Kikapu wrote:But Erol, I have not denied those Syrians who have escaped the war in Syria to Turkey or Jordan as refugees. Of course they are refugees.
No you jumped in to my challenge to Paphitis who made such a claim.
Kikapu wrote:But as refugees, they do not get the right to gate-crash into another country without going through the process to claim their asylum if that is what they want.
So lets just get some terms here straight because we have all been a little sloppy with our use of terms here.
Asylum seeker - someone seeking to be recognised by a state (or UNHCR) as a legitimate refugee under the various laws and treaties , primarily the Geneva Convention.
Refugee - someone granted that status by a state (or UNHCR).
There is no such thing as an illegal refugee. In order to have the status of refugee that requires a nation state (or UNHCR) to asses your claim to such a status and grant it. To 'be' a refugee you have to have been assessed by a third party nation state or UNHCR and granted that status.
There is such a thing as an illegal asylum seeker. That is someone who lies about their status and situation in their home country in order to falsely try and gain the status of 'refugee'.
-------------
I have little doubt that the majority of those at the border today with Greece are valid asylum seekers, just based on the 'maths' of the numbers of people who have been displaced by war and persecution in Syria (and Afghanistan and Iraq and other places) and the correlation with numbers arriving at borders and waves of conflict occurring in Syria or those other places. According to international law any asylum seeker can in fact just turn up at a border to a third party state and claim asylum. Remember these laws were drafted as a result of WW2 and the 10's of millions of European people who had become displaced by that conflict. You can under these international laws that Greece is a signatory to, just turn up at their border and claim asylum. Or at their embassy, which is effectively a border of sovereign territory. Or by entering the country on a tourist visa and then claiming asylum once you have entered. All these are valid means to seek asylum under the international treaties. There is nothing in the international laws that say asylum seekers can not do these things but have to apply for asylum in a specific way. What there is in international law is an obligation on states that are signatories to these laws to then start the process of assessing the claim. That is the states legal obligation and they can not avoid that by saying you have to ask for asylum only this way or that way or any other way. Again the laws are clear on all of this.
Nor is there anything in these international laws that prohibit an asylum seeker passing through other third party and potentially safe to them nations. What there is are bi lateral and multi lateral agreements between states, of which the dublin agreement is one example. The 'have to claim asylum in first safe country you arrive at' is not part of the international agreements like the Geneva convention. It is part of separate agreements between states which can not override but have to work in a way compatible with the international treaties like the Geneva convention. The Dublin agreement, which is only between EU member states, when applied in the case of an Afghan asylum seeker that entered the EU via Greece and then went on to seek asylum in Belgium, was itself judged by the ECHR to have violated the ECHR by applying the Dublin agreement in this case. This was back in 2011 and basically the court ruled that Greece in fact was not a safe country in which this person could fairly and reasonably apply for asylum and thus Belgium had no right to return him to Greece to seek asylum there regardless of what the Dublin agreement said because that agreement could not override the Geneva and other international conventions.
https://euobserver.com/justice/31681So things to note.
1. There is no 'have to apply in first safe country you get to' rule in the international agreements concerning asylum.
2. In 2011 the ECHR ruled that Greece was not a 'safe country' in which asylum seekers rights were respected. Compare that with a few years later and insistence, because it suits, from so many, yourself included, that Turkey is clearly a safe country in which any asylum seeker can exercise their right to claim asylum. Getting any stench of hypocrisy yet ?
In any case the Dublin agreement was dealt another blow when in 2015 Hungary, a signatory to the agreement, simply announced, fuck this we are not going to accept any asylum seekers returned to us by other signatories to the agreement regardless of what the agreement says because we do not want to.
----------
In summary
If international law means anything then yes any asylum seeker can seek asylum in any country they choose, regardless of what other countries they have passed through by turning up at a border and requesting it and the state concerned has a legal obligation to fairly asses that claim and provide the seeker with fair treatment until such time as their case is assessed.
These laws were written and designed originally for the benefit of European displaced after WW2. For Europe to have had the benefit of these rules back then but to then say now 70 years later now they are on the 'obligations' side of things, this is not how the law should be, is just one of the many glaring hypocrisies that swirl around asylum. At the end of the day you either believe in and respect these asylum laws and the principles they are founded on or you do not. To say you respected them and wanted others to respect them when they granted you rights but now they place obligations on you, you are no longer going to respect them, is the action of a hypocrite.
