UN expresses alarm by migrants die of cold, “extreme situation” in Greece – The Newspaper of Mexico

Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) – Refugees and immigrants are dying by the cold wave sweeps Europe and governments should do more to help them instead of moving them away from the borders and subjecting them to violence, said on Friday the UNHCR, the UN agency for refugees.

“children are especially prone to respiratory disease at a time as well. It is the time to save lives, not of provisions of bureaucracy,” said Sarah Crowe, spokesperson for the UN agency for children, UNICEF, in an appearance in Geneva. “The extreme situation now is Greece”.

The spokesperson of UNHCR, Cecile Pouilly, referred to the five deaths so far by the cold and asked to be moved to a refuge in mainland Greece to some 1,000 people, including children, who are housed in tents and sleeping without heating in the island of Samos. Hundreds of others were taken to better facilities on the islands of Lesbos and Chios in the past few days.

In Serbia, around 80 per cent of its 7,300 refugees, asylum seekers and immigrants are accommodated in reception centres state heated, but some 1,200 men spend the night in informal places in Belgrade.

The bodies of two iraqi men and a young somali were found near the Turkish border in Bulgaria and two teenage somalis were hospitalized with frostbite after five days in the forest, said Pouilly. The corpse of a young pakistani was found at the same border in late December.

An afghan of 20 years died after crossing the river Evros, on the land border between Greece and Turkey, at night and with temperatures below 10 degrees below zero. The body of a young pakistani was found on the Turkish side of the border with Bulgaria.

“Before the harsh winter conditions, we are especially concerned by reports that the authorities in all the countries along the route of the Western Balkans are still pushing to refugees and immigrants from within its territory to the neighbouring countries,” said Pouilly.

The World Meteorological Organization reported that air movement siberian to the south-east of Europe brought down the temperatures in Greece, Italy, Turkey and Romania, to between 5 and 10 degrees below normal. These events usually occur once every 35 years, said the agency.

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