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Foreign Minister Baerbock: "The events and allegations must now be fully clarified"
Photo: IMAGO/M.
Popow / IMAGO/Metodi Popow
In Greece, the police are exploiting refugees, in North Africa people are dying trying to reach a Spanish exclave: Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has described the events at the EU's external borders as "unbearable".
The Green politician wrote on Twitter that values, humanity and human rights "also apply at our borders" and added the hashtags #Melilla and #Evros.
"The events and allegations must now be fully clarified - they must not be repeated," wrote Baerbock.
»The suffering reminds us that we still have a long way to go in the #EU in terms of asylum and migration policy.«
With the hashtag #Evros, Baerbock reacts indirectly to a report that SPIEGEL researched together with Lighthouse Reports, the ARD political magazine "Report Munich", "Le Monde" and the "Guardian".
It revealed that Greek police officers appear to be using fugitives as henchmen for illegal pushbacks.
Six men said independently of one another that they had been forced to return them to Turkey by force - in return they had been promised residence permits.
The information provided by the refugees could be verified with the help of photos, satellite images and official Greek documents.
The hashtag #Melilla refers to the Spanish exclave in North Africa.
Refugees there try again and again to climb over the meter-high fences in order to get to Europe in this way.
People are dying all the time.
Last Friday, around 2,000 people tried to break through the border installations.
More than 20 people died as a result.
Baerbock received approval from SPD member of the Bundestag Hakan Demir.
He wrote on Twitter that the Greek police use refugees to carry out pushbacks on other refugees.
“As a reminder, this is happening in the middle of Europe.
It does what the EU accuses others of doing itself.«
Green MEP Erik Marquardt wrote that in Greece “refugees are now being enslaved in order to mistreat other refugees and bring them back to Turkey illegally.
If this continues without consequences, the EU no longer has to claim to represent any values.«