Asylum seeker

A total of 10 asylum seekers were arrested and six more are wanted by Greek authorities in connection with the violence that broke out at a hotspot on the island of Chios on Saturday (April 18).

An asylum seeker living at a Greek refugee facility has tested positive for the novel coronavirus, reports said Monday.

Greek authorities will begin the gradual transfer of 2,380 asylum seekers and their families from island camps to accommodation facilities on the mainland after Orthodox Easter (April 19), the country's Migration Ministry said Thursday.

The move, which will take place over two weeks, aims to reduce the risk of refugees being infected by the coronavirus.

Turkey on April 13 rejected Greece's migration minister's remarks that claimed Ankara violated the March 18 agreement with the EU using the coronavirus epidemic as an excuse.

The Austrian government has agreed to send Greece 181 containers to be used for the accommodation of migrants and refugees and as mobile healthcare facilities, following a request by Athens, according to the ministry of migration on Thursday.

Greece has had to place two camps on lockdown after 21 migrants tested positive for Covid-19.

More than two dozen shelters hosting asylum seekers on the Greek mainland will come under the administrative control of the Migration and Asylum Ministry as part of the effort to improve the operation of these facilities, many of which are currently operating under the authority of international organizations or nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).

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Yet even in the midst of the pandemic, the government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban has warned of a crisis of mass migration — despite the fact that the country's frontiers have largely been sealed to migrants and refugees since 2016.

The Serbian government ordered on Monday that migrants and asylum-seekers living in state-run reception centres are not allowed to go out without special permission.

Four asylum seekers, injured by Greek security forces along the Turkey-Greece border, applied to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), state-run Anadolu Agency reported on March 16.   

Ali Cengiz Kalkan, the provincial health director of Northwestern Edirne province, told Anadolu Agency that the asylum seekers applied to the ECHR through their lawyers.

The Turkish Coast Guard has rescued 34 asylum seekers off the Aegean coast, state-run Anadolu Agency reported. 
The coast guard rescued the group of people, who were in rubber boats which had been driven to Turkish territorial waters by the Greek Coast Guard, the agency cited anonymous security sources as saying.