Greek islands back to Turkey.

To discourage chaotic flows by facilitating legal migration, the Commission also proposed an EU-wide system for resettlement directly from refugee camps. It said Brussels would pay 10,000 euros for each person EU states bring in.

But Slovakia, the current holder of the EU’s rotating presidency, was skeptical on chances for unified asylum system.

“We can only talk about real burden-sharing when the quality of life is the same in all EU states,” said Bernard Priecel, head of Slovakia’s migration service. “Otherwise we will always have secondary movements. How can you force them to stay?”

(Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

Greece want to send thousands of migrants back to Turkey

People make their way inside the Moria holding centre for refugees and migrants, on the Greek island of Lesbos

ATHENS (Reuters) – Greece wants to dramatically escalate returns of migrants to Turkey in the coming weeks under a European Union deal with Ankara, the migration minister said on Friday, amid criticism it has been too slow to process them.

The deal, which has been lambasted by rights groups and aid agencies, is aimed at closing off the main route into Europe, used by around a million refugees and migrants last year. It obliges Greece to return those who either do not apply for asylum or have their claims rejected.

Officials say about 8,400 migrants are currently on Greek islands, nearly all of whom have expressed interest in applying for asylum, overwhelming the system.

Greece says that, so far, it has deported 468 people back to Turkey, none of whom had requested asylum. Just two Syrian refugees have been ordered back from Greece to Turkey and they are appealing against the decision in the Greek courts.

Migration Minister Yannis Mouzalas said Greece wanted to send thousands of migrants who arrived by crossing the Aegean Sea back to Turkey within weeks if they did not qualify for asylum in Greece.

“It would constitute failure if, within the next month-and-a-half, those who are obliged to leave the islands didn’t do so,” Mouzalas told Greek TV.

Asked how many people that amounted to, Mouzalas said “more than half” of the migrants currently there.

The minister’s comments came a day after parliament voted an amendment replacing two members of an asylum appeal board with judges.

Previously, the panel was made up of one civil servant, one member appointed by the national human rights committee, and a representative of the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR.

EU officials had called on Greece to think about whether the committee should comprise civil society members rather than judges.

Unrest in Greek island camps boiled over earlier this month as migrants stranded there since March brawled with each other and set tents on fire.

Medical aid charity Medecins Sans Frontieres said on Friday it would reject all funding from the European Union and its member states in protest at the EU-Turkey deal, which its International Secretary General said was “jeopardizing the very concept of the refugee.”

(Reporting by Karolina Tagaris; editing by John Stonestreet)

U.N. urges Greece to improve poor living conditions for refugees

A refugee woman hangs clothes to dry at the sun after heavy rainfall at a makeshift camp for migrants and refugees near the village

ENEVA (Reuters) – Refugees in some sites in Greece are cramped in “sub-standard conditions” in poorly ventilated “derelict warehouses and factories”, with insufficient food, water, toilets and showers, the United Nations refugee agency said on Friday.

“We urge the Greek authorities, with the financial support provided by the European Union, to find better alternatives quickly,” UNHCR spokeswoman Melissa Fleming told a briefing.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Louise Ireland)

Migrants stranded in Greece take to fields to avoid state run camp

A migrant woman with a child sits in a bus after a police operation to evacuate a migrants' makeshift camp at the Greek-Macedonian border near the village of Idomeni

By Phoebe Fronista

IDOMENI/EVZONI, Greece (Reuters) – They packed up their belongings and began to walk, some heading for the fields, others to a gas station, all seeking to avoid going to state-run Greek migrant camps where they fear they will end up trapped.

For months they had been living in Idomeni, a sprawling expanse of tents on Greece’s northern border with Macedonia and a symbol of human misery until police and bulldozers began clearing it on Tuesday.

More than 8,000 people, mostly Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans, had been living there, hoping to reach northern Europe like the nearly a million migrants and refugees before them. But they got stranded in Greece after borders closed down across the Balkans.

The Idomeni camp was nearly empty on Thursday but only about 2,400 people have been relocated to state-run facilities, according to police.

Instead, dozens of tents have sprung up at gas station in the town of Evzoni, some six 6 km (4 miles) away, and dozens more were being pitched in a grassy field nearby.

Diar, an 18-year-old Syrian, said he woke up on Thursday to Greek police asking him to get on a bus to an official camp, so he made his own way out of there instead.

“I’m looking for a smuggler,” he said. “Everyone here is trying to get a smuggler and move from here, by plane or by walking, or anything else.”

Greek officials have not released figures on how many people may have left on their own accord.

Aid groups say the new sites, including some in disused warehouses and industrial zones, are not fully functional. They have called on Greece, which is also grappling with its worst economic crisis in generations, to improve conditions there.

The government says there are still more than 54,000 migrants on Greek soil. Asylum requests have spiked in recent months, adding to the burden of an asylum service already criticised as slow and inefficient.

Progress has also lagged on a scheme to redistribute 160,000 asylum seekers from Greece and Italy to other EU states to alleviate pressure on the two frontline countries. Just over 1,100 people have been relocated so far.

“This is not just about survival. Sites must provide for refugees’ basic needs,” said Rowan Cody, northern Greece field coordinator for the International Rescue Committee aid group.

“Increasing desperation is already leading to spikes of violence and an increase in mental health issues. How much more can these people bear?” he asked.

One Syrian refugee who left Idomeni for the barren field in Evzoni with his wife and two daughters said he refused to go to an official camp as he had been told of overcrowding.

“There is no place for us and there is not enough food and aid and medicine. People are cramped on top of each other and, at the same time, there are same problems as the previous camp,” he said.

“I don’t want to go and get squeezed among people and in the end, we still don’t know what our fate will be.”

(Writing by Karolina Tagaris; Editing by Tom Heneghan)