LONDON - Turkey has illegally forced thousands of refugees to return to Syria, a report by Amnesty International says. The group says about 100 Syrians have been sent back to their war-torn country every day since mid-January in breach of international law. Amnesty says its report exposes the flaws in a recent deal between the EU and Turkey aimed at stemming the flow of refugees arriving in Greece. Turkey has denied sending back any refugees against their will. The Amnesty report comes just days before Turkey is expected to receive the first migrants returned from Greece under the deal with the EU. On Friday the UN called for safeguards before any migrants were returned. The group says its research in southern Turkey suggested that authorities had been rounding up and expelling groups of about 100 Syrian men, women and children almost daily since the middle of January.
Under the "non-refoulement" principle of international humanitarian law, a state is prohibited from deporting individuals to a war zone. Amnesty said one case involved three young children forced back into Syria without their parents, while another saw the forced return of an eight-months' pregnant woman.
It said many of those returned appeared to be unregistered refugees but it had also documented cases of registered Syrian refugees being sent back while not carrying their papers. "The inhumanity and scale of the returns is truly shocking; Turkey should stop them immediately," said John Dalhuisen, Amnesty's director for Europe and Central Asia. Under the EU-Turkey deal, migrants arriving illegally in Greece are expected to be sent back to Turkey from 4 April if they do not apply for asylum or if their claim is rejected. In return, Turkey will receive aid and political concessions. But critics of the deal say it hinges on Turkey being a safe country of asylum, which Amnesty says is clearly not the case. "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 Mr Dalhuisen. "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." He added: "Far from pressuring Turkey to improve the protection it offers Syrian refugees, the EU is in fact incentivising the opposite." (FA)