Turkey massively deporting refugees to Syria – Amnesty International

Amnesty International human rights organization states about the large-scale forced returns of refugees from Turkey to Syria.

This is stated in the released report, quoted by Deutsche Welle.

According to the organization, the Turkish authorities have been rounding up and expelling groups of around 100 Syrian men, women and children to Syria on a near-daily basis since mid-January.

“One of the cases uncovered by Amnesty International is of three young children forced back into Syria without their parents; another is of the forced return of an eight-month pregnant woman,” reads the report.

It is noted that the facts of deportation were registered, in particular against the background of the agreement between the EU and Turkey adopted at the emergency summit in Brussels on March 18, according to which Ankara shall host the refugees who illegally got to Greece since March 20 while the EU Member States shall resettle 72,000 refugees from the Turkish territory.

The observations of the human rights organization experts on the Syrian-Turkish border indicate that Turkey is far from being a “safe third country” for the refugees. Moreover, they see a violation of the international law in such actions.

Therefore, according to the human rights defenders, the EU Member States should immediately call on Ankara to provide protection to refugees and to put an end to human rights abuses. And until that happens, the EU should not “randomly send those seeking protection” from Greece back to Turkey, the organization adds.