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Greece Extends Lockdown on More than 120,000 Migrants, Refugees

Anthee Carassava

   ATHENS - Even though Greece is slowly but steadily lifting strict
   COVID-19 restrictions across the country, it is keeping more than
   120,000 asylum seekers in lockdown, crammed in overcrowded camps to
   contain the spread the coronavirus.

   The virus has killed 190 people in this relatively infection-free
   country.

   In a terse weekend statement, Greece's Migration and Asylum Ministry
   said confinement for those in the country's migrant holding centers
   would be extended through July 5, the second such extension decreed by
   authorities since they were first imposed in March.

   No explanation for the extension was provided by the ministry in the
   single-sentence announcement it issued late Saturday.

   The announcement's timing, hours after 2,000 people rallied in Athens
   streets for World Refugee Day, demanding an end to the confinement of
   asylum seekers and improvement in migrants' abysmal living conditions,
   was controversial.

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