UPDATE 1-U.N. rights boss deplores detention of migrants in Europe

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GENEVA, June 13 (Reuters) - The U.N. human rights chief on
Monday decried a "worrying rise" in detentions of migrants in
Greece and Italy and urged authorities to find alternatives to
confining children while asylum requests are processed.
More than one million migrants, many fleeing Syria's war,
have arrived in Europe through Greece since last year. More than
150,000 have come in 2016 so far - 38 percent of them children,
according to United Nations refugee agency data. Italy has also
set up mandatory detention centres.
"Even unaccompanied children are frequently placed in prison
cells or centres ringed with barbed wire. Detention is never in
the best interests of the child - which must take primacy over
immigration objectives," Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein said in a speech
to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva.
"Alternatives to the detention of children must be
developed," he told the start of a three-week council session.
Zeid said it was possible for Europe to create
"well-functioning migration governance systems", with fair
assessment of individual requests for international protection
while removing what he called "hysteria and panic from the
equation".
Zeid deplored anti-migrant rhetoric "spanning the length and
breadth of the European continent ... This fosters a climate of
divisiveness, xenophobia and even - as in Bulgaria - vigilante
violence".
In April, Bulgarian police arrested a local man who had
posted video on social media showing how he tied up three
migrants near the Turkish border.
The migrant influx has drawn a rising public backlash, in
part because of strains it has imposed on housing and social
services. Concerns have also been raised in some EU countries
about their ability to integrate many mostly Muslim migrants.