Medical aid group Doctors Without Borders on Friday said it would no longer take funds from the EU in protest at its “shameful” policies on the migration crisis, including a deal with Turkey.
The charity, widely known by its French acronym MSF (Medecins Sans Frontieres), received 56 million euros ($63 million) from European Union institutions and the 28 member states last year.
“MSF announces today that we will no longer take funds from the EU and its member states in protest at their shameful deterrence policies and their intensification of efforts to push people and their suffering back from European shores,” the group said in a statement.
The Nobel Peace Prize-winning MSF singled out the EU’s deal with Turkey in March to stem the biggest flow of migrants into the continent since World War II, many of them from war-torn Syria.
“This is really about Europe’s refugee shame,” Jerome Oberreit, international secretary general of MSF, told a press conference in Brussels.
He accused member states of a “shameful European response focused on deterrence rather than providing people with the assistance and protection they need.”
“The EU-Turkey deal goes one step further and has placed the very concept of ‘refugee’ and the protection it offers in danger,” Oberreit added.
MSF has been heavily involved in caring for migrants in locations including the Greek island of Lesbos and the French port of Calais, as well as operating a boat called the Argos which saves lives in the Mediterranean.
Under the Turkey deal, Ankara agreed to take back all migrants and refugees landing in the Greek islands who did not apply for asylum, and to crack down on people smuggling across the Aegean Sea.

Source: Arab News