French police are abusing refugee children

paris - The French border police are treating minor asylum seekers who enter France from Italy alone and are sending them back illegally. This is what Oxfam-Novib writes in the report Nowhere but Out, which the aid organization presents on Friday.

According to the report, children without water, food or blankets are locked up in cells before being put on the train to Italy. In violation of European rules, they are not assigned a guardian and agents regularly change the information on their papers, so that it seems that children are older or return to Italy voluntarily. Oxfam-Novib also accuses agents of cutting the soles of shoes and stealing sim cards.

The children come from the overcrowded Italian camps and cross the border at Ventimiglia. According to the aid organization, 16,500 migrants and refugees took this route between July 2017 and April 2018. A quarter of them are children. Adults must apply for asylum in the EU in the country of entry, but this restriction does not apply to children.

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