Turkey has illegally returned thousands of Syrians to their war-torn homeland in recent months, highlighting the dangers for migrants sent back from Europe under a deal due to come into effect next week, Amnesty International said on Friday.
A Kurdish refugee boy from the Syrian town of Kobani holds onto a fence
that surrounds a refugee camp in the border town of Suruc, Sanliurfa
province November 3, 2014. REUTERS/Yannis Behrakis
ANKARA: Turkey has illegally returned thousands of Syrians
to their war-torn homeland in recent months, highlighting the dangers
for migrants sent back from Europe under a deal due to come into effect
next week, Amnesty International said on Friday.
Turkey agreed with the EU this month to take back all migrants and
refugees who cross illegally to Greece in exchange for financial aid,
faster visa-free travel for Turks and slightly accelerated EU membership
talks.
But the legality of the deal hinges on Turkey being a safe
country of asylum, which Amnesty said in its report was clearly not the
case. It said it was likely that several thousand refugees had been sent
back to Syria in mass returns in the past seven to nine weeks, flouting
Turkish, EU and international law.
"In their desperation to seal their borders, EU leaders have
wilfully ignored the simplest of facts: Turkey is not a safe country
for Syrian refugees and is getting less safe by the day," said John
Dalhuisen, Amnesty International's Director for Europe and Central Asia.
Turkey's foreign ministry denied Syrians were being sent
back against their will. Turkey had maintained an "open door" policy for
Syrian migrants for five years and strictly abided by the
"non-refoulement" principle of not returning someone to a country where
they are liable to face persecution, it said.
"None of the Syrians that have demanded protection from our
country are being sent back to their country by force, in line with
international and national law," a foreign ministry official told
Reuters.
But Amnesty said testimonies it had gathered in Turkey's
southern border provinces suggested the authorities have been rounding
up and expelling groups of around 100 Syrian men, women and children
almost daily since the middle of January.
Many of those returned to Syria appear to be unregistered
refugees, though the rights group said it had also documented cases of
registered Syrians being returned when apprehended while not carrying
their papers.
Amnesty also said its research showed the authorities had
scaled back the registration of Syrian refugees in the southern border
provinces. Those with no registration have no access to basic services
such as healthcare and education.
Under the deal with the EU, Turkey is supposed to be taking
in migrants returned from Greece on April 4, but uncertainty remains
over how many will be sent back, how they will be processed, and where
they will be housed.
The aim is to close the main route by which a million
migrants and refugees poured across the Aegean Sea to Greece in the last
year before heading north, mainly to Germany and Sweden.
"The large-scale returns of Syrian refugees we have
documented highlight the fatal flaws in the EU-Turkey deal. It is a deal
that can only be implemented with the hardest of hearts and a blithe
disregard for international law," Amnesty's Dalhuisen said.
(Editing by Nick Tattersall and John Stonestreet)
- Reuters
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