As More Migrant Boats Arrive, Greek Island Feels Impact of Libya Tensions
Source: Balkan Insight
Earlier this month, protesters backed by local authorities padlocked the gates of a former military base in the municipality of Minoa Pediada, near the town of Heraklion on the Greek island of Crete.
The gesture was symbolic of the local community’s opposition to a Greek government plan to turn the base into a camp for asylum seekers, amid a rise in the number of refugees and migrants arriving on boats setting sail from North Africa.
On July 7 alone, 581 people were rescued by the Greek coast guard trying to reach Crete and Gavdos, Greece’s southernmost island.
“We are demonstrating the will of the local community, which is seeking solutions to its problems and instead receives new and more difficult ones,” the Minoa Pediada municipal authority, where the mayor was formerly an MP of the opposition PASOK party, said on Facebook. “We say ‘No’ to the migrant facility.”
Stung by the backlash, the conservative New Democracy government of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis walked back the plan, but it was only ever only one element of an increasingly hardline policy on migration, one that experts say is spurred in part by animosity between Greece and Libya, the latter having emerged as a major transit point for migrants and refugees crossing the water from North Africa.
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