Pope Francis is to travel to the Greek island of Lesbos on the frontline of Europe’s refugee crisis next week, Athens announced on Tuesday, as a controversial EU accord to send migrants back to Turkey stalled.
The trip by the pope, who is to be accompanied by the head of the Eastern Orthodox Church, is likely to pile pressure on EU leaders already facing criticism over the controversial deal struck last month.
“The Greek government will welcome Pope Francis and the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew as valuable defenders of support to refugees,” a government source in Athens said, adding that the trip was scheduled for Thursday or Friday next week.
Photo: Reuters
“Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras will go with [them] to the island of Lesbos,” the source said.
Hundreds of thousands of people have landed on the island’s shores over the past year after crossing over from Turkey in flimsy boats, part of Europe’s worst refugee crisis since World War II.
Brussels sought to tackle the problem by signing an agreement with Ankara last month to send new arrivals back to Turkey, in exchange for resettling some of the millions of Syrians living in refugee camps on its soil.
The deal has already contributed to a slowing of new arrivals, and Germany’s interior minister on Tuesday said that his country could lift temporary border controls brought in last year by the middle of next month if the arrivals continue to dwindle.
However, the deal has been slammed by rights groups, the UN and even the pope, who used his Easter address to criticize the “rejection” of refugees, and has been slowed by a last-minute rush of asylum applications.
The Greek Orthodox Church said it had approved the papal visit to Lesbos after Francis expressed a desire to “shed light on the major humanitarian problem” of the refugee influx.
Tensions were running high on the Greek islands after the first tranche of 200 migrants were deported on Monday.
A Turkish official said the next transfer “has been postponed to Friday” at Greece’s request.
The process has been slowed “by an increase in asylum requests” in the last few days on Lesbos and another Aegean island, Chios, said Greek migration spokesman Yiorgos Kyritsis.
On Samos, less than 2km by sea from Turkey, Ali, a Pakistani, said that 100 migrants had gone on hunger strike.
“We risk our lives to come here, we do not want to go back to Turkey because they are going to send us back to Pakistan,” he said. “We do not want to apply for asylum in Greece, we want to go to Germany.”
All “irregular migrants” arriving in Greece since March 20 now face being sent back, although the EU deal calls for each case to be examined individually.
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