Greece moves migrants from overcrowded islands to mainland

Greece on Monday began moving asylum seekers fromLesbos in the Aegean islands to the mainland to reduce the pressureon overcrowded camps.A ferry took 640 people, mostly minors, women and families, toThessaloniki in the north, with another ship due to transfer morepeople during the day.In all, the government plans to relocate 1,500 people from Lesbos,state broadcaster ERT said. Thousands of migrants have made it from Turkey to the Greek islandsin recent days, further aggravating the situation in the migrantcamps.The capacity of the facilities is put at 6,338 people, but theislands are presently dealing with around 25,000 asylum seekers andmigrants living in poor conditions. The UN refugee agency UNHCR says that 23,700 people arrived in Greeceby sea since the start of this year alone.Under a 2016 EU-Turkey deal, Greece keeps the newcomers on itsislands to process their asylum applications. Some are allowed intothe EU, while the rest are returned to Turkey.The deal sought to shut down the Balkan migration route, the gatewayto Europe for more than 1 million people in just 10 months of 2015and 2016. Countries on the route also closed their borders tomigrants, reducing the flow to a trickle.But people still arrive at a faster pace than the processing ofasylum applications and the deportation.The new, conservative government in Athens promised to accelerate theprocessing of asylum applications tighten border controls in order toreduce the influx and the pressure on its islands.