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Detained, Assaulted, Stripped, Summarily Deported
Security Forces and Unidentified Men Abuse, Strip and Summarily Deport Thousands
(Athens) – Greek security forces and unidentified
armed men at the Greece-Turkey land border have detained, assaulted, sexually
assaulted, robbed, and stripped asylum seekers and migrants, then forced them back
to Turkey, Human Rights Watch said today. Top EU officials have praised
Greece’s border control measures and provided support through the European
Border and Coast Guard Agency (FRONTEX).
“The European Union is hiding behind a shield of Greek
security force abuse instead of helping Greece protect asylum seekers and
relocate them safely throughout the EU,” said Nadia Hardman, refugee rights researcher
and advocate at Human Rights Watch. “The EU should protect people in need
rather than support forces who beat, rob, strip, and dump asylum seekers and
migrants back across the river.”
Greece should immediately reverse its March 1 decision to suspend for one month
access to asylum for people irregularly entering the country and to deport
them, where possible, to their countries of origin or transit. The Greek
Parliament should investigate, and FRONTEX should monitor, any Greek security
force abuse and summary deportation of asylum seekers and migrants. EU member
states should urgently relocate asylum seekers from Greece to other EU
countries and fairly process their asylum claims.
Between March 7 and 9, Human Rights Watch interviewed
21 asylum seekers and migrants, 17 of whom were men and 4 women, in Turkey
about how they tried to enter Greece over the land border following the Turkish
government’s February 27 announcement that it would no longer stop asylum seekers and
migrants from leaving Turkey to reach the European Union.
Those interviewed and thousands of others have
traveled to Turkey’s Pazarkule border gate on the Greece-Turkey border and to
the Evros river, which forms a natural border between Turkey and Greece, to the
south of Pazarkule. Eight of the interviewees said Turkish police transported
them to border villages and showed them where to cross into Greece.
In response, the Greek government reinforced its border with police, army, and special forces, which fired teargas and reportedly rubber bullets at people who approached the Pazarkule crossing. Two asylum seekers who spoke to Human Rights Watch said that Greek security forces also used live fire to push people back. One of these people, interviewed in a hospital where he was getting treatment, said he was shot in the leg. According to Turkish officials, Greek security forces have shot and killed at least three asylum seekers or migrants, but Human Rights Watch has not verified this number.
All those interviewed said that within hours after
they crossed in boats or waded through the river, armed men wearing various law
enforcement uniforms or in civilian clothes, including all in black with
balaclavas, intercepted everyone in their group. All said the men detained them
in official or informal detention centers, or on the roadside, and stole their
money, mobile phones, and bags before summarily pushing them back to Turkey.
Seventeen described how the men assaulted them and others, including women and
children, through electric shocks, beating with wooden or metal rods, prolonged
beating of the soles of feet, punching, kicking, and stomping.
Human Rights Watch also interviewed five Turkish
residents of border villages who described how between February 28 and March 6
they had helped care for large groups of people who returned injured and almost
naked from Greece saying that Greek security forces had beaten, robbed,
stripped, and deported them.
In one case, an interviewee described Greek security
forces sexually assaulting his wife when they crossed the border. “They [Greek
security forces] tried to search my wife and touched her breasts,” said a Syrian
man who was travelling with his wife and children. “Then they tried to take off
her headscarf and her trousers. When I tried to stop them, they beat me really
badly with their fists, feet, a heavy plastic rod, and a metal stick. They hit
my 2-year-old daughter with a heavy plastic stick on the head so that she still
has a bruise.” Human Rights Watch saw a bruise underneath the girl’s hair.
In most cases, the interviewees, said that armed men
stripped them down to their underwear, including some women, and forced them
across the Evros river back to Turkey. Many said that they were passed between
various groups, suggesting coordination between police or soldiers and the
unidentified men.
In three cases, asylum seekers and migrants said they
were forced back to Turkey or handed over to abusive Greek forces by people who
did not speak Greek and were not wearing a Greek uniform, though they did not
know where they were from. On March 3, 2020, FRONTEX agreed to deploy along the
full length of the Turkey-Greece land border but how many forces have been
deployed and when remains unclear. On March 13, Human Rights Watch informed
FRONTEX about alleged abuse by non-Greek forces and asked about its deployments
along the border. On March 16, FRONTEX replied saying that it did not have the
requested information and that it would respond as soon as it did.
Some of the interviewees said they tried multiple
times to enter Greece and were each time forcibly returned. Taken together, the
interviewees described 38 deportation incidents involving almost 4,000 people,
although some of these could be double counts.
On March 6, the Turkish President’s communication
director, Fahrettin Altun, condemned reports of Greek border
security stripping, beating, and deporting asylum seekers across the Evros
river, but Turkey continued to transport people to the border and urge them to
cross.
On March 3, senior EU officials met Greek Prime
Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis at the Greece-Turkey land border, praising the
government for protecting the border and referring to Greece as the EU’s
“shield.” In later statements, the European Commission president, Ursula van
der Leyden, and EU Migration Commissioner Ylva Johansson said they had emphasized the
need to respect fundamental rights, including the right to asylum.
Greece is bound by the EU Charter of Fundamental
Rights, which recognizes the right to seek asylum and guarantees protection
from refoulement, the forcible return of anyone to a real risk of persecution
or other serious harm.
Turkey does not meet the EU criteria for a safe
third country to which an asylum seeker can be returned, which
include respect for the principle of non-refoulement. Since July 2019, Turkey
has deported at least hundreds of
Syrians from its cities, exposing those forcibly returned from Greece to the
risk of onward refoulement to Syria.
Since 2016, Turkish border guards patrolling Turkey’s
closed border with Syria have killed and injured Syrian asylum seekers and
carried out mass summary pushbacks. Most have been returned to Idlib
governorate, where Syrian government and Russian forces have recently carried
out a new round of indiscriminate bombings, striking civilians,
hospitals, and schools, forcing a million people to flee. In 2018, Turkey
also summarily deported thousands of
Afghans to their country.
Greece should allow people seeking protection at its
borders to enter, and fairly and efficiently assess their asylum claims, Human
Rights Watch said. The European Commission should urge Greece to reinstate
asylum procedures for people irregularly entering Greece from Turkey, end
summary returns to Turkey, and press the authorities to prosecute abusive
officials.
FRONTEX should monitor and publicly report on Greek
security force compliance with European and international human rights and
refugee law, including detention standards, as well as similar compliance by
its officers and those contributed by member states. Turkey should not compel
anyone to cross the border irregularly into Greece.
“Without EU pressure on Greece to stop these appalling
abuses, this cycle of violence will continue,” Hardman said. “But the EU should
also help Greece by relocating asylum seekers to the rest of the EU and help Turkey,
the world’s number one refugee hosting country, by resettling far greater
numbers of refugees.”
Refugees, Asylum Seekers, and Migrants in Turkey;
Transports to the Border in February and March
Turkey shelters almost 3.6 million Syrians registered under a
“temporary protection” regulation, which Turkish authorities say automatically
applies to all Syrians seeking asylum. This reflects the UN refugee agency’s position that “the vast majority
of Syrian asylum-seekers continue to … need international refugee protection”
and that “states [should] not forcibly return Syrian nationals and former
habitual residents of Syria.”
According to Turkey’s migration authorities, almost 115,000 asylum
seekers lodged protection claims in 2018, including 70,000 Iraqis and 40,000
Afghans, while in 2019 almost 35,000 Afghans
and 15,000 Iraqis lodged asylum claims. In late 2019, Turkey said it also hosted about
460,000 irregularly present people, including 200,000 Afghans, 70,000
Pakistanis, 55,000 Syrians, 12,000 Iraqis, 12,000 Palestinians, and 9,000
Iranians. It is unclear how Turkey identified these people without registering
them.
Until the February 27, 2020, announcement, Turkish
border authorities generally prevented foreigners from leaving Turkey
irregularly at its EU land borders, reflected in the high numbers of people who
resorted to entering Greece in smugglers’ boats beginning in 2015. Between
January 2015 and March 12, 2020, Turkey’s coastguard reportedly intercepted 186,766
asylum seekers and migrants in the Aegean Sea.
On March 5, Turkey announced that it was sending
1,000 additional police officers to the border with Greece to prevent Greece
from pushing asylum seekers back to Turkey. Turkish media published photos of what the
authorities said were new deployments along the Evros river.
Eight asylum seekers and migrants Human Rights Watch
spoke with said that between February 28 and March 6, Turkish police or
military had transported them in buses to villages on the Evros river to the
south of the Pazarkule border crossing and helped them cross to Greece. They
included two men taken from immigration removal centers, one of whom said the
authorities threatened to kill him if he did not agree to be taken to the Greek
border. Two others said police or military took them to Pazarkule. At 7 p.m. on
March 8, Human Rights Watch saw hundreds of foreign nationals getting off five
large white coaches without commercial logos parked next to police vehicles in
Küplü village, 400 meters from the Greek border.
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An asylum seeker in northern Turkey at the Greek border on March 6 shows injuries he says Greek security forces inflicted after he had crossed the Evros River into Greece.
© 2020 Belal Khaled |
Abuse by Greek Forces in late February and early March
Between March 7 and 9, two Human Rights Watch
researchers interviewed 21 asylum seekers and migrants in Edirne city and near
the Evros river to the south of Edirne about abuses that they had faced on the
Greek side of the river. Seventeen of them were men and four were women: 7 from
Afghanistan, 4 from Syria, 2 each from Morocco, Pakistan, and Senegal, and one
each from Azerbaijan, Gambia, Iran, and Iraq.
