Tsipras 'ashamed' of Europe's handling of refugee crisis

Greece's Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has expressed regret over the way the issue of refugee crisis has been handled in Europe.

Tsipras told the Greek parliament on Friday that he was ashamed to be the prime minister of a European Union member state, which has been shirking its responsibility for properly dealing with the crisis.

“I feel shamed as a member of this European leadership, both for the inability of Europe in dealing with this human drama, and for the level of debate at a senior level, where one is passing the buck to the other,” Tsipras said.

He added that the 28-member bloc has been hypocritical in its approaches toward the refugee issue.

“These are hypocritical, crocodile tears which are being shed for the dead children on the shores of the Aegean. Dead children always incite sorrow, but what about the children that are alive who come in thousands and are stacked on the streets? Nobody likes them,” the Greek prime minister stated.

He also stated that Greece did not want a “single euro” for saving lives as thousands of refugees continued to arrive daily on the Greek shores.

Stranded refugees

The European continent is facing a crisis as huge numbers of refugees are fleeing conflicts, mostly caused by foreign-backed militants, in Syria, Iraq and other crisis-hit Middle Eastern countries. 

The majority of the asylum seekers waiting to cross the border are housed in tents, but several hundred are forced to live in the open. The bottleneck began to grow after rail links from Croatia to Slovenia were re-opened on Tuesday, allowing thousands of asylum seekers to continue their journey through to central and northern Europe.

Thousands of refugees scrambled on Friday to cross over to Austria from the Slovenian border town of Sentilj.

According to Austrian police, around 7,000 people had congregated at the border area, after Slovenia began transporting large groups of refugees there by train. Sporadic skirmishes broke out in the crowd.  

Children perish as politicians wrangle

The remarks by the prime minister came as earlier in the day about 22 refugees, including 13 children, died in an incident in which their boats capsized on the way from Turkey to Greece in the eastern Aegean Sea.

A second boat capsized near the island of Rhodes early Friday, killing three people. Six people were rescued.

Turkish media report also said that four Syrian children, aged from one to four, drowned off the coast of Turkey on Friday, when the boat carrying them to Greece capsized. The media said 19 refugees were rescued.

Many refugees have lost their lives in dangerous boat journeys from Turkey to Europe.

On October 25, the heads of 11 EU states met in Brussels, Belgium, in an emergency summit, where they agreed upon paying $6.5 million in aid to Greece in the next four months to help cover the costs of setting up temporary shelters for refugees.

Athens has agreed to temporarily host up to 50,000 refugees pending their relocation to other countries.

Europe is facing record refugee arrivals. While a few European leaders support an open-door refugee policy, others are in favor of controlling the EU’s external borders, deporting more people and paying third countries to keep asylum seekers on their soil.

According to the latest figures released by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), over 704,220 refugees have reached Europe’s shores so far this year while a total of 3,257 people have either died or gone missing in their perilous journey to the continent.

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