Greek authorities have fired tear gas and staged military exercises using live ammunition along the country’s eastern borders in an effort to prevent thousands of migrants including young children crossing from Turkey, deepening a stand-off between Brussels and Ankara.
On 1st March, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis announced that his country would not be accepting any new asylum requests for a month after two days of clashes between border police and migrants. The Greek government is struggling with a sudden increase of arrivals at its border of refugees and migrants after Turkey announced it would no longer prevent people from crossing.
“Everyone has a right to seek asylum. Deporting people without due process could mean sending them back to the horrors of war or expose them to grave human rights violations, breaching the fundamental principle of non-refoulement,” said Eve Geddie, Director of Amnesty International’s European Institutions Office.
The border between Greece and Turkey
On 27th February an attack by forces loyal to the Damascus regime of Bashar al-Assad killed at least 33 Turkish soldiers in northwest Syria. In response to this loss of life and as a political move in the conflict in Syria, Turkey opened its borders, enabling thousands of migrants penned up in the country to head towards its land and sea borders with Greece and Bulgaria.
Following Turkey’s decision to no longer prevent people from crossing the border, Greece announced they would temporarily suspend the registration of asylum claims from people who enter the country irregularly. This measure will be coupled with the immediate return without registration of new arrivals if the return to their country of origin is “possible.” It’s not clear how the Greek authorities are interpreting “possible” in this context.
According to reports thousands of people have arrived at the borders of Turkey with Greece. Turkey says it has allowed more than 117,000 migrants to cross into Europe, but Greece say no more than 1,000 have made it across. Neither figure has been independently verified, and each country has a political interest in fudging the numbers.
Brutal crackdown from Greek authorities
Clashes have been reported between Greek police and people at the land border, with the police using excessive force and indiscriminately firing tear gas into crowds to stop them from crossing into Greece. Meanwhile, arrivals have increased on the Greek islands already overwhelmed with refugees. According to reports, locals on Lesbos prevented boats from coming ashore. They also attacked activists and the cars of volunteers and journalists.
“Greece must refrain from using excessive force and ensure search and rescue operations can operate at sea. People who are seeking asylum in Greece should be helped, not treated as criminals or a security threat,” said Eve Geddie.
On 2nd March, the UK Independent newspaper reported that a video had emerged of Greek coastguard officers apparently trying to capsize a boat full of refugees at sea, as a crisis mounted over migrants from the Middle East attempting to reach western Europe.
A migrant child was also killed on 2nd March when the boat they were aboard capsized off the island of Lesbos and a Syrian refugee trying to cross the Greek border was reportedly killed by rubber bullets, underscoring the dangers faced by those attempting to make the passage west from Turkey.
“It is important that the authorities refrain from any measures that might increase the suffering of vulnerable people,” UNHCR said in a statement.
The UN agency said neither international nor EU law provided “any legal basis for the suspension of the reception of asylum applications”.
Journalists covering refugee movements at risk in Turkey
According to a report from the Committee to Protect Journalists, journalists covering the refugee movements in Turkey have been detained and jailed.
On 29th February, Turkish gendarme detained at least four journalists in the country’s western Edirne province, who were covering refugees moving through the country from Syria: reporters İdris Sayılgan and Naci Kaya from the pro-Kurdish Mezopotamya News Agency, and reporter Rawin Stêrk and camera operator Mehmet Şirin Akgün from the Iraqi-Kurdish outlet Rudaw.
On 2nd March, as journalists in Edirne covered further refugee movements in the area, police detained freelance photographer Bradley Secker, a UK national, and released him at about 11 pm, after he gave a statement to authorities.
“As Turkish authorities crack down on journalists covering refugees in the country, they are revealing how little they care for the freedom of the press,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, in New York. “Authorities must immediately release journalists who remain in detention and drop any charges against them, and allow reporters to work freely.”
EU’s response
The EU has scrambled to help Greece police the frontier and has sought to put pressure on Turkey to go back to preventing refugees and migrants stranded on its territory from seeking to reach Europe. Turkey was supposed to curb the flow of migrants and refugees to Europe as part of a €6.6bn (£5.4bn) aid package, but only half the money has been dispersed, owing to EU accounting rules. But the Turks say the allocated funds are not nearly enough to cover the costs of at least 3.6 million Syrians sheltering in the country.
In a speech on 2nd March, Turkish President Erdogan demanded that Europe do their fair share for migrants, who are leaving Syria, Iran, and Afghanistan for Europe.
“The era of unilateral sacrifice is over,” he said.
The move by Turkey to open its border is seen by analysts as an attempt to put pressure on the European Union, which has downgraded Syria to below Libya and Iran on its list of Middle East and North Africa priorities.
Today, on 3rd March, the leaders of three key European Union institutions will visit the Greece-Turkey land border. EU interior ministers are to meet on Wednesday 4th March, while foreign affairs ministers will hold an extraordinary meeting on Friday.