It is unclear exactly what Turkey’s plans are for assisting the migrants other than to house them in refugee camps.
Advertisement
Lesvosnews reported that as the morning ferry was leaving Lesvos, a Greek coast guard boat was entering the port after rescuing 60 refugees and migrants who tried to cross from Turkey to Greece.
Overall, there are over 52,000 people trapped in Greece after Balkan states further north closed their borders to migrants.
The European Commission says the arrangement is created to end what it calls “irregular migration”, and replace it with formal routes into Europe.
Germany a year ago took in more than a million refugees and migrants.
Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said people who were members of banned organizations, involved in terror activities or convicted of terror-related crimes could lose their Australian citizenship.
The spokeswoman said the coastguard had no information about the ages and nationalities of the migrants.
Some 325 migrants have been deported to Turkey from the Greek island of Lesbos under an European Union deal. Turkey’s parliament approved overnight an agreement enabling Ankara to repatriate Pakistani migrants. The majority of the Pakistanis appeared to be young men no older than their twenties.
Hours later the boats arrived in the Turkish harbour town of Dikili where the downcast migrants, clutching blankets and with small backpacks on their shoulders, were escorted off the vessels by security officials.
The threat of deportation is aimed at discouraging people from making the often deadly crossing in flimsy boats. The previous day, another 76 arrived.
Meanwhile, Germany has announced that the number of new asylum applications it has received dropped severely from February to March, totaling only 20,000 compared to 60,000 a month earlier.
Activists said that the EU-Turkey deal runs roughshod over human rights, and they stood at the gates of the port blowing whistles and banging on metal barriers in protest. He said the discrepancy was due to a delay between people arriving and formally requesting asylum. According to a United Nations official quoted by the Guardian, Greek police “forgot” to process their asylum applications.
Lesvos Mayor Spyros Galino said 240 people have been transferred from Moria camp to an open center in Kara Tepe of the island in a bid to ease the pressure of Maria camp. “If any Syrian asked me today, ‘should I make the journey?’ I’d say go back and die in your land with honor”. The detainees include pregnant women, young children and infants.
“The worst reading of the EU-Turkey deal would be to imagine that Turkey is about to get a “discount” on EU membership conditions just because of the refugees”, he said.
Advertisement
For every Syrian returned, Europe agreed to take a Syrian refugee already living in Turkey to be resettled in an European Union country.
