Morning Star.png Refugee Talks Are Shameful Editorial, The Morning Star, London, 19 March 2016 The deal discussed between the EU and Turkey yesterday is shameful in every respect. First, it threatens to contravene the 1951 UN Convention on the Status of Refugees and its 1967 protocol and the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). As UN High Commission for Refugees European director Vincent Cochetel has pointed out, the ECHR prohibits the mass expulsion of foreign nationals. Deporting refugees in Greece back to Turkey without processing their individual claims for asylum would violate the UN convention and cannot be escaped by importing an equal number of refugees from Turkey for resettlement in the EU. A last-minute commitment to process claims before deportation rings hollow in the face of abject EU failure to do so before now. Classifying Turkey as a "safe country" in order to justify the violation is to compound the cynicism and facilitate further breaches of international law. There is nothing "safe" about Turkey today. Having allowed thousands of volunteers to cross Turkish borders and join Isis, while enraging the Kurds of his own country and across the Middle East, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan sowed the seeds and now his citizens reap the terrorist whirlwind. The Ankara regime's authoritarian response to democratic internal dissent is exacerbating that country's crisis, instead of resolving it through renewed peace talks with the Kurdish Workers' Party and its jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan. While Turkey has provided a haven for three million refugees, it cannot meet the social and humanitarian standards demanded of a "safe country," as UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi recently told the EU Parliament. In particular, it has deported refugees back to danger in their countries of origin without due process. This also begs the question: how safe in Turkish hands are the thousands of Kurdish refugees bombed out of Turkey, Syria and Iraq by Erdogan's airforce? Worst of all, an EU-Turkey deal will not resolve the refugee crisis itself. People fleeing war, famine and destitution will continue to arrive in Europe, but more of them by unsafer routes than across the Aegean Sea between Greece and Turkey. Many will contine to languish in unsafe, unhealthy camps, waiting for months to see whether they will be processed or deported. Rather than allow Turkey to expand the EU "free market" in cheap migrant labour, or talk to Erdogan about EU membership while his military forces still illegally occupy northern Cyprus, the EU should work with the UNHCR to settle all refugee women and children in genuinely safe countries - including Britain - without delay. From: http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-be6c-Refugee-talks-are-shameful#.VuzkR- J9600 -- -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] . --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "YCLSA Discussion Forum" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
