5月16日VOA聽力：歐盟簽證限定威逼與土耳其移民協定
European Union figures show just over 26,000refugees arrived on the Greek islands in March — lessthan half of February's total. EU officials say thisshows the deal with Ankara is working.
"If we did nothing, we will condemn Greece tobecome a huge, huge refugee camp with hundreds of thousands refugees stuck. That is whatwe needed to solve," Frans Timmermans, the European Commission's vice-president, said lastweek.
Turkey says it is on track to meet all the criteria laid down by Europe— and insists visa-freetravel is a non-negotiable part of the migrant deal.
But in Germany, analysts say fears over a wave of Kurdish asylum seekers from Turkey aredriving up anti-immigration support. Exacerbating those fears is the escalating conflict betweenKurdish PKK rebels and the Turkish government.
But such concerns are misplaced, according to Ibrahim Sirkeci, RIA Professor of TransnationalStudies at Regents University in London.
"Any Kurdish citizens of Turkey applying for asylum in Europe will be refused,” he said. “It willbe desk rejection, immediate rejection. This has been the case anyway for a long while."
Targeting human rights
While right-wing politicians look to benefit from fears of migration, some lawmakers inBrussels have threatened to try to block the deal with Turkey over human rights concerns.
Amnesty International accuses Ankara of forcefully returning hundreds of unregistered refugeesback to Syria — and even of shooting Syrians trying to cross the border illegally.
"Just as it's illegal for Turkey to be sending refugees back to the very conflict zones thatthey're fleeing, it's no less illegal for the EU to be sending refugees from those areas back to acountry that's sending them on," said Amnesty's John Dalhuisen.
It's not only the rights of refugees in the spotlight.
Prosecutors have opened more than 1,800 cases against people for insulting President RecepTayyip Erdogan since 2014.
Nobel Prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk spoke out Tuesday.
"This is about only silencing political opposition,” he told reporters. “This is about intimidatingpeople and scaring the country so that no one criticizes the government."
Sirkeci argues that Europe's actions negate any claim of moral superiority in Brussels. "…abandoning a huge population who are in need of humanitarian protection. Europe says, ‘OK,instead of taking and helping you, we will just let you stay wherever you are, and instead we willpay Turkey 6 billion euros to keep our borders shut down.' That is what Europe is losing."
But even as Europe attempts to close one route, another is expanding fast. Tens ofthousands of migrants have made the journey from Libya to Italy in recent weeks, and more areexpected as summer brings calmer seas.
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