Human traffickers now use aircraft to smuggle Iraqi migrants to Italy

Till now, human traffickers used to ferry migrants in boats or follow the land route but, now, they have gone in for aircraft. Police have arrested six members of a trafficking network that charged up to £6,000 to fly Iraqis to Italy - the arrests were made as they prepared a plane for seven migrants.
This has been reported in dailymail.co.uk dated 18 March 2016.

A gang of four Greeks and two Iraqis were involved in this smuggling and the police nabbed them when four children were due to take off on the flight - it happened in western Greece. This smuggling network has already successfully taken 12 groups of migrants from Iraq to Italy. Each of the migrants had paid the smugglers between 4,500 and 7,500 euros (£3,515-£5,858).
The police officers seized the Piper small aircraft, 34,430 euros (£26,500) in cash, two cars, 700 grams of cannabis and shotgun cartridges during the raid in Messolonghi. The criminal network used for illegally transferring the migrants from Greece to countries in western Europe on small aircraft has since been dismantled.
It is not clear just how the migrants had arrived in Greece but the smugglers had driven them to the west of the country from Athens where the plane was due to depart from. The migrant children have been sent to a juvenile welfare centre but, the fate of the adults was not clear.
Italian officials have revealed that there had been a spike in migration due to the good weather and ships had picked up 3,100 migrants over the past three days most of them are Lybians. The breakdown is - 712 migrants were picked up yesterday and, another 2,400 had landed in the two previous days, all grouped in small, flimsy rubber dinghies.


Image courtesy wikimediacommons.org

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Migrants clash with police at Greece-Macedonia border

Hundreds of refugees stranded at the Greece-Macedonia border tried to break through a border fence and enter Macedonia from Greece, where more than 7,000 people are stranded. The situation provoked clashes and anger mounted over barriers that had been put up to prevent entry of migrants flooding into Europe. This has been reported in zeenews.india.com dated 1 March 2016.

There wre clear signs of deepening divisions within Europe as German Chancellor Angela Merkel lashed out at Austria and Balkan states for introducing tight limits on migrant entries - that left Greece stuck with refugee boats continuing to arrive from Turkey. Macedonian President Gjorge Ivanov has warned that once Austria reaches its cap of a maximum 37,500 migrants transiting through this year, the refugee route through the Balkans will have to close. Macedonian police had to fire tear gas at the border as some 300 migrants forced their way through a Greek police cordon and raced towards a railway track between the two countries. There was a stampede and at least 30 people, many of them children, had to be given first aid in the stampede. This has been informed by the charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF). The protest took place several hours after Macedonia allowed just 300 Syrians and Iraqis to cross.


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Migrant crisis in Greece - millions more migrants expected

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras of Greece has remarked that Greece is turning 'into a warehouse of souls' as more countries close their borders to migrants. He spoke out ahead of EU talks aimed at reducing the flow of refugees through the Balkans and as Germany was warned to expect 2.5million more migrants in the next four years.
This is reported in dailymail.co.uk dated 25 February 2016.

Greece, at present, is the arrival point for nearly four fifths of the huge flow of people fleeing war and poverty who are arriving in Europe. Most of them take the route via Turkey and this influx is turning out to be the worst crisis of its kind to face Europe for more than half a century.
Already one hundred thousand migrants have arrived this year and more than a million last year - these figures are as per the International Organization for Migration (IOM). And, with another 3.6 million refugees on the way, the record €19.4 billion budget surplus that the government took in last year in taxes will soon be eroded.
Therefore, ahead of the meeting, Tsipras has threatened not to cooperate with future EU agreements on the migrant crisis if the burden was not fairly shared among member states. Athens is seething over a series of border restrictions along the migrant trail to northern and western Europe. This has resulted in a bottleneck in Greece, the main entry point to Europe.
Hence, Tsipras has made it clear to the Greek parliament that Greece will no longer agree to any deal if the burdens and responsibilities are not shared proportionally. He has added that Greece cannot be turned into a warehouse of souls.


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