The Ankara Government prepares to denounce Athens in the Strasbourg Court for the shooting of refugees.
Turkish Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu announced Thursday the dispatch of 1,000 agents from the special police units to patrol the land border between Turkey and Greece to avoid hot returns. Refugees arriving in the area claim to have moved to Greek territory to be later returned by the Hellenic security forces and stripped of their money and belongings , a common practice of the Greek security forces in this area - despite being contrary to international law - but that has multiplied in these days due to the magnitude of the new migration crisis.
“With the aim of hindering hot returns, this morning we sent 1,000 agents from the special units of the police and zodiac boats. From now on we will not allow these bad practices [towards refugees], ”explained Soylu. The minister, who moved to the border crossing of Pazarkule and examined the area in the helicopter, said that Greece has returned 4,900 migrants who had arrived in Hellenic territory. The Government of Athens, for its part, says that since Friday it has prevented 34,778 illegal entries into its territory - 7,000 of them in the last 24 hours - and that 244 migrants have been arrested and are in custody. These will be transferred to a detention center in the Greek town of Serres and from there “deported to their countries of origin”,
Unlike the maritime border between the two countries, the agreement signed by the EU and Turkey in 2016 is not in force in this area , which allows the return of migrants who are not subject to international protection and who have arrived illegally at the Greek islands. An earlier bilateral agreement was in force on the land border whose application suspended Ankara in 2018 due to Athens's refusal to return eight Turkish military refugees in Greece and allegedly involved in the attempted coup d'etat of 2016. In fact, Soylu affected Athens that In the last two years, it has hosted some 15,000 Turks who escaped persecution in their country and do not do so now with refugees from other countries.
Greece accuses the Turkish security forces of helping migrants and refugees to cross their territory illegally - and there is evidence that it has been partly so . In the last hours a video has circulated on social networks that shows how a Turk - in civilian clothes - urges several migrants to get off a bus and take a boat to Greece. "Why did you come here?" He shouts at the complaints of several, and pulls out a gun: "To him who does not come down I will hit him now." Soylu said that his agents are limited "not to prevent" those who want to cross to Greece do. Regarding the firing of tear gas from Turkey to the Greek agents, he attributed it to a "response" to the fallen gas canisters in the Turkish military posts.
The Turkish minister charged against the "inhuman" behavior of Greek security forces and on Wednesday announced that his Government is preparing to denounce Greece before the European Court of Human Rights. Ankara accuses the Greek side of killing two people - whose families would have given Turkey permission to start a lawsuit in Strasbourg, according to Soylu - and of having injured another 164 by firing plastic bullets and real ammunition. The death of the first of them, Muhammad al Arab, has been rebuilt by the Forensic Architecture research group of the University of London, which shows that there is enough data to conclude that he died from shots fired from the Greek side of the border , despite to the denials of the Government of Athens.
"You are giving hunting shotguns to the farmers and with them they attack innocent people," the Turkish minister denounced in a reference to the departures of neighbors who have organized with municipal support to patrol the border. The Greek channel Star has published images of the local militia organized by the Feres City Council - a village near the Evros River - that would have 500 people, and SUVs patrolling at night. The France Presse agency interviewed several members of these groups, consisting of neighbors and retired military. “We have weapons to protect ourselves. We are determined to protect our borders, ”said one of them, called Sakis:“ And if an accident occurs, then let it happen! ”.
https://elpais.com/internacional/2020-03-05/turquia-envia-mil-agentes-especiales-a-la-frontera-para-evitar-las-devoluciones-en-caliente-de-grecia.html
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