Tag Archives: Refugee Crisis

Austria takes migrant fingerprints on the border, then discards them

SPIELFELD, Austria/BRUSSELS (Reuters) – On the Austrian-Slovenia border, one of the last stops on the migrant route to Germany, a policeman explains that after his 12-hour shift taking new arrivals’ fingerprints, most are lost minutes after they are taken.

“We are not allowed to save the fingerprints,” the Austrian policeman, who wanted to remain anonymous, said as he sat in a tent at the Spielfeld border crossing. “We do what we’re asked to do.”

Austria, which saw 700,000 migrants crossing its borders last year, says it is not legally allowed to save and share with other European states more than 90 percent of the fingerprint data it takes of migrants fleeing war and poverty, a potential security problem at a major migrant hub.

It is only required to upload onto Europe’s shared fingerprint database, Eurodac, the data of those who actually apply for asylum in the country, which is less than 10 percent of those crossing into Austria.

So Austria takes digital fingerprints of everyone entering the country, checks whether they have a criminal record, but does not save the data if they want to move on to Germany, which most do.

Roz, a 28-year old Syrian mother of two, is surprised to hear that her family’s fingerprints are neither saved nor shared.

“They need to know who we are. If you record fingerprints of refugees, it guarantees security in this country,” she said as she was shown by Austrian officials onto a bus that would take her to the German border, her chosen destination.

ANACHRONISM

The situation highlights how European laws are far behind the challenges of the continent’s latest crisis, one that has already seen hundreds of thousands of migrants and refugees, mainly from Syria, flooding into the continent seeking a new life.

“That is a major problem, we have no records on these people, there are so many moving around the bloc and we have no trace of them whatsoever,” said one diplomat in Brussels, adding that some EU countries have tried to push for changes but they were blocked due to privacy protection concerns.

Berndt Koerner, deputy executive director of Europe’s border agency Frontex, said he was confronted with an “anachronism” in the sharing of migrant data.

“We are currently confronted with the problem that we cannot access certain databases, which can be used nationally in border controls,” Koerner told reporters this month.

The system was not changed even after the evident security problems in tracing the movements of the surviving Islamist militants involved in the Paris attacks last November.

Only states on the EU’s external borders, such as Greece and Italy, must save and share all fingerprint data.

Still, at a West Balkans summit in October all participants, including Austria, committed to registering, fingerprinting and uploading onto Eurodac all migrant data even on borders in the no-visa and border-control free Schengen zone.

Croatia and Finland, for example, save fingerprints of all migrants who arrive there, while Germany only lets in migrants who state they want to apply for asylum there.

Austria’s coalition of the social-democrat SPO and Christian-conservative OVP has come under pressure in opinion polls from their right-wing, anti-Islam Freedom Party rivals since the latest migrant wave arrived last autumn.

Drawing ire from Brussels and accusations it was breaking EU law, Vienna this month introduced daily caps on how many entries it allows across its southern borders and the number of asylum requests it will accept.

But even as the coalition seems to attempt to coax back voters worried about migration, the two parties publicly blame one another for failing to create the legal grounds to save the fingerprints as talks began on how to amend the border law.

(Additional reporting by Francois Murphy, Igor Ilic, Tuomas Forsell, Tina Bellon Editing by Jeremy Gaunt)

More children, migrants drowning while trying to cross Mediterranean

More than 340 children have died while trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea in the past five and a half months, three agencies announced Friday, saying the death toll continues to climb.

The actual number of drownings could be higher, the International Organization for Migration (IOM), United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) and the U.N. Refugee Agency said in a joint statement, because authorities may not have been able to recover every child’s body.

Still, the agencies said the current number of deaths equates to an average of two children per day since September 2015, as more migrant families try to reach Europe in search of better lives.

The U.N. Refugee Agency has said that more than 1 million migrants and refugees traveled to Europe by sea alone last year, most of them fleeing war-torn countries. More than 3,700 died.

In Friday’s announcement, the three agencies said migrants often travel in overloaded, poor-quality boats that place them at a higher risk of capsizing, particularly in rough seas.

“Clearly, more efforts are needed to combat smuggling and trafficking,” U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said in a statement.

The IOM says 90,756 adults and children have traveled across water to Italy and Greece during the first 49 days of 2016, and 411 of them have died. Some 7,461 have died since January 2014.

The agencies called for actions to ensure migrants travel safely, noting that many of them are currently trying to join relatives in Europe. They said some 36 percent of migrants are children.

“This is not only a Mediterranean problem, or even a European one,” IOM Director General William Lacy Swing said in a statement. “It is a humanitarian catastrophe in the making that demands the entire world’s engagement.”

Canada divided as 25,000 Syrian refugees settle in

TORONTO (Reuters) – Canadians remain divided about the resettlement of Syrian refugees, with some saying Canada should accept more despite a series of racist incidents that have marred a mostly smooth arrival of nearly 25,000 migrants, a poll showed on Friday.

Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was elected in October on a promise to accept more Syrian refugees more quickly than the previous Conservative government had allowed, but the original deadline for accepting 25,000 by the end of 2015 proved too ambitious and the timeline was extended by two months.

During his election campaign, Trudeau said a Liberal government would work with private sponsors to accept “even more” than the immediate goal of 25,000, and Immigration Minister John McCallum said in December the government could double the intake to 50,000 by the end of 2016.

A poll by the Angus Reid Institute released on Friday showed 52 percent of Canadians support the plan to resettle 25,000 refugees before the end of February, while 44 percent opposed the program.

The poll also showed that 42 percent of respondents want Canada to stop taking in Syrian refugees, while 29 percent said Canada should stop at 25,000 and 29 percent said the country should accept even more.

Some 21,672 Syrian refugees – sponsored by both private citizens and the government – have arrived in Canada since November, dispersing into more than 200 communities, according to the Immigration Department.

While the arrival has been smooth for privately sponsored refugees supported by families or community groups, hundreds of government-sponsored refugees have struggled to find housing and remain in hotels in Toronto, where the housing market is tight and expensive.

There has also been a scattering of racist incidents, including one last week in which graffiti was sprayed on a school in the western Canadian city of Calgary urging “Syrians go home and die” and “kill the traitor Trudeau.”

The prime minister responded on Twitter: “Canadians have shown the best of our country in welcoming refugees. That spirit won’t be diminished by fear and hate.”

In January, a group of Syrian refugees were pepper-sprayed by a cyclist in Vancouver, an attack Trudeau also condemned on Twitter.

(Reporting by Andrea Hopkins; Editing by Sandra Maler)

Austria sticks to migration cap despite EU legal warning

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Austria said on Thursday it would go ahead with introducing daily caps on migrants despite warnings from Brussels that the move broke European Union rules, which have already been badly stretched by the migration crisis engulfing the bloc.

Vienna announced it would let in no more than 3,200 people and cap asylum claims at 80 per day from Friday as it tries to cut immigration, drawing criticism from the European Union’s migration chief.

“Politically I say we’ll stick with it … it is unthinkable for Austria to take on the asylum seekers for the whole of Europe,” Austria’s Chancellor Werner Faymann said on arriving at an EU leaders’ summit in Brussels.

Around 700,000 migrants entered Austria last year and about 90,000 applied for asylum in the country sitting on the migrant route from Turkey via Greece and the Balkans to Germany.

“After 100,000 refugees, we can’t tell the Austrian people that it will just continue like this. That’s why I tell the EU: we set a good example but to think that you don’t have to do anything, then I have to say it is time for the EU to act,” Faymann said.

Austria is the latest EU state to resort to its own measures to curb migration and try control the flows as the 28-nation bloc has all but failed to implement a joint response to its worst migration crisis in decades.

“It is true that Austria is under huge pressure,” European Union Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos told Reuters earlier on Thursday. “It is true they are overwhelmed. But, on the other hand, there are some principles and laws that all countries must respect and apply.”

Avramopoulos sent a letter to Austria’s Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner on Thursday, urging Vienna to reconsider the move as it was against EU laws.

“The Austrians are obliged to accept asylum applications without putting a cap,” Avramopoulos said.

But Faymann blamed the failure of the European migration and refugee policies, saying the bloc’s relocation plan to ease the burden on most-affected countries was not working and criticizing central-eastern EU members who have stalled it.

The migration crisis, which saw more than a million people reach Europe last year, opened deep rifts between EU states, which are trading blame and increasingly resorting to ad-hoc national solutions despite Brussels calls to prevent them.

Faymann backed Merkel in pushing for more cooperation with Turkey to get Ankara to curb the number of migrants and refugees who embark from its shores toward Europe.

Germany and Austria are among 11 EU states that were due to meet Turkey separately before the summit of all 28 EU leaders to discuss taking in more people directly from Turkey to discourage perilous journeys across the Mediterranean.

“Every agreement between Turkey and Greece to protect the common border and make legal immigration possible, every advance and may it be ever so mediocre, would be necessary and right,” Faymann said, adding he would seek a new meeting with Turkey after the Thursday one was canceled over a bombing in Ankara.

(Additional reporting by Shadia Nasralla and Francois Murphy in Vienna; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

EU ‘silent’ on migrant rights abuses in Turkey, rapporteur says

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Anxiety about refugees streaming to its shores has led the European Union to turn an apparent blind eye to rights abuses in Turkey, whose help the EU needs to reduce the migrant influx, the European Parliament’s rapporteur on Turkey said on Tuesday.

The number of Syrian war refugees in neighboring Turkey has swelled to 2.6 million and the EU has promised Ankara 3 billion euros to help it cope with them in the hope this will dissuade many from making onward journeys to Europe.

EU officials have also voiced renewed support for Turkey’s long-held aspiration of joining the 28-nation bloc if it does more to stem the outflow of migrants to Europe.

The European Parliament’s rapporteur on Turkey said the delay of a European Commission progress report on Ankara’s EU qualifications until after the November 2015 election, won by the party that backs President Tayyip Erdogan, suggested the bloc was staying “silent” in the face of a deteriorating rights record in Turkey.

Turkish security-force operations against Kurdish militants in southeast Turkey since July have killed at least 160 civilians, according to rights groups. Journalists and academics critical of the government’s policies have been detained.

“The (EU) accession process … should be connected to democratic reforms or rule of law or what’s happening with the Kurdish question,” rapporteur Kati Piri told Reuters. “The European Union gave a pretty bad signal by connecting it so directly to migration.”

Ankara’s peace talks with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) collapsed in July, ending a ceasefire. Some 400,000 people have been displaced since the conflict reignited, Piri said in the telephone interview.

“If the EU does not engage actively in calling for an immediate ceasefire and the peace process to be resumed, we could face another refugee inflow, and this time it will be coming from Turkey,” she told reporters in Brussels, presenting the draft report that will be voted on by European lawmakers.

STEPS TO CURB FLOW

More than 1 million migrants reached Europe via illegal routes in 2015, and another million will seek to do so in 2016, according to the International Organization for Migration and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

Turkey has yet to receive any of the 3 billion euros of EU aid, but Piri said the government had boosted efforts to stop refugees, including blocking Syrians coming from Jordan and Lebanon and breaking up people-smuggling rings.

But it will have to lift its geographical limitation on accepting refugees in order to meet EU criteria, she said.

Turkey only considers those fleeing Europe to be refugees, although there has been no such migration for decades, and gives those from other regions only limited rights to live and work.

“This will be a very important point in the coming months. It is one of the conditions Turkey needs to fulfill for visa liberalization with the EU. This could be a huge step forward for improving the lives of asylum seekers in Turkey,” said Piri.

Turkey opened membership talks with the EU in 2005 but the slow pace of reforms there, a dispute over the divided island of Cyprus and worries in Europe about taking in a country with a large Muslim population has stalled its accession bid.

(Additional reporting by Francesco Guarascio in Brussels; Editing by Nick Tattersall and Mark Heinrich)

Not in my backyard? Mainstream Scandinavia warily eyes record immigration

OSLO-STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – Norwegian officials called the school guards “extra supervision”. Critics said the plan to post security personnel near an Oslo school in case of assaults by newly arrived refugees was an ugly euphemism for intolerance.

Across the border in the far northern Swedish town of Kalix, a traditional bastion of center-left politics, over 100 residents signed a petition against plans to turn a 19th century country house into a reception center for unaccompanied minors.

The debate among these liberal Scandinavian stalwarts would have been unheard of a year ago, underscoring how concern about a record influx of immigrants is percolating into the Nordics’ mainstream from the populist fringes.

Anti-immigrant, populist parties have gained support since some 250,000 refugees entered the Nordics last year. A record 163,000 refugees arrived in Sweden and the far right is vying for top spot in polls. In Denmark, the anti-immigration Danish People’s Party is the second largest in parliament.

But it is a backlash among the mainstream that may be the biggest change. There are signs that voters may be broadly supportive of immigrants but not in their own backyard. From welfare cuts to new ID checks, it is a trend that shows the limits of even some of Europe’s most open societies, and may represent a sea change for politics in Scandinavia.

“It’s a big change happening close to us. In all neighborhoods there are concerns,” said Pia Almvang, head of the parents’ association at Lysaker primary school in a leafy well-to-do area of villas near Oslo, cut through by a motorway with cheaper four-storey blocks of flats built alongside.

“The parents just want to look after their kids.”

The town council agreed to parents’ requests for extra security by a motorway underpass near a refugee center for 600 people that opened this month. After criticisms of “asylum guards” the proposal was withdrawn, but it had already polarized this middle class community.

A February survey showed immigration as the main concern for 40 percent of Swedes, easily trumping worries over failing schools, joblessness and welfare. The change over half a year was the biggest opinion swing in the poll’s history.

From taking in Vietnam draft dodgers in the 1960s to Balkans war refugees in the 1990s, Sweden has been proud of its open door policy for decades. Norway has been among the leaders in helping refugees worldwide with aid.

While the asylum situation has led to an outpouring of support from many Swedes – charities reported record donations last year – it has also led others to worry about the effect on schools, crime and the country’s welfare state.

TENSION AT HOME

In Kalix, hit by a decline in the paper industry but still a bastion of Social Democrat support, residents have petitioned the council to abandon plans for a center for around 30 unaccompanied children.

“I have a big heart and I believe we have to help, so it’s not about that, but enough is enough,” said Anne-Maj Ostlund, a 75-year-old retired school teacher who lives close to the yellow-painted wooden villa in Kalix, being used as a hostel

“I have lived in heaven here … it is peaceful,” said Ostlund, who has lived in the same house since 1948. “What is going to be left?”

Middle class neighborhoods in Stockholm and Gothenburg have seen meetings where furious citizens have questioned politicians over refugees’ housing.

Police were called to one meeting in Haninge, near Stockholm, where the local authority had gathered residents and parents of pupils at a nearby school to inform them about plans for a center for unaccompanied minors.

Council workers were met by shouts of “they are going to rape our children,” and “who will take responsibility when someone dies”.

Mainstream parties in Sweden are now proposing measures against immigration that were only the ground of the far right a few years ago. Prime Minister Stefan Lofven, who once told crowds that “My Europe does not build walls”, tightened asylum rules and border controls with ID checks.

In Denmark a bill tightening immigration laws, including the confiscation of refugees’ valuables, passed with overwhelming support including the center-left Social Democrats.

Sweden’s Moderate Party, the biggest of the center-right opposition, wants to limit asylum seekers’ access to welfare.

It was a sign of the times that when Sweden’s center left interior minister said the government would deport 80,000 immigrants this year, former Foreign Minister Carl Bildt tweeted the “probable aim is to send a signal that new ones are not welcome.”

The concerns are not just related to security but that the Nordic state is under threat from the high fiscal cost of newcomers and the sense that civic trust which underpins a culture of high taxes is being eroded.

Nordic nations have the highest percentage of people agreeing that “most people can be trusted” when asked in international surveys, helping drive a consensus for high taxes and extensive welfare.

“The Nordic welfare state works due to trust. You have to trust that people work and pay taxes when they are able to do so,” said Gert Tinggaard, professor of political science at Denmark’s Aarhus University.

“The second condition is that you also have to trust the politicians,” he added. “You get a bang for your buck.”

The IMF estimates that Sweden will spend 1.0 percent of its gross domestic product on asylum seekers in 2016, by far the highest of 19 European nations surveyed.

Last year, Sweden had to find an extra 70,000 school places due to asylum seekers, on top of 100,000 pupils that normally enter the school system for the first time in any given year.

In a country where speaking out against immigration is still taboo for many, Scandinavians privately voice concerns about signs of crowded emergency rooms and larger school classes. Newspapers are increasingly full of reports of money being spent on refugees and reports of crime involving asylum seekers, although crime figures do not bear out these concerns.

Lofven – who admits Sweden faces increased polarization – has seen his government’s support fall to record lows in polls due to a sense his government is helpless to stop a migrant influx.

For Ylva Johansson, Swedish minister for employment and integration issues, the problem is that thousands of refugees, many young men, are not integrated into the workforce, instead languishing in asylum centers in villages and towns.

“Most Swedes are not racist,” she said. “But when there is this special asylum housing when they cannot work, and cannot be part of society this is really a tension.

“This is a dangerous situation,” she added. “We have a lot of people in no man’s land .. living outside society.”

(Additional reporting by Daniel Dickson and Johan Ahlander in Stockholm, Sabina Zawadzki in Copenhagen; Writing by Alistair Scrutton; Editing by Janet McBride)

For veteran Turkish smuggler, only an army could stop migrant flow

IZMIR, Turkey (Reuters) – Demand has never been higher for the services of Turkish smuggler Dursun, who has taken migrants to Europe for more than decade, and he says nothing short of an army could stamp out his illicit trade.

The EU is counting on Ankara to stem the flow of migrants to Europe after more than a million arrived last year, mainly illegally by sea from Turkey, in the continent’s worst migration crisis since World War Two.

But the task of policing Turkey’s coastline may be beyond its stretched security forces, even with the help of Western allies. NATO sent ships to the Aegean on Thursday to help Turkey and Greece stop criminal networks smuggling migrants.

“Turkey would have to put soldiers on all the beaches,” said the burly Dursun, 30, who has spent three short prison spells in Greece for piloting motor boats full of migrants into Europe. “You have to put thousands of soldiers on the beaches,” he said in the coastal city of Izmir, declining to give his last name.

The Turkish government is under growing pressure from the EU following a $3.3 billion aid deal for the country last year, aimed at slowing the flow of migrants. Thousands died making the crossing in 2015, and the exodus has also strained security and social systems in some EU states and fueled support for anti-foreigner groups.

Ankara has stepped up patrols of its 2,600 km Aegean coast, deploying more coastguard and police and increasing the punishment for the smugglers it catches, especially if their actions led to the deaths of migrants.

While Turkey boasts the second-largest army in the NATO alliance, it is also fighting Kurdish militants in the southeast and has a heavy military presence on its border with Syria where a civil war has raged for five years, the main source of the current refugee crisis.

Namik Kemal Nazli, governor of the Ayvalik district near Izmir, said a big problem facing authorities was the fact that much of the coastline was remote and relatively unpopulated, with many places where smugglers could hide.

“It is hard to control the entire coastline and they are exploiting this,” he said.

DANGEROUS ROUTES

Western diplomats are sympathetic to the difficulties of managing a jagged coast line with plenty of blind spots. But they say Ankara can still do more, both with policing its shores and in tracing criminal gangs. They also say it should do a better job of deterring illegal migrants, especially as some have been caught multiple times trying to make the crossing.

Illegal migrants are usually fingerprinted after being caught. Depending on their nationality, many are released, free to try to reach Europe again.

Turkey, which has taken in more than 2.6 million refugees since the start of the Syrian civil war, says it needs more help from the West. Its Minister for EU Affairs Volkan Bozkir said last week that solving the refugee crisis was not just Turkey’s job, urging European countries to cooperate with Ankara on border controls and information sharing.

Yet the flood of refugees only increases, with more than 80,000 arriving in Europe by boat during the first six weeks of this year – mainly from Turkey to Greece – and more than 400 dying as they tried to cross, according to UNHCR, the U.N. refugee agency.

More than 2,000 people a day are now risking their lives to make the journey, UNHCR said last week. The cold winter weather can mean cheaper passage but a more dangerous journey.

Smugglers are taking riskier sea routes to avoid the police crackdown, said Abby Dwommoh of the International Organization of Migration.

“When interdiction measures go up, smugglers and the migrants tend to find ways around them,” she told Reuters. “The numbers are overwhelming for any country to deal with.”

MORE CAUTIOUS

When Dursun started out, there was only a trickle of refugees from Eritrea and Somalia; there were no Syrians and only a few smugglers. Now, the courtyard of a mosque in the rundown neighborhood of Basmane in Izmir where he operates is filled with Syrians trying to make deals with smugglers – just a few blocks from a police station.

Even though police are more vigilant, Dursun said there was nothing they can do unless a smuggler was caught on a beach with a group of refugees. As he spoke, he pointed out other smugglers walking past. Locals say it has become a popular occupation, to which neighborhood drug dealers have switched.

Still, the native of Turkey’s Black Sea coast says he’s become more cautious and no longer captains the boats, despite the lucrative payment of 2,000 euros a trip.

Instead, he brings the migrants and refugees to the setting off points by minibus, coordinating with others in a chain that includes lookouts and those who assemble the groups of refugees.

“If the driver is alone and gets arrested, but nobody saw him transport refugees and there were no refugees in the car, he will be out again straight away,” he said.

Punishments have become much harsher. Recently, two ring leaders were sentenced to 15 and 20 years in jail, he said.

On a recent stormy day, the hotels in Cesme, about an hour’s drive from Izmir, were filled with migrants who were waiting for the weather to break before setting out from Europe.

One hotel manager, who declined to give his name, said even if NATO “shut down the sea” to stop smugglers, that wouldn’t deter migrants from seeking to reach Europe.

“Of course they would look for other ways.”

(Additional reporting by Melih Aslan; Editing by David Dolan and Pravin Char)

Thousands of Iraqi refugees leave Finland voluntarily

HELSINKI (Reuters) – Thousands of Iraqi refugees who arrived in Finland last year have decided to cancel their asylum applications and to return home voluntarily, citing family issues and disappointment with life in the frosty Nordic country.

Europe is in the grip of its worst migrant crisis since World War Two, with more than a million people arriving last year, fleeing wars and poverty in the Middle East and beyond.

Germany and Finland’s neighbor Sweden have taken in many of the migrants but Finland too saw the number of asylum seekers increase nearly tenfold in 2015 to 32,500 from 3,600 in 2014.

Almost two thirds of the asylum seekers last year were young Iraqi men, but some are now having second thoughts, so Finland will begin chartering flights to Baghdad from next week to take them home.

Officials said about 4,100 asylum seekers had so far canceled their applications and that number was likely to reach 5,000 in the coming months.

“My baby boy is sick, I need to get back home,” said Alsaedi Hussein, buying a flight back to Baghdad at a small travel agency in Helsinki.

Somalia-born Muhiadin Hassan who runs the travel agency said he was now selling 15 to 20 flights to Baghdad every day.

“It’s been busy here for the past few months,” he said.

A majority of the home-bound migrants have told immigration services they want to return to their families, but some expressed disappointment with life in Finland.

“Some say the conditions in Finland and the lengthy asylum process did not meet their expectations, or what they had been told by the people they paid for their travel,” said Tobias van Treeck, program officer at the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

“TOO COLD”

Echoing that comment, travel agent Hassan said: “Some say they don’t like the food here, it’s too cold or they don’t feel welcome in Finland. There are many reasons.”

Nearly 80 percent of the migrants returning home are Iraqis. Just 22 of the 877 Syrians – whose country is racked by civil war – and 35 of the 5,214 Afghans who sought asylum in Finland last year have asked to return to their home country.

Along with other Nordic states, Finland has recently tightened its immigration policies, for example requiring working-age asylum seekers to do some unpaid work.

Hostility to migrants has also increased in Finland, a country with little experience of mass immigration and which now has economic problems.

Germany too, which took in 1.1 million people in 2015, has seen small numbers of Iraqi refugees choosing to go home.

Finland had been preparing to reject up to 20,000 asylum seekers from 2015, but the number of voluntary returnees could significantly reduce that figure.

“The number of returnees is increasing steadily … All asylum seekers are informed about the options for voluntary return and about the available financial assistance,” said Paivi Nerg, a senior official in the Finnish interior ministry.

However, most Iraqi returnees pay for their own flight home or seek help from Iraq’s embassy in Helsinki, she added.

Last year the Finnish government and the IOM provided financial help to 631 returnees and a similar number is expected this year.

The charter flights will carry up to 100 passengers back to Baghdad from Helsinki every week for as long as demand lasts, officials said.

(Editing by Jussi Rosendahl and Gareth Jones)

NATO launches sea mission against migrant traffickers

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – NATO ships are on their way to the Aegean Sea to help Turkey and Greece crack down on criminal networks smuggling refugees into Europe, the alliance’s top commander said on Thursday.

Hours after NATO defense ministers agreed to use their maritime force in the eastern Mediterranean to help combat traffickers, Supreme Allied Commander Gen. Philip Breedlove said he was working quickly to design the mission.

“We are sailing the ships in the appropriate direction,” Breedlove told a news conference, and the mission plan would be refined during the time they were en route. “That’s about 24 hours,” he said.

The plan, which was first raised only on Monday by Germany and Turkey, took NATO by surprise and is aimed at helping the continent tackle its worst migration crisis since World War Two. More than a million asylum-seekers arrived last year.

Unlike the EU’s maritime mission off the Italian coast, which brings rescued migrants to Europe’s shores, NATO will return migrants to Turkey even if they are picked up in Greek waters.

Britain’s defense minister said that marked a significant change in policy. “They won’t be taken to Greece and that’s a crucial difference,” Michael Fallon told reporters.

NATO will also monitor the Turkey-Syria land border for people-smugglers, said NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg.

Although the plan is still to be detailed by NATO generals, the allies are likely to use the ships to work with Turkish and Greek coastguards and the European Union border agency Frontex.

“There is now a criminal syndicate that is exploiting these poor people and this is an organized smuggling operation,” U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter told reporters.

“Targeting that is the way that the greatest effect can be had … That is the principal intent of this,” Carter said.

The numbers of people fleeing war and failing states, mainly in the Middle East and North Africa, show little sign of falling, despite winter weather that makes sea crossings even more perilous.

A 3 billion euro ($3.4 billion) deal between the EU and Turkey to stem the flows has yet to have a big impact.

SEEKING SHIPS

Germany said it would take part in the NATO mission along with Greece and Turkey, while the United States, NATO’s most powerful member, said it fully supported the plan.

The alliance’s so-called Standing NATO Maritime Group Two has five ships near Cyprus, led by Germany and with vessels from Canada, Italy, Greece and Turkey. Breedlove said NATO would need allies to contribute to sustain the mission over time.

Denmark is expected to offer a ship, according to a German government source. The Netherlands may also contribute.

“It is important that we now act quickly,” German Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen said.

Intelligence gathered about people-smugglers will be handed to Turkish coastguards to allow them to combat the traffickers more effectively, rather than having NATO act directly against the criminals, diplomats said.

Greek and Turkish ships will remain in their respective territorial waters, given sensitivities between the two countries.

NATO and the EU are eager to avoid the impression that the 28-nation military alliance is now tasked to stop refugees or treat them as a threat.

“This is not about stopping or pushing back refugee boats,” Stoltenberg said.

(Additional reporting by Sabine Siebold in Brussels and Michele Kambas in Athens,; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)

Greeks at frontline of migrant crisis angry at Europe’s criticism

ABOARD THE AGIOS EFSTRATIOS, Aegean Sea (Reuters) – Greek Captain Argyris Frangoulis lifts his binoculars and with eyes fixed on the Aegean Sea horizon, steers his patrol boat out near the Turkish border to a dinghy full of stranded refugees.

He zeroes in on the target and gasps – “My God!” – another grey rubber motor boat packed with about four times as many people as it can hold, many of them young children and babies.

“Everybody safe, OK?” he yells at the passengers, mainly Syrians and Afghans, approaching the coast guard vessel bewildered and in near-silence. “Stay calm and do not panic!”

About 50 people are pulled aboard one by one, smiling but too exhausted to speak. By the time they stagger wearily to the boat’s rear, a dinghy is spotted in the distance. Then another, and another, crammed almost entirely with women and children.

By midday, the Agios Efstratios, a gunboat with 29-member crew who work in shifts, had plucked more than 600 people from sea and ferried them to the port of Lesbos, the island on the frontline of Europe’s migration crisis.

From Greece’s islands, the refugees and migrants travel to the mainland and then to the northern border with non-European Union member Macedonia. Most of them are trying to reach Germany.

The influx has led some in the EU to accuse Greece of failing to make use of available EU funds and personnel to ensure people arriving in the Schengen zone of open border travel are documented. Some EU members have suggested Greece should be suspended from Schengen if it does not improve.

But the criticism and threats have been met with anger in Greece. Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on Wednesday said the EU was “confused and bewildered” by the migrant crisis and said the bloc should take responsibility like Greece has done, despite being crash-strapped.

Most Greeks, including the coast guard, the army, the police were “setting an example of humanity to the world,” Tsipras said.

For those at the frontline, foreign criticism is even more painful.

“We’re giving 150 percent,” said Lieutenant Commander Antonis Sofiadelis, head of coast guard operations on Lesbos.

Once a dinghy enters Greek territorial waters, the coast guard is obliged to rescue it and transport its passengers to the port.

“The sea is not like land. You’re dealing with a boat with 60 people in constant danger. It could sink, they could go overboard,” he said.

RELIEF AFTER EVERY RESCUE

More than a million people, many fleeing war-ravaged countries and poverty in the Middle East and Africa, reached Europe in the past year, most of them arriving in Greece.

For the crews plying a 250-km-long coastline between Lesbos and Turkey, the numbers attempting the crossing are simply too big to handle. It is but a fraction of a coastline thousands of kilometers long between Greece and Turkish shores.

“The flow is unreal,” Sofiadelis said.

Lesbos has long been a stopover for refugees. Locals recall when people fleeing the Iraqi-Kurdish civil war in the mid-1990s swam across from Turkey.

Yet those numbers do not compare to what has become Europe’s biggest migration crisis since World War Two and which has continued unabated despite the winter making the Aegean Sea even more treacherous.

After days of gale force winds and freezing temperatures, more than 2,400 people arrived on Greece’s outlying islands on Monday, nearly double the daily average for February, according to United Nations data.

Sofiadelis, the Lesbos commander, said controls should be stepped up on the Turkish side, while Europe should provide assistance with more boats, more staff and better monitoring systems such as radars and night-vision cameras.

Greek boats, assisted by EU border control agency Frontex, already scan the waters night and day.

By late morning on Monday, Captain Frangoulis and his crew – including a seafaring dog picked up at a port years ago – have been at sea for more than 24 hours.

Each time his crew spot a boat that could be carrying migrants “our stomach is tied up in knots,” Frangoulis said. “There’s this fear that everything must go well, everyone boards safely, no child falls in the sea, no one’s injured.”

Though fewer than 10 nautical miles separate Lesbos from Turkish shores, hundreds of people have drowned trying to make it across.

Patrol boats, as well as local fishermen, have often fished out corpses from the many shipwrecks of the past months, the bodies blackened and bruised from days at sea.

After every rescue operation, a sense of relief fills the crews. Once the Agios Efstratios docked at the Lesbos harbor on Monday, Frangoulis’ beaming crew helped passengers disembark, holding up crying babies in their arms.

“There’s no room for sentimentalism. We execute commands,” Frangoulis said of the rescue operations.

“Beyond commands, we’re human. We’ll lose heart, we’ll cry, we’ll feel sad if something doesn’t go well. There isn’t a person who won’t be moved by this,” he said.

(Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)