User:Calthinus/Sleeve

If necessary:

specifically refugee camps -- 38,000 people on islands of Lesbos, Samos, Chios, Leros, Kos

EU parliament civil liberties, justice & home affairs calls for urgent measures to relieve pressures

"no chance of isolation or social distancing"

Six ICUs in Lesbos total

refugee groups create different language teams to organize orderly access to local supermarkets -- white for Arabic, blue for Persian

border guard violence against refugees from ISIS in northern Balkans

displays of force "are not effective deterrents"

80% of 263 studied by Border Violence Monitoring Network report being assaulted

Frontex begins patrolling Albania

Hungary spending 440 m euro on southern border wall

discourse in Germany

Greece refuses EU pressure to mvoe migrants from the five island camps to hte mainland, fears taht it could "enflame the spread of coronavirus"; as of 26 March there were no known cases (however Calth note: they probably were unreported.)

Greek Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson: relocate specifically those most vulnerable to the virus

Eva Cosse' at Human Rights Watch: "The government’s strategy is to lock everyone in one place and throw away the key"

MSF calls for refugees/asylum seekers/migrants to be evacuated immediately.

some parts of Moria according to MSF -- 1300 people clustered wiht no soap available whatsoever.

Familes of 5-6 sleep in spaces of less than 3 m^2

Samos: One water tap per 1300 people, one toilet for 167

Samos: Greek gov't allows only one person per family out each day on March 18

Human rights activists: EU countries using coronavirus "as an excuse to suspend asylum or relocation" (incl Eva Cosse' of HRW)

March 1 : Greece suspends new asylum apps (plus NY Times see also matter of Turkey etc etc : https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/01/world/europe/greece-migrants-border-turkey.html)

secret extrajudicial locations to detain migrants and deport htem to TUrkey (NYT March 10 : [])

March 16: United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) releases paper -- although states can implement health or screening measures for refugees attempting to cross their borders, "any blanket measures bannign refugees without evidence of health risk is discriminatory under international law" (paper on Ref world : [])

Part of the dire situation in camps is because medical charities stopped operating in the camps after mob violence directed at them in early March by far-right mobs (Guardian: "We fear for our lives" after "being set upon by a mob wielding nail-headed cudgels"; conspiracy theories that aid groups were encouraging refugees to come)

March 6 video on assault of NGOs by far-right "sunrise" groups []

Amnesty International : criticized EU for turning back on Greece, not supporting it in refugee sitch

part of the Moria camp was destroyed by mobs, complicating corona sitch

[]

Secret site ? 

Role of Turkey
[] -- DW

-- pushing refugees into Europe as a way to put pressure on the EU, described as "irresponsible tactic" by Die Welt.

Also elaborated in:

)

[] " Turkish security forces in uniform and plain clothes firing tear gas at Greek forces as migrants attempted to storm the border fence."

-- March 4 -- RTErdo opens border with Greece so millions of migrants could enter Europe, making good on an early threat he made after the death of 33 Turkish soldiers in SYria

-- Erdogan claimed action was to save hundreds of thousands of refugees from Russian/Syrian bombing in Idlib, but the refugees actually there are trapped by the world's second longest border wall, and Turkish gendarmes use lethal force to keep it closed.

-- March 27 -- Turkish police burn down migrant tents, using corona as reason

-- Turkey-Greece border as "trump card" in negotations, and dramatically unsettled Euro politics in past in favor of the far-right, in 2015.

-- "owed Turkish security forces in uniform and plain clothes firing tear gas at Greek forces as migrants attempted to storm the border fence. Others showed a Turkish armored vehicle attempting to pull down the border fence by tugging on an attached cable."



Overall background from Ayça Tekin-Koru, Economics prof at TED : [https://voxeu.org/article/precarious-lives-syrian-refugees-turkey-corona-times

-- can also be cited for acute issue of Turkey's refugee/coronavirus interaction.

-- in early 2020 Turkey launched counteroffensive against Assad gov't, and this was followed by

-- "silence on refugee front" attributed to either the matter not being felt yet or in which, in a context of rising xenophobia in Turkey.

-- risks are "geographically heterogenous"

-- not only in camps but also in Istanbul and Sanliurfa, refugee families tend to livein homes with poor water, sanitation and hygiene conditions; 1 in 5 lack access to clean drinking water, 1 in 3 lack access to hygiene items.

-- 45% of Syrian refugees live in poverty, 14% live in extreme poverty, living quarters are "crammed"

-- despite having theoretical access to healthcare, Doctors of the World (2019) survey concludes that 23% of refugees lack practical access to healthcare services in urban areas; this is 58% in rural areas.

op-ed from Bejan

"Refugees forced to sleep on streets"

analysis by ECFR of refugee issue, irrespective of covid.

-- Erdo wants safe zone in Idlib, stensiobly to prevent its 2.7 million inhabitants from joining the 3.7 million Syrians alreayd in Turkey

-- wants to gain European support politically and financially,

-- also for internal purposes to shift discussion away from failure in Idlib and toward "Euro-bashing"

-- wants to renegotiate the 2016 EU-Turkey refugee agreement for more financial aid. Erdogan oft complained that EU did not live up to its end of the bargain. --

Brookings []: number of Syrian refugees plus asylum seekers and irregular migrants surpasses 5 million

-- most live in particularly precarious circumstances --> more vulnerable to contracting and spreading the virus

-- "one of the most acute challenges" for Turkey, per Brookings (Kemal Kirisci and M. Murat Erdogan)

-- Syrian refugee population -- 3.6 million per Turkish government (cited in Brookings); tend to reside in towns and cities; only 2% livein camps

-- estimated 370,000 asylum seekers

-- Turkey has been largest refugee host since 2014

-- March 2016 deal between EU and Turkey -- Turkey obliged to provide ~1.5 million Syrian refugees and 0.2 million non-Syrian asylum seekers with modest financial support (cited in source)

however the implementation has been lacking, far from meeting basic economic needs of refugees -- hence an estimated 1 mil must work for basic sustenance.

-- due to general economic issues in Turkey, 1/3 of Turkish nationals work informally, cited in og

-- during covid-19 economic downturn, refugees are being forced to consider doing jobs that no one else will do because of Covid

-- Irregular migrants are especially vulnerable as fear of being detained prevents them from seeking services. Syrian refugees and other asylum seekers meanwhile have accecss to basic health services (cited in OG)

-- view of migrants deteriorating bc of covid, but in 2019 83.2% of Turks already wanted all refugees returned cited in source.

Economist : only 3% of employed Syrians had official work permits, and as such they were the first to be sacked. The Turkish parliament passed a law banning companies from sacking workers for three months, and offering those that were forced to take unpaid leave an allowance of about $6 per day, however none of this applies to migrants and refugees.

role of Turkey blamed for "ushering refugees toward Greece in a cynical bid to manufacture a new crisis" (also, Guardian in relation to human rights NGOs on the matter )

late February "Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced... he no longer would block their [refugees and migrants]' access to Europe. Rescinded orders then in mid March. Soylu: some 150,600 migrants entered Greece, the biggest migrant push since 2016. Greece disputes numbers, says only 9486.

-- threat in response to losing soldiers in Syria -- Feb 28

pushing.

-- closed border with Georgia and suspended road and air transport with Azerbaijan, while building its border wall iwth Syria... and at the same time pushing refugees into Greece, calling Greece a "Nazi country" for not accepting it.

Turkish special forces involved according to VICE

Censorship
Al-Monitor

Detainments opacity etc

In Iraq
Bombing vulnerable sites during pandemic [] -- not clear about effect on COVID19 however.