IRAQ: Greece ‘Failing Refugees’

By Apostolis Fotiadis Reprint | | Print |

Apostolis Fotiadis

ATHENS, Aug 6 2007 (IPS) - Sixteen Greek NGOs have launched a campaign against redirecting Iraqi refuges to Turkey.

Until the beginning of this year Iraqis were allowed to make asylum applications in Greece. But the position has now altered dramatically, the NGOs have said in a petition to the government.

“The police have given information on at least three waves of refoulement, of 40 Iraqi persons each, in the first five months of 2007,” Panagiotis Papadimitriu from the Greek Council of Refugees, one of the NGOs, told IPS. “It is very possible that true numbers are much higher.”

Today more than two million Iraqis are internally displaced, and another two million live as refugees in other countries. An Oxfam report last week said that the majority of them live in dire poverty and are in urgent need of assistance.

More than 800,000 Iraqis live in Syria and 700,000 in Jordan, while their number is constantly growing in other Arab countries like Egypt and Libya.

Since the beginning of the year the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has publicised directives calling on governments to give refugee status to Iraqis coming from south and central Iraq or at least to provide residence permits on humanitarian grounds. But Greece is failing to help them, the NGOs say.

“The fundamental reason for this change is that Turkey has started accepting Iraqis through the bilateral Refoulement Protocol,” says Natasa Straxini, a lawyer working with the Solidarity Committee for Refugees in the Greek island Chios. “Until last December Turkish authorities didn’t accept Iraqi nationals, but we reckon that for internal political reasons this has changed.”

The protocol agreed in 2001 enables both sides to redirect illegal migrants to the country from which they crossed the border.

“In this way authorities can route migrants together and avoid observing their nationality or consider anyone’s special status,” says Spyros Rizakos from the Universal Refugees Programme, one of the NGOs that signed the petition. “The priority for the police is to get rid of migrants. But they cannot send people directly back to Iraq. Turkey’s decision to accept them has provided Greece with an excellent solution.”

According to the NGOs, Iraqi citizens should not become subjects of this bilateral agreement.

“It is self-evident that Iraqis are not and must not be considered illegal migrants,” Eleni Spathana, representative of the Lawyers Group for the Protection of Migrants and Refugee Rights told IPS. “The decision on refoulement of these persons does not respect Greece’s commitments under the Geneva Convention and the European Treaty of Human Rights.”

International refugee law prohibits repatriation of people if there is reason to suspect that they can face violence if they are sent back.

Amnesty International and Helsinki Watch in Turkey have informed the Greek NGOs that Iraqis who arrive in Turkey from Greece are sent back to Iraq. “It is impossible to keep track of them after they are deported from Greece but it is certain that they end up in Iraq,” says Straxini.

The UNHCR has confirmed that a group of 135 Iraqis arrested while preparing to cross into Greece have been sent back to Iraq. Members of the group applied for political asylum, but they were deported without having their status considered.

Straxini says it is common practice for the coastal police in Chios to turn away migrants before they can enter Greek waters to request political asylum.

“Many people who arrive on the Greek border, many Iraqis among them, are aware of the tough migration policy,” says Rizakos. “So they choose not to apply for refugee status. They hope to cross through and move on deeper into Europe.”

That can be a hopeless move into which they are often misled by traffickers. The Dublin treaty of 1997 says foreigners can have their status considered only in the country in which they entered the EU.

But hopes of finding acceptance in Greece are even lower. Greece has the lowest refugee acceptance rate in Europe. Less than one percent of applications are successful.