Asylsuchende in Griechenland leiden doppelt unter dem Feuerinferno

Eine sehr lesenswerte Analyse aus dem Guardian:

Refugees and migrants in Greece are facing off against the “two great injustices of our times”, Amnesty International has said, as it linked wildfires and scant access to legal migration routes to the deaths of 19 people believed to be asylum seekers.

As wildfires continue to rage across swathes of Greece, authorities in the country said they were working to identify the charred remains of 18 people found this week in the dense forests that straddle the country’s north-eastern border with Turkey.

Given there were no reports of missing people in the area, officials said it was possible the victims, who include two children, were asylum seekers who had entered the country irregularly. One day earlier, the body of another person believed to be an asylum seeker was found in the same area.

In recent days the fires have ripped through an area that had increasingly become a crossing point for thousands of refugees and migrants, Amnesty International said in a statement. Their arrival on EU soil had been “systematically” met with “forced returns at the border, denial of the right to seek asylum and violence”, it added.

“The 19 people killed by wildfires in northern Greece appear to be victims of two great injustices of our times,” said Adriana Tidona, a migration researcher with the organisation.

“On the one hand, catastrophic climate change … On the other hand, the lack of access to safe and legal routes for some people on the move, and the persistence of migration management policies predicated on racialised exclusion and deadly deterrence, including racist border violence.”

The presence of hundreds of asylum seekers in the fire-ravaged area was flagged this week by Alarm Phone. “We are in contact with 2 groups of around 250 people in total who are stranded on different islets of the Evros River,” the NGO wrote on social media. “They say ‘the fires are getting very close to us now. We need help as soon as possible!’”

Pleas for help had gone unanswered by authorities for days, it added. “They fear for their lives as the wildfires approach and the air is unbreathable.”