Tag Archives: Migrant Crisis

Hundreds of migrants march out of Greek camp, cross to Macedonia

MOIN, Macedonia (Reuters) – Hundreds of migrants marched out of a Greek transit camp, hiked for hours along muddy paths and forded a rain-swollen river to get around a border fence and cross into Macedonia, where they were detained on Monday, authorities said.

A Macedonian police spokeswoman said the several hundred migrants who had crossed into Macedonia would be sent back to Greece. A Reuters photographer put the number who crossed as high as 2,000.

About 30 journalists, including a Reuters photographer, who followed the migrants were also detained, witnesses said.

Earlier, Macedonian police said three migrants – two men and a woman – had drowned crossing a river near the Greek border that had been swollen by heavy rain.

The crossing put the migrant issue back in the spotlight days before leaders from the European Union and Turkey are due to meet again to seal an agreement intended to keep migrants in Turkey from moving to Europe through Greece.

At least 12,000 people, including thousands of children, have been stranded in a sprawling tent city in northern Greece, their path to the EU blocked after Macedonia and other nations along the so-called Western Balkan route closed their borders.

On Monday, more than 1,000 migrants streamed out of the camp, searching for a way around the twin border fences Macedonia built to keep them out. A second group of migrants, many of them from war zones in Syria and Iraq, later followed them.

Heading west along muddy paths, the migrants, wrapped in coats and hats, carried their belongings in rucksacks and bags. Many were children, some walking, others riding in strollers. Some made victory signs as they walked.

When they reached a river, the migrants stretched a rope across it and formed a human chain to cross. They carried children across on their shoulders.

Once over the river, the migrants walked along the border fence until they found the point where it ended in mountainous country. But after they crossed the border, Macedonian soldiers rounded them up and put the migrants in army trucks.

“We are taking measures to return the group to Greece,” the Macedonian police spokeswoman said.

Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said Hungary was the EU country that had sent most police officers to help non-EU member Macedonia protect its border with Greece.

“Macedonia needs and deserves help and assistance from the European Union because actually they’ve been protecting the southern border of the European Union,” he told reporters in Brussels.

Petros Tanos, a police spokesman in northern Greece, said police were investigating media reports that leaflets had circulated in the Idomeni camp urging migrants to march on Monday.

“We do not know who produced it…nor how they found the ropes yet,” he told Reuters, referring to ropes used to cross the river.

Babar Baloch, regional spokesman for U.N. refugee agency UNHCR, said conditions in the Idomeni camp were difficult after days of heavy rain.

“This is not a proper camp. People are exhausted, tired and running out of patience,” he said.

A Serbian customs spokeswoman said 33 migrants trying to cross into Serbia from Macedonia had been found in an empty cargo train in Presevo, southern Serbia, on Saturday and had been handed over to police.

The group, aged between 18 and 26, were mainly Afghans, but also included Syrians and Libyans. All but one were men. More than a million people fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and beyond have flooded into the EU since early 2015.

In Berlin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Monday there was no question Germany has benefited from the closure of the Balkan migrant route. A day earlier, voters in three regional elections had punished her conservatives and flocked to a new anti-immigration party that wants German borders closed.

But Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said it was time to say enough to the selfishness of countries that thought raising a wall was a lasting response to the migrant challenge. “How long do you think a wall might last in the internet age?” Renzi told students in Rome.

(Additional reporting by Branko Filipovic, Ivana Sekularac, Lefteris Karagiannopoulos in Athens, Alexandros Avramidis in Idomeni, Steve Scherer in Rome, Tina Bellon in Berlin, Gabriela Baczynska in Brussels; Writing by Adrian Croft; Editing by Larry King)

Syrian war creates child refugees and child soldiers, report shows

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Syria’s five-year-old conflict has created 2.4 million child refugees, killed many and led to the recruitment of children as fighters, some as young as seven, U.N. children’s fund UNICEF said on Monday.

Its report “No Place for Children” said more than 8 million children in Syria and neighboring countries needed humanitarian assistance, with the international response plan for Syria chronically underfunded.

“Twice as many people now live under siege or in hard-to-reach areas compared with 2013. At least two million of those cut off from assistance are children, including more than 200,000 in areas under siege,” it said.

The U.N. says more than 450,000 people are under siege. Cases of starvation have been reported this year in areas surrounded by government forces and their allies near Damascus, and by Islamic State in eastern Syria.

Violence continues despite a fragile cessation of hostilities reached last month.

UNICEF said 400 children were killed in 2015. A separate report on Friday by a number of aid groups, including Oxfam, said U.N. figures showed at least 50,000 people had been killed since April 2014.

CHILD SOLDIERS, NO SCHOOL

“A trend of particular concern is the increase in child recruitment,” UNICEF said.

“Children report being actively encouraged to join the war by parties to the conflict offering gifts and ‘salaries’ of up to $400 a month.”

Since 2014, warring sides have recruited younger children, it said, some as young as seven. More than half of children recruited in cases UNICEF verified in 2015 were under 15.

Children have been filmed executing prisoners in grisly propaganda videos by the Islamic State group.

Outside Syria, 306,000 Syrian children have been born as refugees, it said. U.N. refugee agency UNHCR says nearly 70,000 Syrian refugee children have been born in Lebanon alone.

UNICEF said 3.7 million children had been born since the conflict began, a third of all Syrian children.

Some 2.8 million Syrian children in Syria or neighboring countries are not attending school. Dozens of schools and hospitals were attacked in 2015, according to aid groups.

“Half of all medical staff have fled Syria and only one third of hospitals are functional. Each doctor used to look after the needs of around 600 people – now it’s up to 4,000,” UNICEF said.

Syria’s neighbors host the vast majority of its 4.8 million refugees. Europe hosts an eighth of the number residing in those countries, it said.

The separate joint aid agency report, “Fuelling the fire”, criticized world powers including Russia, Britain, the United States, France, Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Iran, which had “intensified their military engagement in Syria”.

“To varying degrees, these states – which should play a key role in ending the suffering in Syria – are actively contributing to that very suffering,” it said.

U.N.-brokered peace talks open on Monday in Geneva to seek an end to a conflict that has killed more than 250,000 people.

(Reporting by John Davison; Editing by Andrew Roche and Toby Chopra)

Greece struggles to convince stranded migrants that Balkan route is shut

ATHENS/IDOMENI, Greece (Reuters) – Tens of thousands of refugees and migrants were stuck in camps and ports across Greece on Friday as authorities struggled to convince them that the main passage to reach wealthy northern Europe has shut.

By early morning hundreds more people, many from the Middle East and Africa, had reached Greek islands, days after the shutdowns along the “Balkan route” were imposed.

Their arrival helped swell the number of those stuck across the country to over 42,000. At a sprawling, muddy tent city near the northern border town of Idomeni, 12,000 people, among them thousands of children and babies, waited to cross to Macedonia.

“These people maintain the hope that a number of them will cross to the north,” Citizen Protection Minister Nikos Toskas told Greek TV. “We’re trying to convince them … that the Balkan route has closed.”

Further south, more than 3,500 people waited at the main port of Piraeus near Athens after having arrived on ships from the eastern Aegean islands.

“At Piraeus we spent five hours trying to get people on buses and take them to a camp, but they didn’t want to board,” Toskas said. “They think that once you reach Idomeni, you cross to central Europe.”

Scuffles have broken out at Idomeni this week as destitute migrants and refugees scrambled for food and firewood. Tensions flared briefly on Friday and at least one man was injured, with blood streaming down his face, during a handout of supplies.

Many have slept in the open, often in the rain and low temperatures.

“In Syria we are fighting ISIS (Islamic State militants), now we are fighting nature and I think its worse,” said Ali, a Syrian refugee from Aleppo who has been in Greece for 20 days. “ISIS have a limit but nature (has) no limit,” he told Reuters.

EU READY TO HELP

Greece has been the main entry point into Europe for more than a million refuges and migrants since last year. More than 130,000 people have arrived this year alone, stretching the country’s limited resources.

So far, Greece has the capacity to host 30,000 people at camps and centers across the country and aims to raise that to 50,000 by next week, Deputy Defense Minister Dimitris Vitsas said.

“We need to convince these people, in every possible, non-violent way, that there are shelters in mainland Greece to host them,” he told Greek radio.

The EU launched a new aid program last week worth an initial 700 million euros. Greece, its economy blighted by the euro zone debt crisis, was expected to be the main beneficiary of the scheme.

During a visit to Athens on Friday, the EU’s commissioner for humanitarian aid, Christos Stylianides, reiterated the EU’s support and said the bloc stood ready to help Greece with further funds.

“We have a moral duty as Europeans to offer this help to refugees,” Stylianides told reporters after meeting Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, adding other European funds were available besides humanitarian help.

Macedonia, which erected a razor wire fence at its border with Greece, criticized Greece on Friday for doing too little despite the support it has received.

“The get all they want. The only problem is they’re doing nothing with it,” Macedonian President Gjorge Ivanov was quoted as telling German daily Bild.

(Additional reporting by Renee Maltezou and Lefteris Karagiannopoulos in Athens, Michael Nienaber in Berlin and Stoyan Nenov in Idomeni; Writing by Karolina Tagaris)

Turkey promises legal compliance in implementing EU migrant deal

ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkey is working on measures to fulfill its part in a potential $6.7 billion deal to take back illegal migrants from Europe and will involve the U.N. to ensure it complies with international law, senior Turkish officials said on Friday.

Ankara struck a draft deal with the European Union on Monday in which it agreed to take back irregular migrants in exchange for more funding, the quick introduction of visa-free travel for Turks, and a speeding up of long-stalled EU membership talks.

European and Turkish leaders hope the deal will discourage illegal migrants and kill off the business of human smugglers.

But legal details are still being worked out ahead of an EU summit next week and many governments remain skeptical. The top U.N. human rights official said on Thursday it could mean illegal “collective and arbitrary expulsions”.

A senior Turkish government official involved in the negotiations said Turkey would comply with international law and that the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR would be involved.

“UNHCR will certainly not be excluded on any work conducted between Turkey and the EU. UNHCR will take part in the execution and the implementation,” he said, declining to be identified because the agreement has not yet been finalised.

A particular difficulty for EU lawyers trying to tie up the package by the March 17-18 summit is the question of whether Turkey constitutes a “safe” country for the return of illegal migrants.

An EU definition of such a state refers to the Geneva Convention on refugees, with which Turkey does not fully comply.

“Many say that Turkey is not a safe third country. That subject is one that needs more work and discussion,” said Metin Corabatir, a former UNHCR spokesman who now heads the Research Centre on Asylum and Migration, a Turkish think-tank.

Turkey is nonetheless planning rapid legislation to try to ensure the deal can be implemented. It has already offered to sign readmission agreements with 14 countries including Afghanistan, a move which would enable it to more quickly take back migrants rejected by the EU.

It is also working on the conditions set by EU leaders for the granting of visa-free travel by June, seen by many Turks as the most tangible benefit they will get from the deal.

Turkey aims to complete nine steps by May 1 including a new personal data security law, a framework for the introduction of biometric passports and tighter regulation of its border security agency, the senior official said.

(Additional reporting by Tulay Karadeniz; Writing by Nick Tattersall)

Europe’s deal with Turkey fails to deter migrant attempts for now

DIDIM, Turkey (Reuters) – Turkey’s coastguard intercepted dozens of mostly Syrian migrants in coves along the Aegean coast on Wednesday as they continued to attempt perilous sea crossings to Greece despite Ankara’s efforts to stem the flow under a deal with the European Union.

A group of 42 people, more than a dozen of them children, sat inside a coastguard compound, some lying under blankets, in the seaside resort of Didim after being detained. Scores more waited among boulders by the beach, watched by armed police, as a bus came to take them away.

“We’re afraid of staying here and afraid of staying in Syria … We’re fleeing to the country that will take us. We want safety, someone to care for us,” said Sameeha Abdullah, one of the group near the beach, who fled Syria’s civil war.

Just offshore, a coastguard boat approached what appeared to be a small vessel carrying more migrants. Some officials fear a scramble to cross to the nearby Greek islands, despite increased NATO-backed sea patrols in the Aegean, before the tentative agreement with the EU comes into full force.

Under the draft deal struck on Monday, Turkey agreed to take back all irregular migrants in exchange for more funding, an earlier introduction of visa-free travel to Europe for Turks, and a speeding up of Ankara’s long-stalled EU membership talks.

The aim, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and EU leaders have said, is to discourage illegal migrants and break the business model of human smugglers who have fueled Europe’s largest migration crisis since World War Two. The message, they say, is simple: try to cross illegally and get sent straight back.

But in a shabby sea-front hotel in Didim, off whose coast 25 migrants drowned on Sunday when their boat capsized, few had heard of the deal. A group of migrants from the Iraqi city of Mosul, stuck because they could not afford to pay the smugglers, said they were still determined to leave.

“Even if they catch me, what am I going to do here? I may as well die trying,” said Hussein, 45, who said his three sons were killed by Islamic State militants in Iraq.

The hotelier, who gave his name as Enes, said a group of 20 Syrians, whom he collectively charged 500 lira ($170) for the night, had left yesterday for Europe. But he was sure more would come.

“Even if Europe gave Turkey hundreds of billions for refugees, Syrians still wouldn’t stay. Most of their family is there so they’re joining them,” he said.

LEGALITY QUESTIONED

Turkey has no intention of sending refugees back to conflict zones and sees no legal hurdles to implementing the deal, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Wednesday, after meetings with Belgian officials in Ankara.

EU and Turkish officials are scrambling to finalize the deal before their next summit on March 17-18, and Cavusoglu said the bloc had largely accepted Turkey’s terms.

But the United Nations and human rights groups have warned that blanket returns without considering individual asylum cases could be illegal. And it remains far from clear that the message will get through to desperate families who see smuggling as their surest route into Europe as its borders close.

Even as groups of migrants were detained on the beaches, more arrived by taxi in Didim, a popular holiday resort with yachts bobbing in its marina. Some carried bags, children in tow, and headed for the town’s small hotels, which like in other parts of the Aegean coast, have been profiting from migrant business in the tourism low season.

“The markets, the hotels, the restaurants – everyone was smiling. Because of the refugees we eat bread,” said the manager of one hostel. The hostel is in Basmane, a run-down neighborhood of Izmir, the main city on the Turkish Aegean coast and long a stopover for migrants trying to reach Europe during the Iraq wars and Arab Spring uprisings.

NEW GROUPS ARRIVING

More than a million people fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and beyond have flooded into the EU since early 2015, most crossing the Aegean from Turkey to Greece in small boats, then heading north through the Balkans to Germany.

Border shutdowns further north have blocked the ‘Balkans corridor’, leaving tens of thousands of migrants trapped in Greece. Macedonia has closed its border to illegal migrants after Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia announced tight new restrictions on migrant entry.

Rights group Amnesty International called the proposed mass return of migrants under the EU deal with Turkey a “death blow to the right to seek asylum”. Relief charity Doctors without Borders said it was cynical and inhumane.

But Davutoglu insisted the preliminary deal would not stop Syrian refugees legitimately seeking shelter in Europe. He and Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras signed an amendment to the countries’ readmission agreement late on Tuesday to make returning third country nationals easier.

“The aim here is to discourage irregular migration and … to recognize those Syrians in our camps who the EU will accept – though we will not force anyone to go against their will – on legal routes,” he said after a meeting with Tsipras in Izmir.

Under the tentative deal with Ankara, the EU would admit one refugee directly from Turkey for each Syrian it took back from the Greek Aegean islands. Those who attempted the sea route illegally would be returned and go to the back of the queue.

With new groups of migrants from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere continuing to arrive along Turkey’s coast in the hope of crossing to Greece, that message appears for now not to be getting through, to the frustration of some local residents.

“Whatever’s necessary should be done. The refugees should be gathered in one spot in my opinion. Everything should be done to ensure everyone’s comfort, peace and welfare,” said Armagan Gulcicek, an Izmir resident in a street full of cafes and stores popular with migrants, some of them selling life jackets.

“Let’s put an end to this nonsense.”

(Additional reporting by Umit Bektas and Mehmet Emin Caliskan in Didim, Kole Casule in Skopje; Writing by Nick Tattersall; editing by David Stamp)

Yemen war generates widespread suffering, but few refugees

(Reuters) – Amid Yemen’s misery, two young women living in the war-damaged cities of Aden and Sanaa know they are among the relatively fortunate. They are not starving, their homes have not been destroyed and they have survived bombs and bullets unscathed.

But both long to escape the conflict plunging their country ever deeper into catastrophe. Neither can see a way out.

“I don’t want to lose my life over a dream,” says Nisma al-Ozebi, a 21-year-old civil engineering student in the southern port city of Aden. She hankers for a scholarship that would be her passport to a sanctuary in Europe, but adds: “I don’t want to leave Yemen and live like a refugee.”

Yemen’s civil war intensified sharply almost a year ago when a Saudi-led Arab coalition intervened with air strikes, a naval blockade and ground troops to counter Houthi rebels intent on seizing the whole country.

The Houthis, Zaidi Shi’ite tribesmen now allied with an old enemy, former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, are seen by Riyadh as tools of regional arch-foe Iran, a charge they and Tehran deny.

“You feel like death is waiting in every place,” says Kholood al-Absi, 27, who lost her job with an oil services company in Sanaa late last year. “From the air it’s Saudi planes. From the ground it’s Houthis, car bombs, explosions, clashes. You feel the lives of Yemenis are very cheap.”

Reached by telephone at her home in the capital, she says: “I have a valid passport … I’m just ready to go.”

But she admits it’s a fantasy for now. Her family would never let her travel as a single woman, even if she had enough money to study abroad and seek a new life.

Besides, she can’t imagine crowding into a refugee boat for Djibouti. “It’s very dangerous, so I think it’s better for me to die in my home than to die far away,” she laughs.

MALNOURISHED CHILDREN

About 170,000 people have fled Yemen so far, mostly to Djibouti, Ethiopia, Somalia and Sudan. Most of them are not Yemenis, but returning refugees and other foreigners. The United Nations expects another 167,000 departures this year.

Given the immense hardships in Yemen, a greater refugee exodus might have been expected. People fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and beyond have flooded into the EU since early 2015 causing a crisis.

However, penned in by ocean and desert, with only Saudi Arabia and Oman as direct neighbours, Yemenis have no easy outlets – although Riyadh now allows those already in the kingdom to stay. Flights out are irregular at best. Former havens such as Jordan now demand visas and set tough conditions.

Mogib Abdullah, a Yemeni spokesman for the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR, says his countrymen have in the past tended not to migrate for work much further than Saudi Arabia, are culturally reluctant to become refugees, and view getting to Europe as a very difficult option.

“People do not really have the courage or means and resources to do it,” he says. “I think they will just have to live with the realities they have. They are trapped and they will continue to be trapped, until the warring parties acknowledge that Yemenis deserve a better life at peace in their own country.”

The war has inflicted a devastating toll on 26 million Yemenis struggling to survive in an already impoverished country beset by acute water scarcity, poor governance and corruption.

The United Nations estimates conservatively 6,000 people have been killed, about half of them civilians. It says four-fifths of Yemenis need outside aid. More than half have poor food supply and at least 320,000 children under five are severely malnourished. Upwards of 2.4 million have been forcibly displaced.

STOLEN DREAMS

Low living standards and education levels in Yemen mean Nisma and Kholood, with their hopes of visas to study in Europe, are the exception, not the rule. But if the war lasts longer, desperation might yet turn a trickle of refugees into a flood.

“I was ambitious, I liked to dream, I had many plans in my head,” says Kholood of her pre-war life. “But the war has stolen everything from me. I’m just thinking maybe I will die today or tomorrow. I feel like I’m dying but still breathing.”

The country she once knew has unraveled.

“Now there is a big gap between Yemenis. Before, all of us, Sunni and Shi’ite, went to the same mosques, gathered in the same places. This war makes us ask which religion, which party, someone belongs to,” she said.

Evidence of worsening poverty is stark. “A lot of people are just begging for money and food. Some are well-educated people who lost their jobs and couldn’t feed their children. This war has stolen their dignity,” Kholood says. “I feel it’s unbearable for me, but my situation is better than a lot of people.”Kholood said she feels lonely because friends had left Yemen, sad because of relatives who had been killed and lacking purpose without the job she loved.

Now, apart from domestic chores, she spends time on Facebook and watching the news, especially a channel that quickly reports the location of air strikes. “When we hear bombs, we go to this channel to see where they are falling,” she says.

Kholood has no love for the Houthis, but her initial support for the Saudi intervention has soured with the passage of time. “We feel it destroyed Yemen. Saudi Arabia and the other countries supporting it … are just killing people without feeling any guilt. A lot of innocent people have been killed, civilians, children.”

MILITARY STALEMATE

No end to the fighting is in sight. The Saudi-led coalition, mostly comprising Sunni Muslim Arab states, has failed to win a clear victory despite its air power and resources.

The Houthis were pushed out of Aden in July by local Sunni militias backed by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The main fighting has moved to fiercely contested Taiz and closer to the Houthi-held capital Sanaa in the north.

Yet the battle-hardened Houthis are defiant. Holed up in Aden, Saudi-backed President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi enjoys international recognition, but little popular support, even among his fellow-southerners.

The war has fueled Sunni-Shi’ite animosities, long muted in Yemen, and deepened rifts between the north and the once-independent south, where separatist sentiment runs high.

Among the main beneficiaries of the mayhem are militants of al Qaeda and the newly implanted Islamic State. This unintended, if predictable, consequence of the war worries Saudi Arabia’s main arms suppliers, the United States, Britain and France.

Yet whatever their misgivings, Western powers provide munitions, intelligence, mid-air refueling and other support for the Saudi-led coalition, despite what a U.N. panel describes as its “widespread and systematic attacks on civilian targets”.

Critics in Yemen and elsewhere accuse the United States and its allies of willingness to sacrifice Yemeni civilian lives to safeguard arms deals with Gulf states worth billions of dollars and to placate Saudi anger over a fragile Western detente with Iran, a suggestion Western officials dismiss.

Caught up in the turmoil are millions of Yemenis, among them Kholood and Nisma, who live in daily fear.

With her father and step-mother away in Jordan for medical reasons, Nisma was left in sole charge of her three younger siblings, including her five-year-old brother Mustafa, when fighting erupted near their home in March 2015.

The Houthis and their allies were assaulting the airport in Aden, which Hadi had declared his temporary capital after being driven from Sanaa. Street battles raged for the next four months. Few supplies reached the blockaded city.

“AFGHANISTAN MODEL”

Nisma and her siblings moved twice in search of safety. First, crammed into a neighbor’s car with a family of five, to an aunt’s house after a missile exploded next door. And then a few days later, when rockets and shells pounded their aunt’s district, to their grandmother’s home.

The family, by now reunited, returned home to Aden’s Khormaksar district when fighting abated in July and to their surprise found it undamaged, unlike many others.

Nisma says a degree of normality has returned, with power and water restored. But she has lost any sense of personal security. “I go out of my house every day expecting I will be killed anywhere, at any time, by any guy,” she says.

Frequent assassinations and attacks by Islamist fighters, other factions and criminal gangs in the last six months illustrate new risks in a once-cosmopolitan Arabian Sea port.

“They say they follow Islamic State, but who knows,” Nisma reflects. “If they are bold enough to stop us and tell us to dress as they want, maybe one day they will lock us in our houses. The Afghanistan model is coming here soon.”

This fear drives her determination to escape a country where any hope for a better future has evaporated.

“Everyone is thinking of leaving, but how and where?”

(Reporting by Alistair Lyon, editing by Peter Millership and William Maclean)

U.N., rights groups say EU-Turkey migrant deal may be illegal

GENEVA/BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The United Nations and human rights groups warned on Tuesday that a tentative European Union deal to send back all irregular migrants to Turkey in exchange for political and financial rewards could be illegal.

“I am deeply concerned about any arrangement that would involve the blanket return of anyone from one country to another without spelling out the refugee protection safeguards under international law,” U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi told the European Parliament in Strasbourg.

He was speaking hours after the 28 EU leaders sketched an accord with Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu in Brussels that would grant Ankara more money to keep refugees in Turkey, faster visa-free travel for Turks and a speeding up of Ankara’s long-stalled membership talks.

Rights group Amnesty International called the proposed mass return of migrants a “death blow to the right to seek asylum”. Relief charity Doctors without Borders said it was cynical and inhumane.

But the executive European Commission insisted the deal to put an end to a mass influx of more than a million people fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and beyond, due to be finalised next week, was fully legal.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who pushed for the accord to assuage anxious voters before regional elections on Sunday, said things were finally moving in the right direction after nearly a million Syrians, Iraqis, Afghans and others flooded into Germany alone last year. She denied accusations that Turkey was using refugees to blackmail Europe.

The 28 EU leaders were taken by surprise by the bold, last minute Turkish initiative, which went beyond previous plans for more limited cooperation. Unable to sign up to firm commitments immediately, they agreed to wrap up a deal at their next summit on March 17-18 but several points remain sensitive.

Migrants marooned in squalor on Greece’s frontier with Macedonia by the closure of borders further north vowed to keep trying to cross Europe to wealthy Germany, while Syrian refugees in Turkey said they too would not be deterred by the lockdown.

“We will stay here even if we all die,” said Kadriya Jasem, a 25-year-old from Aleppo in Syria, one of 13,000 people living in a makeshift camp in Idomeni on the Greek side of the border with Macedonia.

ONE-FOR-ONE

Under the tentative deal, the EU would admit one refugee directly from Turkey for each Syrian it took back from the Greek Aegean islands, and those who attempted the perilous sea route would be returned and go to the back of the queue.

The aim is to persuade Syrians and others that they have better prospects if they stay in Turkey, with increased EU funding for housing, schools and subsistence.

EU officials questioned how the one-for-one scheme would work in practice, with several EU countries objecting to any quota system for resettling refugees.

It might also be overwhelmed if the volume of migrants crossing the Aegean remains high despite increased NATO-backed sea patrols by Greece and Turkey.

Brussels sought to dismiss concerns over the legality of the proposed re-admission arrangements.

“You can be sure that the agreement that will come at the end of it will comply with both European and international law,” Commission spokesman Alexander Winterstein told a news briefing.

Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker cited EU asylum procedure rules to argue that member states were entitled to refuse to consider a claim from a person who arrives from a safe third country.

Some Commission officials have private misgivings both about Turkey’s “safe” status, given its human rights record, and the compatibility of mass returns with asylum seekers’ right to an individual assessment of their claim, an EU source said.

It was unclear whether an eventual deal could be challenged in European or international courts. Any case might take years to reach a ruling, with EU doors closed in the meantime.

Migration experts said refugees would likely try other routes if Turkey’s closure worked. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have begun tightening identity controls and erecting fences on their eastern borders, fearing the Baltic region will become a new entry point for migrants.

“MISERABLE”

EU Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos, speaking in the European Parliament, welcomed the preliminary deal and said: “We need now to ensure a quick implementation of the voluntary humanitarian scheme from Turkey and to implement projects that will further improve the situation of the Syrians in Turkey.”

But many lawmakers criticized the strategy to regain control of the influx, saying the EU must ensure people needing international protection are able to claim asylum.

“In the name of ‘realpolitik’, member states seemed ready to trample on their principles to conclude a shameful bargain with Turkey,” the French Socialist group said.

Critics denounced a cascade of border closures down the main Western Balkan migration route that has left 33,000 people stranded in Greece, causing a humanitarian catastrophe.

Avramopolus responded on Twitter: “It is our responsibility to create more legal pathways for people in need of protection to come to Europe legally and safely.

“Let me assure you that @EU_Commission does not forget and does not forsake its humanitarian duties.”

While Poland and others fretted about where the EU would find the money to double the existing 3 billion euros earmarked for Syrian refugees in Turkey, Cyprus dug in its heels on advancing Turkey’s EU accession process.

Nicosia has blocked the opening of five so-called negotiation chapters – vetting Turkish compliance with EU rules – to demand recognition by Ankara and trade access. It says it will not lift objections until Turkey opens its ports and airports to Cypriot-registered traffic.

Turkey has no diplomatic ties with Cyprus, an ethnically divided island which joined the EU split in 2004 and which is represented by the Greek Cypriot government. Ankara maintains ties with a breakaway Turkish Cypriot state in northern Cyprus.

The two Cypriot communities are negotiating a peace deal to overcome 42 years of division, but until there is movement, Nicosia looks set to keep blocking Ankara’s EU progress.

(Additional reporting by Alastair Macdonald in Brussels, Lefteris Papadimas in Idomeni, Greece, and Michele Kambas in Nicosia; Writing by Paul Taylor; Editing by Giles Elgood)

‘Game changer’: How the EU may shut Turkish door on migrants

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – A European Union draft deal with Turkey to stop migrants reaching Greece introduces a harder edge of coercion to what critics have derided as a hitherto feeble EU response to a crisis tearing it apart.

Just last week, some saw European Council President Donald Tusk running short on ideas when he urged would-be migrants: “Do not come to Europe.” UKIP, a party campaigning to take Britain out of the EU at a June referendum, said his “weak plea” was “too little too late to stop the vast migrant flow into Europe”.

Yet what Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu called a “game-changing” plan for Turkey to forcibly take back not only economic migrants who make it to Greek islands off its coast but even refugees from Syria, who will then suffer disadvantages, is the strongest move yet to change the calculus of migration.

If the plan is agreed, and if it works, taking to a boat from a Turkish beach at the cost of life savings to a smuggler – and possibly of life itself – would no longer be a ticket to a better life in Germany but a rapid round trip to Turkey. There, those returned would be, in the words of EU officials, “at the back of the line” for legal asylum and resettlement in Europe.

The United Nations refugee agency warned that Europe must not close its door to those in need, as civil war in Syria has left millions homeless and afraid. Human rights groups have been scathing about a Europe preaching democracy but cutting a deal with a Turkish government accused of persecuting opponents.

Many are concerned about a quickfire process of deporting everyone back to Turkey with little regard for individuals.

But 1.2 million people reached the EU last year to claim asylum amid chaotic scenes on beaches and on the long trek north from Greece through the Balkans. It has set EU states at odds, shut long-uncontrolled borders and fueled nationalist sentiment among voters across the bloc. Leaders’ patience is thin.

“We need to break the link between getting in a boat and getting settlement in Europe,” they said after Monday’s summit.

DETERRENCE

An earlier EU plan foresaw deportation back to Turkey reserved for those, such as Pakistanis or North Africans, with little likelihood of winning refugee status in the EU – though in practice making such distinctions has proven problematic.

The new plan would see even Syrians and others with stronger asylum claims being shipped with little ceremony back across straits, now being demonstratively patrolled by NATO warships.

To force back crowds that last year numbered up to 20,000 a day seems impracticable. But EU officials said the key was to dissuade people from traveling in the first place.

For every Syrian sent back from a Greek island in future, another Syrian would be entitled to a legal, safe trip to Europe. That could be a rather small number if deterrence works, so EU leaders agreed to consider also resettling larger numbers.

For Europeans, the deal could help end a crisis that has jeopardized their cherished Schengen passport-free zone.

There are clear gains for Greece, where Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has warned of becoming a “warehouse of souls” as more than 30,000 migrants have become stranded there since its northern neighbors began closing their borders. The downside could be ugly scenes on the islands off Turkey.

For German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who worked closely on the deal with Davutoglu before the summit, a dramatic sign of an imminent end to the crisis could be a boost in regional elections on Sunday that will, in part, pass judgment on her decision last summer to open Germany’s doors to Syrians.

“DIRTY DEAL”

Turkey is seeking in return some 6 billion euros ($6.6 billion) to help improve the lives of refugees over the next three years – twice as much as a two-year deal with the EU struck in November, as well as the opening of new “chapters” in its long-stalled negotiation to join the European Union.

Also important for Turkish public opinion is a request to bring forward by four months to June a plan to make it easier for Turks to travel without visas to Europe’s Schengen zone.

Several European governments have strong reservations about the Turkish proposals. Cyprus is wary about lifting its veto on parts of the accession process as long as Ankara does not end a refusal to recognize or trade with Cyprus, diplomats said.

It is also concerned not to disrupt talks that have brought the prospect of ending the four-decade division of the island.

France, sceptical of Turkey ever joining the EU, is resistant to a rapid easing of visa requirements for Turkey. President Francois Hollande said it would still have to meet 72 criteria – among them modernizing Turkish identity documents.

Britain, too, where Prime Minister David Cameron is campaigning to persuade voters to back continued EU membership on June 23, is wary of newspaper headlines suggesting 75 million Turks may soon be traveling more easily around Europe, even if Britain is outside the Schengen visa area they could access.

And central and eastern European states, long opposed to EU efforts to force them to take in a share of refugees, are concerned about elements of the deal that could see more calls for asylum-seekers to be resettled around the bloc.

However, the lure of an end to the crisis – at least inside Europe – may prove a compelling argument despite the critics.

John O’Brennan, Jean Monnet Professor of European Integration at Maynooth University in Ireland, tweeted: “EU norms of pluralism are being completely eviscerated. By the European Union itself. Shame on this dirty deal with Turkey.”

Summit chair Tusk, a former Polish premier, insisted the EU was not going soft on defending human rights in Turkey. But he stressed the benefits of the plan to crack down on travelers, saying: “The days of irregular migration to Europe are over.”

(Editing by Robert Birsel)

EU welcomes bold Turkey plan to stop migrants, defers decision

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – European Union leaders welcomed Turkey’s offer on Monday to take back all migrants who cross into Europe from its soil and agreed in principle to Ankara’s demands for more money, faster EU membership talks and quicker visa-free travel in return.

However, key details remained to be worked out and the 28 leaders ordered more work by officials with a view to reaching an ambitious package deal with Turkey at their next scheduled summit, on March 17-18.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister David Cameron among others hailed the surprise Turkish proposal at an emergency summit in Brussels as a potential breakthrough in Europe’s politically toxic migration crisis.

More than a million people fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and beyond have flooded into the EU since early 2015, most making the perilous sea crossing from Turkey to Greece, then heading north through the Balkans to Germany.

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told EU leaders that Ankara was willing to take back all migrants who enter Europe from Turkey in future, including Syrian refugees, as well as those intercepted in its territorial waters.

“With this game-changing position in fact our objective is to discourage illegal migration, to prevent human smugglers, to help people who want to come to Europe through encouraging legal migration in a disciplined and regular manner,” he told a news conference after the summit.

In exchange for stopping the influx, he demanded doubling EU funding through 2018 to help Syrian refugees stay in Turkey and a commitment to take in one Syrian refugee directly from Turkey for each one returned from Greece’s Aegean islands, according to a document seen by Reuters.

He also asked to bring forward EU visa liberalization for Turks to June from end-2016 and to open five more negotiating chapters in Turkey’s long-stalled EU accession process.

The EU leaders agreed to the earlier target date for visa-free travel provided Ankara meets all the conditions including changing its visa policy towards Islamic states and introducing harder-to-fake biometric passports.

They left open how much additional aid they would provide for refugees in Turkey and made only a vague reference to preparing for a decision on opening more areas of membership talks – a particularly sensitive issue for Cyprus.

European Council President Donald Tusk, who chaired the summit, said the outcome would show migrants that there was no longer a path into Europe for people seeking a better life.

“The days of irregular migration to Europe are over,” he told a joint news conference with Davutoglu.

Merkel, who requested the special summit to show results before regional elections in Germany next Sunday, said: “The Turkish proposal is a breakthrough, if it is implemented, to break the chain from getting into a boat to settling in Europe.”

Desperate to end the influx of Syrians, Iraqis, Afghans and others, EU leaders brushed off warnings from the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees that the EU should not shut its doors and should be willing to take in hundreds of thousands more refugees from Turkey.

Davutoglu said the summit showed how indispensable Turkey was for Europe, and Europe for Turkey.

At a preparatory meeting with Merkel and Rutte on Sunday night, he demanded double the 3 billion euros ($3.29 billion) earmarked so far to support Syrian refugees in Turkey.

Diplomats said Merkel and Rutte pressed hard for a deal on the Turkish plan but met resistance from central European states opposed to taking refugee quotas, as well as from Greece and Cyprus which have conditions for the Turkish accession talks.

Three days after the Turkish government seized the best-selling opposition newspaper Zaman, the leaders said they had discussed the situation of the media in Turkey with Davutoglu.

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said he had insisted on a reference to media freedom in the final statement.

USE FORCE?

Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo, one of several central European leaders who has resisted pressure to accept a quota of refugees, said the Turkish proposal, if honored and implemented, would be a big step toward solving the migrant crisis.

The EU leaders pledged to help Greece cope with a backlog of migrants stranded on its soil and welcomed NATO naval back-up in the Aegean Sea to help stop people smugglers.

Merkel refused to endorse border closures by Austria and Balkan neighbors that have stranded over 30,000 migrants in Greece, but the statement noted: “Irregular flows of migrants along the Western Balkans route have now come to an end.”

The German leader, facing a possible political backlash in three regional polls over her welcoming of the refugees, said the question of Turkish EU membership was “not on the agenda today” but strategic cooperation with Ankara was in Europe’s vital geopolitical interests.

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said the bloc must speed up the process of relocating asylum seekers from Greece to other EU countries as promised last September. EU states have so far taken in only a few hundred of a promised 160,000 people and central European countries have rejected the whole principle.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said the alliance had begun patrols in the Aegean to support efforts to locate migrant boats, overcoming territorial sensitivities in Greece and Turkey to patrol in the waters of both NATO states.

“NATO is starting activities in territorial waters today,” he told a joint news conference in Brussels with Davutoglu.

“We are expanding our cooperation with the EU’s border agency, Frontex, and we are expanding the number of ships in our deployment,” he said, adding that France and Britain had agreed to send ships to the Aegean.

Germany is leading the NATO mission that was agreed on Feb. 11, which also includes ships from Canada, Turkey and Greece. Until now, ships had been in international waters.

Britain’s Cameron said he was sending a naval force to the Aegean to join the NATO force even though Britain is outside the Schengen zone of passport-free travel and has refused to take any share of the migrants from Europe.

While Cameron stressed Britain would take no part in any common EU asylum policy, further migrant chaos could damage his efforts to win a June referendum and keep Britain in the EU.

($1 = 0.9122 euros)

(Additional reporting by Francesco Guarascio, Robert-Jan Bartunek, Renee Maltezou, Philip Blenkinsop, Jan Strupczewski, Alissa de Carbonnel, Paul Taylor, Alastair Macdonald and Robin Emmott in Brussels; Writing by Alastair Macdonald and Paul Taylor; Editing by Sandra Maler)

EU courts Turkey, outlines plan to save open borders

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – European Union officials voiced guarded optimism on Friday that Turkey was starting to cooperate to stem the flow of migrants to Europe as Brussels outlined a timetable for restoring open borders across the continent by the end of the year.

European Council President Donald Tusk, who will chair an emergency EU summit with Turkey on Monday, said after talks in Ankara he saw first signs that EU states were overcoming their differences to tackle the year-old crisis.

He also said Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu had told him Turkey was ready to take back all migrants apprehended in Turkish waters. The EU is demanding that Ankara crack down on people smuggling and take back all illegal migrants from its shores who do not qualify for asylum in the 28-nation EU.

“For the first time since the beginning of the migration crisis, I can see a European consensus emerging,” Tusk said in a summit invitation letter to leaders. “It is a consensus around a comprehensive strategy that, if loyally implemented, can help stem the flows and tackle the crisis.”

The EU is trying to close its porous external borders and change the calculus of people fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and beyond, offering them help if they stay put.

While Tusk was holding talks with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, the European Commission announced the first payouts from a 3 billion euro ($3.3 billion) fund to help Ankara keep some 2.5 million Syrian refugees on Turkish soil.

It also said Turkey was making progress towards achieving eagerly sought visa liberalization for its citizens in the EU.

EU envoy to Turkey Hansjorg Haber told reporters in Istanbul that 400 million euros had been disbursed on humanitarian aid and schooling for migrants.

Meeting in Paris, the leaders of Germany and France agreed that refugees fleeing war in Syria should stay in the region and said their common objective was to put Europe’s frayed Schengen passport-free travel agreement back into operation.

“Our efforts are not done yet,” Chancellor Angela Merkel told a joint news conference with President Francois Hollande. “I understand that Turkey also expects Europe to deliver.”

Merkel pressed for Monday’s summit with Davutoglu in an effort to demonstrate results before three regional elections in Germany on March 13 in which her conservatives face losses to the anti-migration Alternative for Germany party.

STAMPEDE

Tusk said Monday’s summit would confirm the EU had closed the so-called Western Balkans route from Greece to northern Europe, which has been the main entry point for migrants.

“The number of illegal entries from Turkey to Greece remains far too high,” he said after his talks with Davutoglu. Some 30,000 migrants are bottled up in Greece and more are arriving at a rate of 2,000 to 3,000 a day despite still wintry seas.

“We both believe that we can reduce the flow through the large-scale and rapid return from Greece of all migrants not in need of international protection,” Tusk said.

On a visit to Athens, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Ankara was seeing a significant decrease in the number of refugees arriving at its borders due to its changing visa regime.

In Brussels, the Commission presented a step-by-step plan to implement agreed or already-proposed measures – including a new EU border and coast guard – to curb the influx after more than a million people arrived in an uncontrolled stampede in 2015.

“We cannot have free movement internally if we cannot manage our external borders effectively,” Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos told a news conference.

In a pre-summit report to EU leaders, the Commission estimated that a complete collapse of passport-free travel in the 26-nation Schengen zone could cost the European economy up to 18 billion euros ($19.8 billion) a year. Much of the cost would fall on cross-border commuters, transport and tourism.

But investment bank JPMorgan Chase said the short-term impact of more probable selective border controls was likely to be “small in business cycle terms”.

Eight Schengen countries have temporary, emergency border controls in place now to control the flow of migrants, putting in jeopardy one of Europe’s most prized achievements.

More than 1.2 million people submitted asylum requests in the 28-nation EU last year, including 363,000 Syrians and 178,000 Afghans, the EU statistics agency Eurostat said.

Some 442,000 applications were submitted in Germany, the top destination for refugees and migrants, followed by 174,000 in Hungary, which erected barbed-wire fences and used security forces to shut people out, and 156,000 in Sweden, it said.

Sweden, long regarded as the most generous EU state towards refugees, said it would scrap payments of daily allowances to migrants whose asylum applications had been rejected in its latest attempt to curtail the influx.

Fewer than one-fifth of Germans believe the EU will agree on a common approach to the refugee crisis, according to a poll published by the daily Die Welt, and some 48 percent want Berlin to improve protection of Germany’s national borders.

A clear majority — 56 percent — said Germany should cut its EU contributions if Monday’s refugee summit fails.

While Brussels and Berlin are pushing for a European response to the crisis, more and more EU states are skeptical it could work and are resorting to unilateral steps.

“The Commission would never announce that Schengen is over,” said one Brussels-based diplomat from an EU country.

“That would be a major political blow to them, the first real setback in the whole process of European integration. It would be like the pope announcing there is no God.”

(Additional reporting by Alastair Macdonald in Brussels, Paul Carrel in Berlin, Andrew Callus in Paris, Nick Tattersall and Humeyra Pamuk in Istanbul; Writing by Paul Taylor; Editing by Gareth Jones)