The European Parliament has produced a report: Returns are illegal, enough….

In today’s Greek media news, the Left-GUE/NGL Group in the European Parliament, together with the Border Violence Monitoring Network which operates mainly in the Balkan and Greek regions, announced their report on rights violations. human rights at the external borders of the EU in 2021 and 2022. .

“95 PERCENT OF MIGRANTS ARE EXPOSED TO VIOLENCE”

The report, titled “The Black Book on Returns,” noted that only 5 percent of people interviewed in 2021 said they had not been subjected to or witnessed the use of “excessive force” while being deported from Europe. “Many of these pages are full of testimonies from people on the move who were beaten, kicked, insulted, humiliated and arbitrarily detained before being illegally expelled, both from the external borders of the EU and within the territory of the member states” says the press. statement said.

“ALL KINDS OF VIOLENCE ARE USED AGAINST MIGRANTS”

The report indicates that in many cases they were subjected to different methods of torture, such as rape, sexual abuse, excessive and prolonged beatings, the use of electric weapons against them, and even being thrown into the river by border authorities, sometimes with their own hands, and these were not “the work of a few irresponsible” and their irregular actions, it was stressed that there are “European-wide systems reinforced from above”.

“There are hundreds of thousands of stories that we have not heard, returns are illegal”

“We are beyond the point of denying that there are any rollbacks,” said Hope Barker, the network’s senior policy analyst who submitted the report to the AP. We have camera evidence, medical reports and more than a thousand testimonials. These are only the data that we managed to collect. “This is the tip of the iceberg, there are hundreds of thousands of stories that we haven’t heard,” she said. “Kickbacks are illegal,” Barker said. “We will continue to fight them and publish these reports until this violence ends,” she said.

THEY LAUNCHED A CAMPAIGN TO STOP THE PUSHES

Cornelia Ernst, a German member of the Sol-GUE/NGL Group, blamed the EU Commission for failing to launch infringement proceedings against member states that reject immigrants and deny asylum. Ernst called to sign the “Stop pushbacks” campaign on the Group’s website. The report includes cases in Greece, Bulgaria, Austria, Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Kosovo, North Macedonia, and Albania.