According to the Czech Minister of the Interior Jan Hamáček, there are no child refugees in the Greek camps who would be suitable for transport to the Czech Republic.
The minister said it would not make sense to bring 17-year-old Afghans or Pakistanis males to the Czech Republic during a parliamentary session. He repeated that the Czech Ministry of the Interior considers the whole matter closed.
“There are no children who would be homeless, abandoned, and suitable for relocation to the Czech Republic. There are many 17-year-old Afghans and Pakistanis who, in my opinion, have no chance of any reasonable resocialization in the Czech Republic,“ said Hamáček.
According to him, these young men would probably soon go to Germany or Sweden to their relatives. The Czech Republic will continue to help resolve the situation in the Greek migrant camps materially, the Czech Interior Minister concluded.
Non-profit organizations and personalities have repeatedly called for the country to take in unaccompanied migrant minors.
Czech MEP Michaela Šojdrová came up with a proposal to accept 50 Syrian orphans from Greek camps. At the beginning of September last year, Greece asked the EU interior ministers to accept unaccompanied child refugees.
As Remix News reported in January, the Czech Minister of the Interior asked Greek counterpart for a list of Syrian children, but the Greek side repeatedly refused to select the children according to nationality, claiming that the cases must be addressed individually.
Interior Minister Jan Hamáček said even then that he considers teenage Afghans to be a security risk.
Other countries such as Germany have vowed to take in 1,800 unaccompanied minors, with 47 arriving in the country.
Several Christian Democractic Union (CDU) members of parliament voiced their dissatisfaction that adolescent men arrived in Germany instead of what was supposed to be a number of unaccompanied young women.
“Germany is getting stiffed by the UNCHR [United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees],” said Hessian CDU member of the Bundestag Hans-Jürgen Irmer while critiquing the agency. “Before Germany accepts more such migrants, other countries are now obliged to do so.”
