Greece ships first migrants back to Turkey under EU deal

AFP: Greece shipped over 200 migrants back to Turkey on Monday, the first wave of deportations under a hugely controversial deal aimed at easing Europe’s worst postwar migration crisis.

Some 200 migrants -- mainly from Pakistan and Bangladesh -- sailed on three chartered Turkish ferries from the Greek islands of Lesbos and Chios back across the Aegean Sea, retracing the perilous journey they took on unseaworthy boats in their quest to reach Europe.

EU leaders hope the last-ditch deal with Ankara will discourage migrants from risking the crossing that has claimed 366 lives this year alone and break up the lucrative racket that smuggled about one million migrants into Europe last year.

The surge of migrants has sparked an existential crisis for the 28-nation EU bloc, as members flung up long-shut borders and barbed wire in a bid to push back migrants fleeing war and poverty in Syria, the Middle East, North Africa and the Indian sub-continent.

And despite the controversy surrounding the deal, it appears to be reducing the flow.

Turkey’s Interior Minister Efkan Ala said at the weekend that the numbers crossing had already fallen substantially in the last 10 days to just 300 people a day.

People shout ‘No Turkey’ at the port of the town of Chios where refugees and migrants, who broke out from the Vial detention center, camp out on 3 April. Under a European Union deal with Turkey, migrants and refugees arriving after 20 March are to be held in centres set up on five Aegean islands, including Chios, and sent back if their asylum applications are not accepted. Returns are supposed to begin on 4 April - AFP

But some decided to chance it despite the risk of being sent back, and the Turkish coastguard on Monday blocked a boatload of about 60 mostly Afghan migrants, an AFP correspondent said.

The first wave of expulsions passed off smoothly under a visible police presence, as two boats left Lesbos carrying 136 migrants and one from the island of Chios carrying 66, said Yorgos Kyritsis, the Greek government’s migration spokesman.

Turkish state media reported that migrants from Sri Lanka, Lebanon, Iran, Egypt, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Afghanistan were among the first wave.

Only two were from Syria and they had requested to return for personal reasons, Kyritsis said.

Some activists have branded the deal inhumane and a few dozen demonstrated gathered on Chios to protest against the deportations, chanting “Freedom,” according to an AFP photographer.