Turkish border guards shooting Syrian refugees ‘daily’ – Amnesty Intl
Turkish
soldiers stand guard as a Syrian refugee boy waits behind the border
fences to cross into Turkey on the Turkish-Syrian border © Osman
Orsal / Reuters
RT,
8
March, 2016
Turkish
guards routinely shoot at Syrian refugees stranded at the border, a
researcher at Amnesty International has told RT, adding that the
number of people being shot has recently spiked. According to Andrew
Gardner, these cases are far from being isolated.
“There
have been many reports of incidents on the border. We collected
information on this as early as 2014, when we received many reports
of people being shot when they were trying to cross the border
irregularly,” Gardner
said.
He
added that the current situation in war-torn Syria has led to a spike
in the number of migrants being assaulted by Turkish border guards.
“Now,
the information we received via Syria doctors is that there are
reports of two or three people being shot every day trying to cross
the border irregularly,” he
said.
The
researcher also stated that the plight of refugees in Syria has
driven many of them into the “hands
of smugglers,” or
forced them to cross the border at night.
According to Gardner,
Turkish guards fire shots at refugees based on what they say are
safety measures.
“What
the Turkish parties have told us is that they don’t know who these
people are, that people could be members of armed groups, they could
be smugglers,” he
said.
Gardner
added that the only way to resolve the problem of the migrant flow
was to make legal crossing points for refugees on the border with
Turkey, and said Ankara “should
not have to hold the responsibility for hosting refugees alone.” To
alleviate the issue, the researcher urged EU members to accept bigger
migrant quotas and advised Russia to accept more refugees from
neighboring countries.
Late
on Monday, Turkey and the EU struck a “game-changing” deal
on resolving the refugee crisis in Europe. EU leaders agreed in
principle to an Ankara-proposed plan to deport illegal migrants from
Greece to Turkey while resettling the same number of Syrian refugees
in the EU. In return, EU leaders promised Ankara an additional €3
billion (US$3.3 billion), hinting that further funding, as well as a
speedy decision on a visa-free regime, could be expected. Ankara was
reminded, however, that it would have to observe all 72 requirements
to enjoy such a regime.
Turkey
has stepped up its border security amid pressure from the US,
following the November terror attacks in Paris. The US urged Ankara
to close its border with Syria to halt the number of fighters seeking
to join terrorist groups fighting there.
Damascus
has accused Ankara of facilitating the cross-border movement of
jihadists, while Moscow has directly accused the family of President
Recep Tayyip Erdogan of backing the illegal oil trade with Islamic
State (IS, ISIS/ISIL) that involves Syrian and Iraqi oil being
smuggling across the Turkish border.
Turkey
is said to be hosting more than 2.5 million Syrian refugees.
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