23:11 GMT +325 August 2019

Syrian refugee children chant slogans behind a fence at the Nizip refugee camp in Gaziantep province, southeastern Turkey.

Safe Haven? 30 Syrian Children Allegedly Raped at Refugee Camp in Turkey

© AP Photo / Lefteris Pitarakis

21:45 12.05.2016(updated 22:30 12.05.2016) Get short URL

5311

At least 30 Syrian children have been raped at a refugee camp in southeastern Turkey that German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Turkey’s former prime minister visited with EU officials last month, Turkish media reported Thursday.

ANKARA (Sputnik) – The Nizip refugee camp 25 miles east of Gaziantep was founded in 2013 and is home to some 5,000 Syrian migrants. Merkel, Turkey’s former Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, EU Council President Donald Tusk and European Commission First Vice-President Frans Timmermans visited the camp on April 23 to mark Children’s Day in Turkey.

People queue for free food at a makeshift camp for migrants and refugees at the Greek-Macedonian border near the village of Idomeni, Greece, May 11, 2016.

© REUTERS / Marko Djurica

EU States 'Will Close Borders to Refugees' if Deal With Turkey Collapses

A cleaner at the camp was alleged to have raped 30 boys aged between 8 and 12 from September 2015 until early this year, the BirGun daily said. The suspected rapist, whose initials were provided as E.E., was claimed to have paid 2-5 Turkish lira ($0.68-$1.69) in exchange for the acts.

The allegations surfaced after families of eight children filed a lawsuit, unfazed by their refugee status that kept other families from going forward, the newspaper said. It added that the scandal was revealed after military personnel noticed E.E. taking children to the surveillance cameras’ blind spots.

A high ranking military officer from the camp accused the Prime Ministry Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD) of failing to notice the rapes.

AFAD retorted by claiming the publication of rape allegations months after the incident were attempts to discredit Turkey as a host of nearly 3 million Syrian and Iraqi refugees.

Related:: EU Should Refrain From Supporting Turkey’s Safe Zones in Syria - Envoy

: Politicians Slam 'Irresponsible Behavior' of EU Over Turkey Deal

: Forget EU's Migrant Deal With Ankara! New Refugee Wave Coming From Turkey

Tags:

rape, children, migrant crisis, Europe, Turkey

Community standardsDiscussion

Comment via FacebookComment via Sputnik

Сomment
Thank you! Your comment will be reviewed by the moderator for compliance with the Rules
Add more
Post limit reached. Please try again in a minute.
Your comment contains a link, so it can't be published on our site

Сomment

Community standards

The fact of registration and authorization of users on Sputnik websites via users’ account or accounts on social networks indicates acceptance of these rules.

Users are obliged abide by national and international laws. Users are obliged to speak respectfully to the other participants in the discussion, readers and individuals referenced in the posts.

The websites’ administration has the right to delete comments made in languages other than the language of the majority of the websites’ content.

In all language versions of the sputniknews.com websites any comments posted can be edited.

A user comment will be deleted if it:

does not correspond with the subject of the post;
promotes hatred and discrimination on racial, ethnic, sexual, religious or social basis or violates the rights of minorities;
violates the rights of minors, causing them harm in any form, including moral damage;
contains ideas of extremist nature or calls for other illegal activities;
contains insults, threats to other users, individuals or specific organizations, denigrates dignity or undermines business reputations;
contains insults or messages expressing disrespect to Sputnik;
violates privacy, distributes personal data of third parties without their consent or violates privacy of correspondence;
describes or references scenes of violence, cruelty to animals;
contains information about methods of suicide, incites to commit suicide;
pursues commercial objectives, contains improper advertising, unlawful political advertisement or links to other online resources containing such information;
promotes products or services of third parties without proper authorization;
contains offensive language or profanity and its derivatives, as well as hints of the use of lexical items falling within this definition;
contains spam, advertises spamming, mass mailing services and promotes get-rich-quick schemes;
promotes the use of narcotic / psychotropic substances, provides information on their production and use;
contains links to viruses and malicious software;
is part of an organized action involving large volumes of comments with identical or similar content ("flash mob");
“floods” the discussion thread with a large number of incoherent or irrelevant messages;
violates etiquette, exhibiting any form of aggressive, humiliating or abusive behavior ("trolling");
doesn’t follow standard rules of the English language, for example, is typed fully or mostly in capital letters or isn’t broken down into sentences.

The administration has the right to block a user’s access to the page or delete a user’s account without notice if the user is in violation of these rules or if behavior indicating said violation is detected.

Users can initiate the recovery of their account / unlock access by contacting the moderators at moderator@sputniknews.com

The letter must contain:

Subject - the restoration of account / unlock access
User ID
An explanation of the actions which were in violation of the rules above and resulted in the lock.

If the moderators deem it possible to restore the account / unlock access, it will be done.

In the case of repeated violations of the rules above resulting in a second block of a user’s account, access cannot be restored.

To contact the team of moderators, write to moderator@sputniknews.com