Greece spooked by Syrian refugees

03 Friday Aug 2012

Posted by theamericanresolution in Europe

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BY NIKOLAJ NIELSEN

BRUSSELS – The surge of Syrian refugees into Turkey has spooked Greece into deploying 1,881 additional guards on its border.

“The deployment of the above border guards has begun today. They will be stationed there [in the Evros region, on the Greek-Turkish frontier] for two months and then they will be replaced by another 1,881 border guards,” Greece’s ministry of citizen protection told this website in an email on Thursday (2 August).

The Panhellenic Association of Border Guard Officers, a trade union, says some 600 border guards are already at the border and that the two-day notice to post the additional 1,881 officers is too short.

“In one night, we are called to abandon our homes and leave our families for two months without any preparation whatsoever and go to the border,” a spokesperson of the trade union in Athens told this website.

Greece has just under 4,000 border control guards in total.