"Greeks blocking resettlement of Yazidi in Portugal"

By TPN/Lusa, in News · 05-07-2016 07:37:00 · 0 Comments

Portuguesa MEP Ana Gomes accused the Greek authorities on Monday of blocking the resettlement of 470 Yazidi refugees who want to come to Portugal and have the backing of the Portuguese authorities for three months.

Ana Gomes was speaking to Lusa after a joint press conference with fellow MEP the Austrian Josef Weidenholzer, who Ms Gomes has been working with to streamline the refugees resettlement process in Europe.

The press conference also heard from Yazido doctor Mirza Dinnay, who works in Germany to rescue girls and women from the grip of so-called Iszlamic State and Lamya Taha, an 18-year-old girl who managed to escape from the group in April after being held captive for 20 months.





At the end of this morning’s meeting with the Portuguese deputy minister Eduardo Cabrita and the secretary of state for citizenship and equality, Catarina Marcelino, Ana Gomes said that “The Portuguese government is completely willing to receive this first group of 470 Yazidis who we found in the Idomeni camp [in Greece] and who have been trying to come to Portugal for the last three months”.

“We understand that the Greeks do want to be seen to privilege anyone, but this is not about sending anyone to the front of the queue”, the Socialist MEP said, recalling that the resettlement process of the 50,000 refugees currently in Greece has to state somewhere.