ATHENS, GREECE - The United Nations’ refugee agency is urging Greece to stamp out migrant abuse and investigate multiple accusations of pushbacks at the country’s sea and land borders with neighboring Turkey.
The UNHCR statement issued late Thursday echoes portions of a report published hours earlier by the Council of Europe's Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT). says Greece repeatedly forced migrants to turn back and encouraged similar actions by European forces deployed along its porous frontiers as part of a concerted effort to crack down on illegal migration.
Forcing migrants to turn around is a serious breach of international law, violating asylum-seekers’ right to safe passage and protection.
Croatia, France, Spain and Italy—all of which face similar migration challenges—also have been accused of engaging in unlawful, .
Earlier this week the from the EU border agency commonly known as Frontex citing an October incident in which Danish coast guard officers assisting Greek authorities refused orders to force migrants and asylum-seekers onto a small boat bound for Turkey.
Frontex chief Fabrice Leggeri last month called the incident a “misunderstanding,” describing it as an “isolated incident” during .
Details of the published emails, however, show that the Danish coast guard crew rejected the pushback order despite alleged recommendations by Greek authorities. They instead issued new orders for the migrants to be returned to a harbor on Greece’s southeastern Aegean Sea island of Kos, which lies roughly 23 kilometers southwest of the Turkish port city of Bodrum.
“UNHCR calls on Greece to continue rescuing, providing immediate support and registering new arrivals seeking protection,” said a prepared statement released by the office of Peter Kessler, the refugee agency’s senior communications officer. “UNHCR firmly reiterates its call on Greece to refrain from any practices that may involve informal returns of people to Turkey after they have reached Greek soil or territorial waters.”
Kessler called out Greek authorities for allegedly underreporting land and sea arrivals from neighboring Turkey—a move believed to provide local authorities a free hand to conduct illegal pushbacks.
Greece has grappled with accusations of forced migrant returns and abuse since 2015, when about a million refugees, mainly from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq, arrived in Europe to escape violence at home.
Inflows have since see-sawed, reaching record lows since the start of the year with a total of 14,600 sea and land entries, according to UNHCR data.
Greek migration officials did not immediately comment on either the pushback accusations or calls by the EU and UNHCR to stamp out migrant abuse.
The government in Athens has repeatedly denied engaging in pushbacks or abuse of migrants, calling accounts part of an “unsubstantiated fake news campaign" orchestrated by its longtime regional rival, Turkey.
Earlier this year, Turkey for using tear gas and water cannons on migrants attempting to enter the country and and killed at least three migrants trying to cross the border from Turkey into the European Union.
Tens of thousands of migrants have been trying to get into EU member Greece since Turkey said on Feb. 28 it would no longer keep them on its territory as part of a 2016 deal with Brussels reached in return for European aid.
Athens on March 1 suspended asylum applications for a month in what it called a strategy to prevent migrants from illegally entering the EU.
According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), a Senegalese Greek security forces fired on a group of migrants and that he saw two men fall to the ground before he fled from the area.
The New York-based rights group could not verify the shooting but accused the European Union of “hiding behind a shield of Greek security force abuse instead of helping Greece protect asylum-seekers and relocate them safely throughout the EU.”
In its lengthy report issued Thursday, the CPT task force deployed to Greece earlier this year found recurring cases of migrant abuse, mainly by local police and coast guard officers.
“The ill-treatment,” CPT said in its report, “consisted primarily of slaps to the head and kicks and truncheon blows to the body [mainly during arrest or transfer to detention cells.]”
The CPT report described .
“Migrants continue to be held in detention centers composed of large barred cells crammed with beds, with poor lighting and ventilation, dilapidated and broken toilets and washrooms, insufficient personal hygiene, inadequate food and no access to outdoor daily exercise.”