Greece migration minister: 49 Syrian refugees trapped on small islet rescued after international outcry News
12019 / Pixabay
Greece migration minister: 49 Syrian refugees trapped on small islet rescued after international outcry

Greek Minister for Migration Notis Mitarachi Monday announced that the Syrian refugees trapped on an islet in the Evros river between Greece and Turkey have been located and a boat was provided to transport them.

The refugees’ plight has attracted international attention after Turkey abandoned them there on August 8 after being transported back and forth between the two countries. Neither Turkey nor Greece made attempts to rescue the refugees between August 8 and August 15. Hours before the rescue, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) called for their immediate evacuation.

Several media outlets and the IRC reported that were nine children and one pregnant woman among those stranded. The IRC recounted that a nine-year-old child is in critical condition and her five-year-old sister died from a scorpion sting on the islet. According to minister Mitarachi, the pregnant woman has been transported to a Greek hospital.

On August 9 the European Court of Human Rights ordered Greece to provide the refugees with supplies and to keep them on Greek territory. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees also expressed their grave concern for the safety and wellbeing of some 40 people allegedly stranded

THIS DAY @ LAW

Bank of England granted political independence

On May 6, 1997, British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown announced that the Bank of England would be granted political independence for the first time in the three-hundred year history of the Bank. This policy was statutized in the subsequent Bank of England Act of 1998 gave the Bank independent control of British monetary policy effective June 1, 1998. Read the Bank of England Act of 1998.

Chinese Exclusion Act barred Chinese laborers from US

On May 6, 1882, President Chester A. Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act, barring Chinese laborers from entering the United States and prohibiting courts from bestowing US citizenship on Chinese. Connecticut Senator Joseph Hawley spoke out against the Act in these words: Let the proposed statue be read 100 years hence, dug out of the dust of ages and forgotten as it will be except for a line of sneer by some historian, and ask the young man not well read in the history of this country what was the reason for excluding these men and he would not be able to find it in the law. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and its successors were abolished in 1943 at the insistence of President Franklin Roosevelt.