News / EU

UN finds Greece mistreating refugees

Friday, 13 December 2019 6:43 PM [ Last Update: Friday, 13 December 2019 6:50 PM ]

Refugees walk in an overcrowded makeshift refugee camp on the island of Chios, Greece, on December 10, 2019. (Photo by AFP)

A group of United Nations (UN) experts reveal “widespread” malpractices by Greece regarding the handling of refugees.

After a 10-day visit to Greek police stations, prisons, and other facilities, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention said in a preliminary report on Friday, “The use of detention remains widespread in the criminal justice and migration contexts and we urge Greece to end this policy.”

“Detention in the context of migration must be an exceptional measure of last resort, based on an individual assessment of each migrant and for the shortest period,” the experts said.

A final report is due in September 2020.

The experts also expressed their “serious” concern on such issues as the non-segregation of unaccompanied minors from adults, saying they were held together in dark cells from a few days to more than two months.

“Detention of children in the context of migration is prohibited under international law and should be discontinued,” the group said.

Greece relocates hundreds of refugees to mainland as arrivals rise

Greek authorities move more asylum-seekers from peripheral islands to mainland Greece amid a surge in refugee arrivals on the remote islands in recent months.

The experts also criticized the country’s long-standing practice of push-backs into Turkey of refugees trying to cross the border into Greece.

Citing information from various sources, the group said some refugees attempting to enter Greece from Turkey “are arrested, detained in very poor conditions, and summarily returned across the Greece-Turkey land border” without being given the chance to apply for asylum.

“We understand that it’s not occasional. In fact, we understand that it’s a long-standing practice dating back several years now,” Leigh Toomey, the vice chair of the group, said.

Greece has been a destination, or a pathway, for refugees since 2015. Arrivals have surged in recent months.

Under a deal signed with the European Union (EU) in March 2016, Turkey agreed to take back all the refugees who had used its territory to illegally reach European shores in return for a number of commitments from the bloc. But implementation has become lax recently as the two sides have moved away from each other on a number of other issues.

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