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(Brussels) – Chaos and violence on the Greece-Macedonia border are a direct result of Austria’s discriminatory border closures and unilateral caps on the number of asylum seekers, Human Rights said Watch today. Thousands of asylum seekers and migrants are effectively trapped in Greece due to border closures, and they face a worsening humanitarian crisis.
“Trapping asylum seekers in Greece is an unacceptable and short-sighted non-solution that causes suffering and violence,” said Eva Cossé, Greece specialist at Human Rights Watch. “This demonstrates once again the complete failure of the European Union to respond collectively and compassionately to refugee flows. »
On the morning of February 29, 2016, Macedonian police fired tear gas and stun grenades after asylum seekers and migrants stormed a border gate. The nongovernmental humanitarian organization Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) told Human Rights Watch that it treated 22 people following the clashes, including 18 suffering from respiratory problems caused by tear gas and four hit by rubber bullets and The sticks. Ten children, some under the age of five, were among the injured.
Human Rights Watch was unable to determine whether the police use of force in this incident was justified. However, Human Rights Watch documented previous cases of excessive police violence by Macedonian officers against asylum seekers and migrants on the border with Greece, including the excessive use of tear gas and stun grenades. Police should not use force unless strictly necessary, and should exercise restraint if lawful use of force is unavoidable, Human Rights Watch said.
Around 7,000 people, including families with children, are stranded in Idomeni, on the Greek side of the border with the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, and hundreds more are stranded in Balkan countries. With the official Idomeni camp designed for only 2,500 people, many people live in squalid conditions around the camp and along the road from the village of Polycastro to the border, with little food or shelter.
The crackdown on movements north follows Austria’s introduction of a daily cap of 80 asylum applications from February 19 and a subsequent restriction by Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia and Macedonia the number of asylum seekers and migrants. authorized to enter the territory of each country, 500 people per day. Austria has also capped the number of non-EU citizens migrants and asylum seekers allowed to cross its external borders into its territory at 3,200 per day. Police chiefs from the five countries agreed on February 18 to joint measures to restrict travel, including imposing strict requirements for proof of nationality, refusing entry to those who may have spent time in a third country , requiring a new travel document that can only be issued in Macedonia, and considering daily quotas.
Since November 2015, Macedonia, Serbia and Croatia have restricted crossing their borders, allowing only asylum seekers from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. On February 19, 2016, they imposed additional restrictions by banning Afghans from entering their territory. In practice, the five governments allow only small numbers of Syrians and Iraqis to cross the borders. Afghans, the second largest national group arriving in Greece from Turkey via the Aegean Sea, cannot leave Greece to travel north. Greek authorities have periodically bussed Afghans from the border to Athens, most recently on February 23.
Preventing someone from applying for asylum because of their nationality is a violation of international law. This discrimination violates the right to seek asylum as set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as well as the right to asylum under the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, Human Rights Watch said. Additionally, the European Commission condemned Austria’s capping of asylum applications, calling it “manifestly incompatible” with European and international law. Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, and Macedonia should quickly end these policies, Human Rights Watch said.
According to the Greek Minister of Migration, around 20,000 to 25,000 migrants and asylum seekers are currently in the country – not only on the islands, but also in Athens. In the country’s capital, a humanitarian crisis rages, with authorities unable to provide basic needs such as food, water and medical care. With temporary shelters and transit centers already full, thousands of people are sleeping under the open sky in Piraeus port, waiting to be transferred to a shelter or head to Idomeni. With an average of 2,000 to 3,000 people arriving each day by boat from Turkey, the Greek government has asked ferry companies to delay crossings from the Aegean islands to the mainland.
The dramatic increase in arrivals in 2015 has exacerbated chronic deficiencies in the Greek asylum system where, despite reforms, people face serious difficulties. obstacles asylum applications, inadequate reception conditions for asylum seekers and obstacles to integration. The Greek asylum service has set up an appointment system almost exclusively via Skype, while lack of staff and interpreters and technical difficulties often force people to try for weeks before even getting a appointment to submit an asylum application. Without adequate access to asylum registration, asylum seekers risk being detained and deported as irregular migrants.
Aware of the pressure on Greece, which still suffers from a deep economic crisis, other EU countries have agreed to relocate 66,400 asylum seekers from Greece over the next two years. As of February 24, almost six months after the plan was adopted, only 295 people had been moved.
At the same time, the European Commission is pushing Greece to take sufficient measures to allow the return of asylum seekers to Greece under the European Union’s Dublin Regulation. According to Dublin, the EU country of first arrival should be responsible for processing an asylum application and other EU countries can return asylum seekers to the country of first arrival. These returns have been virtually suspended since the European Court of Human Rights ruled in January 2011 that conditions for asylum seekers in Greece amounted to degrading treatment.
EU countries should act quickly to fulfill their commitments under the relocation plan to ease the burden on Greece, Human Rights Watch said. This should include providing greater incentives for those arriving in Greece to participate through better information and faster processing, by making places available for the relocation of asylum seekers from Greece and Italy to other EU countries, and ensuring the proper functioning of the “hot spots” created for faster transfer. and better treatment and monitoring to fully respect the rights of migrants. The Dublin system should be replaced by a fairer mechanism for determining the Member State responsible for examining any particular application for international protection.
“It is ridiculous to see on the one hand a relocation plan intended to alleviate the pressure on Greece and on the other efforts of certain member states which risk transforming the country into a huge refugee camp,” said Cossé . “But above all, governments are failing to take into account the real risk of suffering for hundreds of thousands of men, women and children who will have no real chance of obtaining the protection they need. »
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