A makeshift camp for refugees in the port of Piraeus. Greece is to begin deportations on Monday. Photograph: Orestis Panagiotou/EPA
The European Union’s plan to send refugees fleeing Syria’s civil war back to Turkey en masse could be illegal, a top UN official has said, as concerns mounted that Greece lacks the infrastructure needed for the deal to take effect on Monday.
Peter Sutherland, the UN secretary general’s special representative for international migration and development, said that deporting migrants and refugees without considering their asylum applications first would break international law.
In light of claims by an NGO that Turkey had already been pushing Syrians back over the border to their home country, he said none could be deported from Europe without guarantees that their rights would be protected.
Sutherland spoke as Greece prepares to begin deporting migrants and refugees on Monday. Greek immigration officials have already said they need more staff to implement the plan.
Asked during an interview on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme whether Europe’s scheme could be illegal, Sutherland replied: “Absolutely, and there are two fundamental reasons for this.
“First of all, collective deportations without having regard to the individual rights of those who claim to be refugees are illegal. Now, we don’t know what is going to happen next week, but if there is any question of collective deportations without individuals being given the right to claim asylum that is illegal.
“Secondly, their rights have to be absolutely protected where they are deported to, in other words Turkey. There has to be adequate assurances they can’t be sent back from Turkey to Syria, for example if they are Syrian refugees, or Afghanistan or wherever.”
European and Turkish leaders are set to implement a deal on Monday that will result in almost all asylum seekers being deported back to Turkey. In exchange for each person sent back, the EU has agreed to accept a refugee who has not tried to enter Europe illegally.
The success of the deal rests on both Greece’s ability to process thousands of people in a short space of time, and Turkey’s ability to prove itself a safe country for refugees.
In theory, only those refugees who fail to claim asylum in Greece – usually because they are seeking to settle elsewhere in the EU – or whose claims are rejected will be deported. The most senior Greek asylum official, Maria Stavropoulou, said on Friday that she would need a 20-fold increase in personnel to handle expected claims.
Unrest has already erupted among refugees and migrants in Greece in anticipation of the deal being implemented. On the Greek island of Chios, hundreds of people tore down a razor wire fence that had kept them imprisoned in a camp and fled.
One told the BBC: “Deportation is a big mistake because we have risked a lot to come here especially during our crossing from Turkey to Greece. We were smuggled here from Turkey. We cannot go back.
“We will repeat our trip again and again if needs be, because we are running away in order to save our lives.”
Amnesty International alleged that unaccompanied children were among hundreds of Syrians to have been illegally expelled from Turkey since January. John Dalhuisen, Amnesty’s Europe and central Asia director, said: “In their desperation to seal their borders, EU leaders have wilfully ignored the simplest of facts: Turkey is not a safe country for Syrian refugees and is getting less safe by the day.”
The Turkish interior ministry did not respond to a request for comment, but the country’s embassy in the Netherlands later denied Amnesty’s allegations, stating that “no Syrian was ever forced to return to Syria nor were they ever advised or forced to voluntarily return to Syria”.
Fears of an expected influx of refugees fleeing regions of the Middle East and Asia riven by war has reached fever pitch in western Europe. In an interview with the Telegraph on Friday, Chris Grayling, the leader of the Commons, said that Britain “cannot possibly absorb” the number of migrants expected to arrive from Europe in the next two decades.
“We have a whole bloc of people now arriving in Europe who will inevitably in the end get permission to stay, and will be free to come here as well, and we have the magnet of the English language,” he said.
“It is very, very hard to me to see any way in which the substantial flows of migration will not continue.”
Grayling, a prominent voice in the campaign to leave the EU, also said that terrorists would pose as refugees to enter the bloc, posing a potential threat to Britain’s national security.
“There has already been some evidence militants are using refugee flows as a conduit to get into Europe,” he claimed. “We should be concerned. As time goes by and those people are given permission to stay in Europe that poses a threat to us as well.”
The first 500 people to be returned under the deal are set to be deported next week. “On Monday it will begin,” Nikos Xydakis, Greece’s Europe minister, confirmed by phone from parliament. “Not the whole procedure, but the first step.”
Anyone who has applied for asylum in Greece will not be deported until their claims have been processed in the next two weeks, Xydakis said. Deportations in the immediate future will be limited to those have agreed voluntarily to return to Turkey.
Sutherland said that whatever the outcome of the EU-Turkey deal, more needed to be done, not just in Europe but around the world, to tackle the refugee crisis.
“What has been happening has been a gradual pushing back and back and back, by building fences right up through the Balkans, stopping them leaving from Greece and now pushing them back from Greece into Turkey. And, some argue, although this is denied by Turkey, pushing them from Turkey into Syria in some instances,” he said.
“This is an unsustainable position. We have a global responsibility here, a global responsibility to people in desperate circumstances, who are prepared to risk their lives trying to get across the Mediterranean.”