HRW rapporto Frontex: the EU's dirty hands

Greece The EU’s Dirty Hands Frontex Involvement in Ill-Treatment of Migrant Detainees in Greece

(Brussels) – Frontex, the European Union’s external border enforcement agency, is exposing migrants to inhuman and degrading conditions, Human Rights Watch said in a report issued today. Migrants apprehended along Greece’s land border with Turkey are sent to overcrowded detention centers in Greece, Human Rights Watch said.

EU justice and interior ministers are expected to approve changes to the rules governing Frontex operations at a two-day meeting starting on September 22, 2011, but the changes do not go far enough to remedy the situation, Human Rights Watch said.

The 62-page report, “The EU’s Dirty Hands: Frontex Involvement in Ill-Treatment of Migrant Detainees in Greece,” assesses Frontex’s role in and responsibility for exposing migrants to inhuman and degrading detention conditions during four months beginning late in 2010 when its first rapid border intervention team (RABIT) was apprehending migrants and taking them to police stations and migrant detention centers in Greece’s Evros region. The RABIT deployment has been replaced by a permanent Frontex presence.

“Frontex has become a partner in exposing migrants to treatment that it knows is absolutely prohibited under human rights law,” said Bill Frelick, Refugee Program director at Human Rights Watch. “To end this complicity in inhuman treatment, the EU needs to tighten the rules for Frontex operations and make sure that Frontex is held to account if it breaks the rules in Greece or anywhere else.”