Hundreds of people demonstrated in the streets of Athens on Sunday against the refoulement of migrants and violence at the borders, a few days after the discovery of 19 bodies of migrants who died of cold near the Greek-Turkish border.
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According to Greek police, around 700 people marched from Omonia Square in central Athens to Syntagma Square in front of the Greek Parliament.
The demonstrators, who gathered at the call of left-wing and anti-racist groups, shouted their anger against “the murder of migrants at the border”unfurling banners on which one could read “Stop pushbacks and border violence”. Others carried a rescue vessel, an AFP photographer noted. In Syntagma Square, they observed a minute of silence in honor of the deceased migrants.
Turkish authorities said on Thursday they had found 19 bodies of migrants who had frozen to death near the Greek border since Wednesday, implicating Athens in the tragedy. According to Ankara, these migrants were stripped of their clothes and pushed back by Greek border guards, which Athens denied. “Any suggestion that they were pushed back in Turkey is absolutely unfounded. They never reached the border”reacted the Greek Minister of Migration, Notis Mitarachi.
Turkey regularly accuses the Greek authorities of illegally pushing back migrants trying to cross into Greece, which this country has always denied.
Athens in return accuses Ankara of turning a blind eye to people trying to cross the border, in violation of the March 2016 agreement which provided for a real effort by Turkey to limit migration.