Egyptian billionaire Naguib Sawiris,has proposed buying an island off Italy or Greece to house Syrian refugees.
In a tweet on Tuesday, Sawiris said: “Greece or Italy sell me an island, ill call its independence and host the migrants and provide jobs for them building their new country.”
He has proposed, in a separate tweet, naming the island after Aylan Kurdi, the three-year-old boy of Syrian refugees who was found dead on a Turkish beach.
The telecommunications mogul is the owner of Orascom TMT, which has GSM, media, technology, and cable businesses in the Middle East and Asia. Listed by Forbes magazine as the 10th richest man in Africa with a fortune valued at $2.9 billion, Sawiris clearly has the wherewithal to complete the deal.
“You have dozens of islands which are deserted and could accommodate hundreds of thousands of refugees,” he told AFP in an interview on Tuesday. Sawiris said he would approach the governments of Greece and Italy with his proposal.
There are currently over 600,000 people seeking asylum in European countries.
Sawiris told AFP that he would first provide temporary shelters to house the refugees, and would later hire them to build housing, schools, universities, and hospitals.
“Those who accept shelter on the island would be treated like human beings,” Sawiris said. “Now they are being treated like cattle.”
Sawiris acknowledged, however, that it would be a challenge to convince Greece or Italy to cede the island.
Later on Tuesday, he told Bloomberg television: ““If you don’t have an island, and you have a deserted city or a piece of land in your country where you’re willing to host these people, I’ll go in and do all the rest.”
