Refugee camps in Greece
Refugees at a camp in Greece © Getty

Greece was preparing to return a group of failed asylum-seekers to Turkey on Monday amid fears of further unrest at detention centres on the Aegean Islands, where almost 6,000 refugees and migrants are awaiting deportation.

Details of the operation remained sketchy, however, and the government’s migration policy unit declined to give details of how the refugee expulsion would get under way. “Everything is being planned according to the March 20 agreement,” said one migration official referring to the EU’s deal with Turkey to accept returns of refugees and migrants arriving in Greece after that date.

Officials from international aid agencies working on Lesbos and Chios, where the majority of asylum-seekers are detained, said up to 250 people would be taken from Lesbos to the Turkish port of Dikili aboard two vessels operated by Frontex, the EU border agency.

Asylum-seekers would be sent back from Chios beginning on Tuesday, with up to 750 returns from Greece due to be completed this week, the same officials said.

Following riots at the Moria detention centre on Lesbos and a mass breakout last week by several hundred detainees on the island of Chios, there are fears that many rejected asylum-seekers may resist being returned.

“This is an unprecedented operation by the EU and we’re concerned that the returns will be forceful,” said Epaminondas Farmakis, head of SolidarityNet, the Soros Foundation’s Greek arm.

Aid agencies are also worried that international human rights law was flouted in the rush to meet Monday’s EU deadline for starting the returns. The UN last week accused Brussels of failing to put in place adequate protection for legitimate asylum seekers.

One aid worker on Chios said: “The asylum-seekers here did not have access to legal experts or even in many cases to interpreters.”

The first 35 or so Syrian asylum-seekers to be transported directly from Turkey to the EU under the refugee pact, which allows for one direct entrant to the EU for every asylum seeker returned from the Aegean Islands, were due to arrive on Monday in Germany.

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government is leading the way in receiving the refugees despite widespread domestic concerns that other EU members are reluctant to share the burden with Germany.

Germany is due to take about 15,000 of an initial quota of 72,000 Syrians coming directly from Turkey, with France and the Netherlands ready to accept asylum-seekers under this plan.

Martin Schulz, the German president of the European parliament, was positive about the deal and said in an interview with Bild, the daily newspaper, that he was optimistic other EU states would accept their allocations.

However, in a sign of fraught relations between Germany and Turkey that could complicate the deal, Mr Shulz was scathing about Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a key partner in the arrangement, over the criticism the Turkish leader levelled at Berlin over a recent German satirical programme that poked fun at his authoritarian rule. “We have to make it clear to Erdogan in our country we have democracy. Full stop,” he said.

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