What The Paris Attacks Mean For Greece's Refugee Crisis

Gunmen, some of whom detonated suicide vests, left 130 people dead in Paris last Friday. French officials said two of the suicide bombers had traveled through Greece in October. That has fueled concerns that some of the attackers may have reached Europe by hiding among the hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing there to escape war and extreme poverty. 

   While European nations have rushed to strengthen border checks and intelligence cooperation since the Paris attacks, far-right politicians have seized the moment to call for the borders to be closed to refugees and other migrants. This week, Macedonia, Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia stopped admitting anyone not coming from the most war-torn countries, such as Syria, Afghanistan or Iraq, which has created a bottleneck on Greece's northern border.

   Dimitris Christopoulos, vice president of the International Federation for Human Rights, spoke to HuffPost Greece about how the Paris attacks may impact Greece's refugee crisis and how the Greek government has handled the situation thus far.

   If, God forbid, the earthquake that shook the island of Lefkada a few days ago didn't result in two people dead but 20, and 1,000 houses had collapsed and 5,000 people were left homeless, what would the Greek state have done? Would it have remained inert? Of course not.

   So, why doesn't it do something about the refugees? Because, in the final analysis, [the state] isn't sure it wants to do something, and what's more, it has also convinced itself that it cannot either.

Πηγή: huffingtonpost.com