Mindanao Times

NGOs claim Turkey forcibly deported refugees to Syria

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HUMAN rights organizati­ons on Friday accused Turkey of “forcibly” deporting refugees to war-torn Syria in the months leading up to its military incursion in the neighborin­g country.

Turkey launched its military offensive on October 9 to push Syrian Kurdish forces back from its border and to create a “safe zone”, in which it intends to repatriate some of the 3.6 million refugees it is currently housing.

In a report released Friday, Amnesty Internatio­nal said it spoke with refugees who said Turkish police had beaten or threatened them into signing documents stating that they were asking to return to Syria.

“In reality, Turkey was forcing them back to a war zone and putting their lives in grave danger,” Amnesty said, adding that people were “being tricked or forced into returning”.

Amnesty slammed Turkish claims that Syrian refugees were choosing to walk straight back into the conflict as “dangerous and dishonest.”

Human Rights Watch (HRW) also issued its own report Friday alleging that “dozens of Syrians and possibly many more” were arbitraril­y detained and deported to northern Syria between January and September 2019, despite active conflict there.

Amnesty estimated that the number of refugees affected over the past few months was likely to be in the hundreds.

HRW claimed in a statement that refugees

were taken to Syria after signing forms “they were not allowed to read” and that some were even “unlawfully deported... to Idlib governorat­e, one of the most dangerous areas in Syria”.

Turkish foreign ministry spokesman Hami Aksoy rejected the accusation­s later on Friday.

“The claims of forced return, threats and bad treatment are not true and are completely made up,” Aksoy said in a statement.

Turkey wants refugees to return “voluntaril­y, in a safe and honorable manner, and believes this process should be conducted in a way that is in adherence to internatio­nal law,” he added in a statement.

A Turkish diplomatic source earlier told AFP it was “out of the question for anyone to be forced to sign a document.”

- ‘Deporting people to a conflict zone’ -

Turkey hosts the largest community of Syrian refugees, with over 3.6 million in the country. Of the 500,000 in Istanbul, more than 25,000 are living illegally, according to Syrian NGOs.

Officials have extended a deadline for unregister­ed Syrian refugees in Istanbul to leave the city until October 30.

Authoritie­s say refugees must return to the provinces where they were first registered upon arriving in Turkey -- mainly border cities including Gaziantep and Sanliurfa.

Amnesty said Turkey cannot use the generosity it has displayed to refugees over the past eight years as “an excuse to flout internatio­nal and domestic law by deporting people to an active conflict zone.”

Aksoy said that Turkey “scrupulous­ly” adhered to the principle of ‘nonrefoule­ment’, and there had been “no change to this approach”.

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