Majority on Greek border ‘non-Syrian refugees’

Erdinç Çelikkan - ANKARA

People talk together at a migrants' makeshift camp near a bus terminal, as they wait to resume their efforts to enter Europe near Pazarkule border gate in the city of Edirne, northwest Turkey, on March 8, 2020. (AFP Photo)

The Public Supervisory Authority (Ombudsman) has said that most of the refugees rushing to the Turkish-Greek border are non-Syrians living in Turkey.

The authority conducted a field research on the refugee crisis on the border between Turkey and Greece, two weeks after Ankara announced that it will no longer prevent migrants from trying to reach Europe.

A report prepared by the ombudsman authority noted that there is a continuous mass movement in the region and that the number of migrants from Afghanistan, Iran, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Pakistan and Africa was higher than that of the Syrians.

“It was determined that the Greek security forces intervened with tear gas, smoke bombs, sound bombs and water cannons, injuring many migrants with bullets and rifles,” said the report.

Those refugees were able to reach the buffer zone between Turkey and Greece, which is when the Greek police intervention came, according to the report.

“It has been determined that health personnel and police forces were exposed to gas, many migrants were injured as a result of the interventions, and that an 11-month-old baby exposed to a gas bomb was transported to a pediatric emergency room due to respiratory distress,” said the report.

The authority said that smoke bombs fired from the Greek border and spread by the effect of wind had affected the babies and children in the region, and Greece, a member state of the European Union, has committed many “human rights violations.”

Greece collected the belongings of the migrants reaching the Greek borders and stripped them off their clothes, said the report, stressing that they violated all international law documents in which fundamental rights and freedoms are guaranteed.