THE International Organisation for Migration (IOM) urged Greece today to investigate allegations and testimonies of migrants being forced back across the country’s border with Turkey.

The United Nations-affiliated IOM said in a statement that it was “deeply concerned” at reports of Greek police, border guards and coastguards using violence to expel migrants.

“We urge states to refrain from securitising borders and implementing migration practices that could compromise the human rights of migrants, including measures such as the construction of border walls, militarising border patrols or increasing deportations,” it said.

“IOM also appeals to states to suspend deportations during the Covid-19 pandemic while facilitating voluntary returns when and where possible, particularly for those migrants who, considering the situation, would feel safer back home and express their wish to return.”

The IOM statement followed publication by activists and refugee-rights organisations of a string of eyewitness accounts of pushbacks from the country.

Earlier this week, the Border Violence Monitoring Network (BVMN), an alliance of groups documenting pushbacks in the western Balkans and Greece, published details of a police raid on a humanitarian distribution site in Thessaloniki on June 5 that resulted in about 40 migrants being sent back over the border.

The network was contacted by two Algerian men who said that they had been arrested during the raid.

“They were loaded into a large bus by officers who beat and kicked them,” the BVMN said.

“The bus drove them to the Turkish border, where they were held with around 35 individuals in an army barracks for half an hour, before being ferried by boat across the Evros river in groups of five to six onto Turkish land by an officer wearing a balaclava.”