Protests Grow Against Greek Plans to Build Migrant Camps

Residents on the Aegean island of Kos block a Greek army camp

The Wall Street Journal

By NEKTARIA STAMOULI

Updated Feb. 8, 2016 9:48 p.m. ET

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ATHENS—Protests against Greek government plans to build camps for refugees and other migrants escalated on Monday, further testing Greece’s ability to meet European Union demands to control the massive inflow of people via the Aegean Sea.

Residents on the Aegean island of Kos, where locals and riot police have been clashing daily since Friday, blockaded an army camp where the government wants to build a migrant registration and screening center, preventing construction work.

Protesters in Athens, including members of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party, demonstrated against a transit camp for migrants near the port of Piraeus. Work has also been blocked on a northern Greek transit camp near Thessaloniki since Sunday because of a protest by local residents.

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’s government is struggling to set up a string of migrant registration centers by mid-February, before a scheduled EU summit, to show that Greece is safeguarding the bloc’s border against uncontrolled migration and should remain part of Europe’s passport-free-travel Schengen zone. Some EU governments have stepped up pressure on Greece and suggested that it should be suspended from the 26-country Schengen area if it can’t better manage the flow of migrants.

Greece has promised to build the so-called hot spots on the islands of Lesbos, Kos, Samos, Chios and Leros, where large numbers of migrants are arriving by boat from the nearby coast of Turkey. EU authorities want Greece to screen those arriving, separating refugees from economic migrants who don’t qualify for asylum in Europe.

So far, only the hot spot on Lesbos is up and running. The other islands have accepted the construction, but Kos, which relies heavily on tourists, has opposed the plan from the start, arguing that a large center on the island would undermine its economy.

Kos Mayor Giorgos Kyritsis on Sunday wrote to Mr. Tsipras to demand the government abandon the plans, and warned that the protests could lead to bloodshed. Three resident and two policemen were hurt in scuffles over the weekend.

Locals have complained of police violence, as police officials say they have had to face angry protesters armed with dynamite.

The process of setting up the hot spots is already three months behind schedule, though an EU official said on Friday that there had been an “obvious speeding-up” of Greece’s efforts.

The EU official said it was realistic to expect that three of the hot spots could be ready by mid-February, and progress would be made on the one in Samos. The hot spot on Kos is “a sensitive and difficult issue,” the official acknowledged.

Greece has also promised to build the two transit centers for migrants on the country’s mainland, each with a capacity to house up to 4,000 migrants.

In northern Greece, mayors from nearby towns who don’t want the camp in their area were to meet with officials from Greece’s migration and defense ministries on Monday.

Defense Minister Panos Kammenos, who is supervising the construction of the camps, said Greece would build them despite the protests and deliver on its promises to the EU.

Mr. Kammenos said that if the mayors proposed another area, it could be moved later, “but there is no way we will stop work there now, because everything has to be ready by Feb. 15.”

Meanwhile, soldiers in Greece’s northern neighbor Macedonia are putting up a second row of barbed wire and metal fencing parallel to an existing border fence first erected in late November, as part of efforts to control the number of asylum seekers crossing from Greece into Macedonia on their northbound journey into Europe.

Greece is the main gateway to Europe for hundreds of thousands of refugees from Syria and other war-torn countries, as well as large numbers of other migrants from Asia and Africa, who set off from Turkey.

About 857,000 refugees and other migrants entered the EU via Greece in 2015, risking a dangerous sea crossing that has led to almost-daily drownings. Another 68,000 people have landed in Greece so far in 2016.

At least 27 migrants drowned on Monday when two separate boats capsized off the Turkish coast, according to the Turkish coast guard.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 96 people have lost their lives in Greek and 34 in Turkish territorial waters since the beginning of this year, excluding the deaths reported Monday. In 2015, more than 700 people are believed to have died while trying to cross the Aegean.

Write to Nektaria Stamouli at nektaria.stamouli@wsj.com