UN chief Ban Ki-moon arrived in Greece on Friday for a close-up tour of several temporary refugee shelters as well as a visit to the eastern Aegean island of Lesvos, which has bore the brunt of the crisis over the past year and a half.
The Korea-born UN secretary general said that “instead of building walls, we should build bridges between people”, during a visit in Athens to a NGO-run refugee shelter.
Ban was received by the Greek president on Friday evening, with an official reception following. He was due to meet with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on Saturday before flying to Lesvos.
The reception held in Ban’s honor was held at the Acropolis Museum, hosted by Greek President Prokopis Pavlopoulos. Tsipras and main opposition New Democracy (ND) president Kyriakos Mitsotakis were also in attendance, accompanied by their respective spouses.
Hundreds of thousands of Mideast refugees were ferried over to a handful of Greek islands by people smugglers operating from the opposite Turkish coast, setting foot on EU territory in a bid to reach more preferred destinations in central and western Europe under a refugee and asylum seeker status. Additionally, thousands of third world nationals joined in the flow in order to illegally immigrate to Europe.
