Syrian refugees, seeking asylum in Turkey, are being killed and or wounded by border guards, according to a report released Tuesday by Human Rights Watch.
“During March and April 2016, Turkish border guards used violence against Syrian asylum seekers and smugglers, killing five people, including a child, and seriously injuring 14 others, according to victims, witnesses, and Syrian locals interviewed by Human Rights Watch,” the report reads. “Turkey’s Foreign Affairs Ministry maintains the country has an “open-door policy” for Syrian refugees, despite building a new border wall.”
Turkey hosts more than three million Syrian refugees — largely due to its porous border with Syria — and has been widely praised by European leaders like Donald Tusk for its handling of the crisis. The European Union cut a deal with Turkey in which it provides financial aid and eases access for Turkish citizens to travel throughout Europe. In exchange, the deal states that a number of Syrian refugees in European countries will be relocated back to Turkey.
“The European Union will resettle a limited number of Syrian refugees from Turkey while pledging $6.8 billion to Turkey to improve conditions for the migrants living there,” the New York Times reported.
The issue, however, is that Turkey’s recent treatment of refugees clearly indicates that it is not a safe place for the more than three million Syrian refugees there.
“While senior Turkish officials claim they are welcoming Syrian refugees with open borders and open arms, their border guards are killing and beating them,” Gerry Simpson, Senior Refugee Researcher at Human Rights Watch, told the New York Times. “Firing at traumatized men, women, and children fleeing fighting and indiscriminate warfare is truly appalling.”
Human Rights Watch’s report included a video showing the beating of refugees and the corpses of a man and a woman. Witnesses said the aggressors were Turkish border guards.
The people beaten are likely recent refugees who were fleeing the fighting in Aleppo.
“Six of the incidents Syrian witnesses described took place near the Khurbat al-Juz-Güveççi border crossing, about 50 kilometers south of the Turkish city of Antakya. The seventh happened near the Syrian border town of al-Duriya,” the report says. “Seven of the injured people said they had briefly stayed in the Salaheddin camp for displaced persons in the village of Khurbat al-Juz, overlooking the newly-erected Turkish border wall nearby. Most of them, and others who traveled straight to the border, said they had recently fled fighting in and around Aleppo.”