The European Union has begun deporting hundreds of people, most of them migrants from Pakistan and Bangladesh, from Greece to Turkey, days after they crossed the Aegean Sea in rubber rafts in search of a new life.
According to a report filed by the Brisbane Times, bus loads of men were taken aboard two ferries under heavy police and military escort at Mytilene Port in the Greek island of Lesbos and put out to sea in the direction of the Turkish town of Dikili early on Monday.
Ewa Moncure, a spokeswoman for EU border agency Frontex, was quoted, as saying that most of the migrants are from Pakistan and Bangladesh.
The deportations are the first of thousands expected under the EU's plan to end the continent's refugee crisis by shifting the burden onto neighbouring Turkey.
Human rights groups have condemned the strategy as a violation of basic rights.
European officials, however, have forged ahead with a plan to send the migrants out from the popular refugee landing ports of Lesbos and Chios. More deportations are expected to take place later in the week.
