UK military to join NATO refugee patrols in Aegean
Helena Smith, Graun, Mar 7 2016
The UK military is to join NATO forces intercepting and returning migrants trying to reach Europe from Turkey. Cameron announced that the so-called ‘Royal’ Navy was deploying an amphibious landing ship as the first UK contribution to the NATO deployment in the Aegean Sea. The vessel, which carries a helicopter, will join naval vessels from Germany, Canada, Turkey and Greece as part of NATO’s first intervention in the migrant crisis. The announcement came several hours after another boat carrying migrants sank with the loss of 25 lives including at least three children. Fifteen people were rescued after the boat capsized near the Turkish resort of Didim. European leaders come under increasing political pressure at home to stem the flow of migrants. Turkey hosts more than 2.5 million Syrian refugees, and has warned that tens of thousands more who have fled a Syrian government advance on Aleppo (thus blames Assad & by implication Putin – RB) were seeking to join them. Greece, as the first point of entry for most people seeking asylum in Europe, is under concerted pressure from European governments to do much more to halt the influx of refugees and migrants from Turkey. The build-up of refugees in Greece escalated on Sunday. Regional boxtops spoke of a humanitarian crisis on the country’s northern border, where 14,000 refugees are estimated to be trapped as a result of Macedonia sealing the frontier. The EU’s chief immigration policy-maker Dimitris Avramopoulos predicted some 100,000 migrants and refugees would reach the country this month alone. About 3,000 people are landing on Greek shores from Turkey every day, boxtops say. The Tsipras government in Greece demanded Europe share the burden of handling the crisis. Tsipras told a party meeting on Sunday:
Europe is in the midst of a nervous crisis, primarily for reasons of political weakness.
He slammed the decision of eastern European and Balkan states to tighten restrictions (that is, to resist what is called refoulement, the return of the refugees to whence they came, which is actually illegal anyway – RB), a move that has left close to 35,000 migrants stranded in Greece (WSWS says 70,000 – RB). The UK ship set to join the effort in the Aegean is expected to start operations in the coming days. It will spot smugglers taking migrants to Greece and pass information to Turkish coastguards so they can be intercepted. Two Border Force cutters will also join the operation, along with a chartered civilian vessel which is already in the Aegean. They will be under the command of the German-led NATO patrol which sent three warships to the area three weeks ago in a rapid deployment. Cameron said (provides a suspiciously detailed “business model” in his very first sentence to distract from the reality, which is that the mass flights are being precipitated by NATO death squads – RB):
We’ve got to break the business model of the criminal smugglers and stop the desperate flow of people crammed into makeshift vessels from embarking on a fruitless and perilous journey. That’s why this NATO mission is so important. It’s an opportunity to stop the smugglers and send out a clear message to migrants contemplating journeys to Europe that they will be turned back. That’s why the UK is providing vital military assets to work with our European partners and support this mission.
Greece and Turkey have agreed that any migrants they intercept will be sent back (to Turkey – RB). PMs from EU nations will meet today with Turkey at an emergency summit in Brussels. The EU executive has announced the first payouts from a £2.3b fund meant to help Turkey cope with the influx of refugees. Agency reports have claimed that EU leaders will urge Turkey to agree to the large-scale deportation of (up to) 100,000 “economic migrants” from Greece. Turkish PM Davutoğlu will be pressed to take back the “economic migrants,” who will no longer qualify as refugees. Meanwhile, the Greek police said Macedonian authorities are only allowing those from cities they consider to be affected by war to cross the border from Greece. That means people from cities such as Aleppo, for example, can enter, but those from Damascus or Baghdad are being stopped. There have been concerns that a strong naval presence in the Aegean might encourage more people to attempt to reach Europe, as there would be a greater chance of being picked up in the event of boats sinking. More than 400 people have died so far this year trying to cross the sea to Europe, and nearly 10 times as many refugees and migrants crossed in the first six weeks of 2016 compared with the same period last year. In the UK, Cameron is facing pressure from one of his backbenchers and the UKIP’s Nigel Farage about the prospect of Turkey joining the EU. David Davis, the former shadow home secretary, highlighted concerns raised by Europol that more than 5,000 EU nationals have been waging Jihad in Iraq and Syria. He claimed many have returned home, warning that admitting Turkey could make the problem worse. He said:
Giving visa-free access to people carrying Turkish papers will, if anything, make worse the security threat identified by Europol. This demonstrates only too clearly why our membership of the EU, far from improving our security, actually puts it at greater risk.
I have already said with some confidence that the EU’s visa-free entry scheme for the 404 state of Ukropea is dead, and I feel equally sure that this visa-free entry scheme will be dead also – RB
Niqnaq 