A Syrian refugee, former police officer in Syria, poses at a hotel roof garden in Athens, Greece (file photo).
A report says Syrian refugees sheltered in Greece are facing a very difficult situation as the European country grapples with economic meltdown.
According to the report published by the Washington Post earlier this month, most of the Syrian refugees sheltered in Greece are facing problems with regard to food, medicine or other aid.
Å“People arrive in Europe and they get treated worse than your worst nightmare. You get stuck in a cell, and you go in healthy and emerge sick,” said Petros Mastakas, an official at the Athens office of the United Nation High Commissioner for Refugees.
Greece has been at the epicenter of the eurozone debt crisis and is experiencing its sixth year of recession, while harsh austerity measures have left tens of thousands of people without jobs.
A Syrian refugee in Greece, Ahmed Habash, says Å“We imagined a European country that would be better for the future. … There would be no jobs in Greece.”
The report also noted that Syrian refugees in the European country are living in perilous and very dangerous conditions.
Å“In the streets, we are afraid…They (police) donâ„¢t care about refugees here,” said another refugee known as Rangen Hali who came to Athens in 2012.
On June 7, the UN also warned against the spillover of the Syrian crisis into neighboring countries.
More than 1.6 million Syrian refugees are sheltered in often squalid camps across Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Iraq and Egypt.
UN figures show that more than four million Syrians have been internally displaced since the beginning of the unrest more than two years ago.
Syria crisis began in March 2011. Many people, including large numbers of Syrian soldiers and security forces, have been killed in the foreign-sponsored militancy.
Last month, Syrian President Bashar Assad said that militants from as many as 29 different countries were fighting against Syria.
The Syrian government says the West and its regional allies – especially Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey – are supporting the militants.
MAM/PR
Republished with permission from:: Press TV