Refugees

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.

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinian and Syrian refugees living in overcrowded and rundown camps in Lebanon are bracing for the novel coronavirus as aid groups mobilize to help.    

Lebanon is home to tens of thousands of Palestinians in camps that over the decades have become bustling neighborhoods and at least 1.5 million Syrians who have fled the war next door.    

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).

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.

The Greek government has been holding migrants incommunicado at a secret extrajudicial before illegally expelling them back to Turkey without due process, as part of several hard-line measures to seal its border, contravening international law.

Cyprus is more than doubling the number of officials vetting asylum applications, shortening application deadlines and fast-tracking deportations as part of a new string of measures aimed at tackling a spike in migrant arrivals, the country's interior minister said Tuesday.

A total of 60 asylum seekers - over half of them children - were rescued off Turkey's Aegean coast, security sources said on March 8.

Turkish Coast Guard teams said in a statement that a group of Afghans in a rubber boat, including 33 children, were rescued while attempting to cross to Greek islands.

Greece's decision to suspend new asylum applications for a month is unlawful and shameful, Turkey's interior minister said on March 3.

"According to a statement highlighted by the UNHCR, the 1951 Geneva Convention and the EU refugee law do not allow such a decision, either," Suleyman Soylu said on Twitter.