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Council of Europe honors Greek civil organization for helping migrants

Xinhua, January 14, 2016 Adjust font size:

The Council of Europe (CoE) has awarded its Raoul Wallenberg Prize 2016 during a ceremony held Wednesday here to Agkalia, a Greek organization which works on mutual aid with migrants on the island of Lesbos, one of the principal ports of entry in the European Union (EU) for asylum seekers.

"As a small and flexible local organization made up of volunteers, Agkalia provides a leading example of an effective action led by a European civil organization on a major subject of current events and of a global importance," declared CoE Secretary General Thorbjorn Jagland.

"Agkalia makes a real difference for the people who reach Lesbos after a dangerous crossing in the sea. Its activities reflect the fundamental values of the Council of Europe," he added.

On the front line in the refugee crisis, Agkalia has furnished, since May 2015, shelter, food and water, in addition to medical aid, to nearly 17,000 people debarking on the coasts of Lesbos from neighboring Turkey, regardless of origin or religion.

In his speech, the representative of the association Georgios Tyrikos-Ergas dedicated the Raoul Wallenberg Prize 2016 to all of his compatriots who "offer lessons in humanity by sharing their limited resources and their courage with the refugees" but also "to all the courageous volunteers on the ground, to all the Europeans who honor this union of people through their activism and their humanism."

"Only humanism and tolerance can bring better days to Europe. Utopia or not, we have seen it with our own eyes in Greece," he concluded to warm applause.

Tyrikos-Ergas also dedicated the Wallenberg Prize to the founder of Agkalia, "Papa-Stratis," who died in September 2015, and to whom he gave a vibrant tribute.

The biennial Raoul Wallenberg Prize of the CoE, with a value of 10,000 euros (10,849 U.S. dollars), was created in 2012 at the initiative of the Swedish government and the Hungarian parliament in order to reward "exceptional humanitarian accomplishments of one person, a group of people or an organization."

The prize bears the name of Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg who, in 1944, in Budapest, saved tens of thousands of Jews from the Holocaust.

The first Wallenberg Prize was given in Jan 2014 to Elma Arus, a Turkish film director of Roma origin. Endit