Greece has completed work on a 25 mile fence, with a surveillance system, at its border with Turkey in an effort to stop asylum seekers crossing into Europe after the Taliban-takeover of Afghanistan, according to Sky News.
The Afghanistan crisis has raised alarm in member nations of the European Union with the recent memory of the refugee crisis of 2015, in which almost a million people escaped war and poverty throughout the Middle East by crossing to Greece from Turkey.
The fall of Afghanistan to the militant Taliban group has left much of the country’s population in panic, fearing for their lives and desperate to leave the country by any means necessary.
Greece has declared that it may send back any Afghanistan citizens that arrive illegally in the country after it had already blocked new asylum applications last year, accusing that Turkey had “opened the doors” for migrants to travel to the EU.
Michalis Chrisochoidis, Greece’s Citizens’ Protection Minister, said: “We cannot wait, passively, for the possible impact.
“Our borders will remain safe and inviolable.
“We support the democratic rights and the people’s freedoms but at the same time we can’t allow the instrumentalisation of the possible migration flows that arise.”
Image source: Sky
