Migrant shelters in Greece face overcrowding

(Vatican Radio)  Time is running out for scores of Moroccan and other migrants who have found themselves stranded in Athens and have been told they’ll have to vacate their temporary shelter by midweek.

More than 750,000 of the 900,000 migrants who have arrived in Europe this year originally landed in Greece. Now that European nations have begun allowing entry to the Schengen area only to Syrian, Afghan and Iraqi migrants, many people are stranded in Greece and unrest is rising in the country’s temporary shelters.

Listen to John Carr's report:

Some of them demonstrated noisily outside the former Olympic wrestling venue where they’re being kept, demanding to be allowed to travel on to central Europe – but so far the Macedonians at the border are allowing through only Syrians, Afghans and Iraqis.

Greece’s minister for migration, Yannis Mouzalas, said the wrestling hall has to be readied for an international athletics event, and the migrants out of there by Wednesday.  When asked where the Moroccans would go, he admitted he didn’t know.

The mayors of four Athens boroughs have said they have no room for more migrants, compounding the space problem.  Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has appealed for fewer fences and walls, saying Greece should not become a ‘repository for souls,’ as he put it.

But as cold weather bites, officials do not appear to have any credible remedy.