Why are Pushbacks controversial?
“Pushback” is not a legal but a political term. However, the “reject” of refugee boats on the lake, legally, highly controversial: “Pushbacks can be a violation of the rescue duty,” says the peoples rights activist Nele Matz-Lück, University of Kiel. For example, “by subjecting persons in distress at sea, so in a different sea zone drags, to let you back in there in an emergency situation”.
refugees are not expected to be brought back to where you “directly to persecution, torture, inhuman treatment or other serious violations of human rights” threatened. This is a violation of the Geneva Convention on refugees and the European Convention on human rights, stresses the Professor of Maritime and international law.
May reject EU States to refugees on the lake?
Within the European Union, not outside already. “At the Moment, in which someone reached the territory of an EU member state, the Person has the right to apply for asylum, which must then be checked,” explains the Hamburg-based Maritime law expert Alexander Proelß. But: “such A claim is not, in principle, beyond the European territory.”
So it is not outside the territorial sea of a country that can extend up to 12 nautical miles from the coast. “Also in the Mediterranean sea there have been several occasions in the past incidents, in which government ships just outside this 12 miles posted, and the refugee boats, then pushed back, so you can not enter the territory,” explains the Professor of Maritime and international law at the University of Hamburg the human unlawful practice.
there Is an international legal obligation to help people in distress?
Every captain is obliged to provide persons in distress at sea help. No matter who it is, and what is the reason for a ship in distress is advised. Unless he would bring his own vessel or his Crew in danger. So it is in the UN law of the sea Convention rescue come from 1982 or, in the Convention on the distress from the year 1979.
But what is the international law of the sea says right to the question of what happens to the Saved more? “There is no sea peoples legal obligation that must tolerate then launched in the state, for example, Italy or Greece, that the people may go to the country,” explains legal scholar Proelß.
The current law of the sea is at this point incomplete. In other words: The decades-old standards of the law of the sea are to the current migration situation, only limited applicable.
refugees are legally Able to take action against Pushback?
This is complicated. First, the national law of the state in whose waters a castaway was picked up engages. Each country must ensure that its state officials in the search and rescue to comply with the law and, in particular, to the binding human rights.
don’t Do that – as in the case of Pushbacks, where the Greek coast guard may have been involved, can approach the Concerned before the Greek courts against this unlawful treatment.
having exhausted the national legal system and can be referred to the European court of human rights. But: “The Refugees were towed back into Turkish waters, have to initiate other things to Worry about, and if in doubt, neither knowledge nor means of appropriate procedures,” says Kiel peoples rights activist Nele Matz-Lück. Other opportunities, legal proceedings against the Pushback action is not there currently.
Like Greece a rating of the legal situation?
Greece denies that illegal methods against boat refugees to proceed. You can see in the middle of the Corona pandemic, with “massive and organized migration flows” from Turkey, confronted, informed the coast guard of the country, the Deutsche Welle on demand.
Greece to save the European Maritime borders in Accordance with national and international law. From Turkey’s upcoming refugees and migrants to stop, the government in Athens is the establishment of a just under three kilometres long, floating barrier in front of the island of Lesbos in the Aegean sea.
author: Esther Felden, Nina-timbered houses
*The post “Are Pushbacks at Europe’s sea borders legal?” is published by Deutsche Welle. Contact with the executives here.
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