Despite criticisms, EU ready to deport refugees

ATHENS, Greece — Greece is pressing ahead with plans to start deporting migrants and refugees back to Turkey next week, despite mounting concern from the United Nations and human rights organizations that Syrians could be denied proper protection while some are allegedly even being forced back into their war-torn country.

Lawmakers in Athens voted 169-107 Friday to back draft legislation, fasttracked through parliament, to allow the returns to start as soon as Monday.

The operation would see migrants and refugees who arrived on Greek islands after March 20 put on boats and sent back to Turkey.

Several Greek officials said that deportations are likely to start from the island of Lesbos, with migrants from Afghanistan, Pakistan and other countries whose asylum claims are considered inadmissible.

The transport, the officials said, will be carried out under heavy security escort — with one police minder for every migrant — using buses that are likely to board straight onto chartered vessels.

The imminent deportations are backed by the European Union following its recent agreement with Turkey, and triggered more violence at detention camps in Greece.

Authorities on the Greek island of Chios said several hundred people pushed their way out of an overcrowded detention camp and staged a peaceful protest in the island’s main town. The rally followed overnight clashes between Syrian and Afghan detainees that left five people injured.

In Geneva, the United Nations refugee agency urged Greece and Turkey to provide further safeguards for asylum seekers, noting that conditions were worsening for more than 4,000 people being held on Greek islands.

And rights group Amnesty International, which has strongly opposed the EU-Turkey agreement from the start, said in a report Friday that it had evidence of Turkish au- thorities rounding up Syrians and sending them back across the border to their conflict-torn country.

Greek officials did not respond to the criticism directly, but insisted the rights of detained asylum seekers were protected.

“We will strictly observe human rights procedures, not what people are inventing, but what is required under the circumstances,” Migration Affairs Minister Ioannis Mouzalas told parliament.

More than 11,000 of those stranded migrants remain camped out at the Greek-Macedonian border, ignoring calls by the government to move voluntarily to organized shelters.

Many say they have heard conditions in other camps are worse, and they fear what they might find if they are forced to move.

“Look at these people here,” said Mohammed Ali, a 45-year-old pharmacologist from the embattled town of Deir el-Zour.

“You know Victor Hugo, the French writer? He wrote a book — ‘Les Miserables.’ In the 21st century, we stand in the land of Hugo.”