Aegean Sea a ‘lawless space’ for migrants as abuses soar: NGO

February 12, 2021   

(AFP) There was an “unprecedented escalation” of human rights violations against migrants in the Aegean Sea last year, a campaign group said Friday, accusing Greece and the EU’s border patrol agency Frontex of being behind a soaring number of illegal returns to Turkey.

Berlin-based Mare Liberum said it had documented 321 incidents from March to December 2020 in which over 9,000 people “were violently pushed back to Turkey and thus deprived of their right to asylum.”

“Illegal pushbacks at Europe’s external borders are not an unfamiliar phenomenon, but they have reached an entirely new dimension,” the rights group said in a new report, describing the Aegean as a “lawless space” for migrants.

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