The first to raise the issue was Professor Costas Grivas. We are coming back to make the enormous Greek contribution to limiting the spread of coronavirus in Europe even clearer, since the measures taken both in Europe and in our country has been a priority issue for all media for several days. However, there have been only a few references to the Greek contribution to this global fight, which is extremely unfair…

By Stergios Theofanides

This argument does not include the slightest dose of exaggeration, for the following reasons:

– Preventing tens of thousands of illegal immigrants from entering Europe via Greece’s border with Turkey to the Evros, which began as a process in the last days of last February, has limited the number of cases of coronavirus in both Greece and Europe.

A significant proportion of the people who have been in Evros for the past three weeks have crossed into Turkey via Iran. A country in which the spread of the coronavirus has taken on uncontrolled proportions, something that is soon to be revealed in neighboring Turkey as well…

Even if all these people had been trapped in Greece from March 1st to March 15th, the number of outbreaks in our country and abroad would have increase sharply for the very simple reason that no European country had taken any significant measures to stop its spread during this time at their ports, land borders and airports…

Most European countries began to impose strict travel restrictions on March 13th and ended up closing their borders and tightening controls on March 17th. Almost three whole weeks since the beginning of the siege of Evros!

– Turkey behaved criminally mainly towards its citizens and certainly towards those who traveled to the country.

By denying the incidents on its territory for nearly two weeks and having a consistent policy of removing airline access to its airports (especially in Constantinople…) in the event of the latter’s refusal to fly to Turkish destinations, has caused an uncontrolled spread of the coronavirus not only in Europe but also in many other continents and countries.

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The pushing of tens of thousands of illegal immigrants to the Greek-Turkish border was also a criminal act from a health point of view, as the spread of coronavirus was already a recognized and appreciated threat.

– Europe gained valuable time through the Greek resistance in Evros and the eastern Aegean and began imposing measures to deal with the problem of the outbreak, following the very high number of cases in Italy, which unfortunately was followed by a large number of deaths.

Just take under consideration that the big international airports all over Europe had stopped receiving flights, or were only allowed to accept returning citizens after March 15th!

Therefore, no one can practically deny that Greece’s contribution to the overall effort to prevent the spread of coronavirus in Europe and elsewhere has been crucial through its decision to close down passage in the Evros and the eastern Aegean.

Don’t take our word for it. Just let the numbers speak. By March 15th, Greek forces had prevented at least 55.000 migrants from entering the country illegally. And that number would be three times or even five times bigger if the Greek borders had opened, as some (fortunately few…) “humanists” demanded.

Source: Defence Point