asylum applications lodged in the EU in 2007, to be exact.17 Left nearly alone to bear the burden, both Sweden and Greece have reacted in ways that are as unfortunate as they are predictable. Sweden’s reaction was to become much less willing to recognize Iraqis as refugees and less generous in offering asylum. It went from granting 91 percent of Iraqi refugee claims in 2006 to 25 percent in the first trimester of 2008. 18 In the first half of 2008, only about 4,000 Iraqis lodged asylum claims in Sweden,19 less than half the number who applied during the first six months of the previous year. Greece has taken the approach of using noxious detention conditions, procedural obstacles to lodging claims, and illegal summary removals and abusive police and Coast Guard conduct to deter asylum seekers from entering Greece or, if they do succeed in entering, to dissuade them from staying or from seeking asylum there. A more equitable and better managed approach by the EU as a whole might have put less of a burden on Sweden and Greece and resulted in better protection for Iraqi refugees. But whatever the EU’s failures in equitable burden sharing within the EU or the wider world, this does not obviate Greece’s own responsibility to treat all human beings—migrants included—humanely and its obligation not to return refugees and asylum seekers to persecution or anyone to the real risk of inhuman and degrading treatment or worse. Transfers to Greece under Dublin II Iraqis and other non-EU nationals who enter the EU irregularly through Greece and then move further into the Union face the possibility of forced return to Greece under the Dublin system.20 17 Iraqis filed 38,286 asylum applications in the EU in 2007, of which 24,100 were filed in Sweden (18,600) and Greece (5,500). Statistics from UNHCR, “Asylum Levels and Trends, 2007,” pp. 25, 35, and 36. 18 “Very Sharp Drop in the Number of Iraqi asylum-seekers,” citing Marie Andersson, spokeswoman for the Swedish Migration Board, Migration News Sheet, August 2008, p. 18. See also UNHCR, “Fortress Europe and the Iraqi ‘Intruders’: Iraqi Asylum-seekers and the EU, 2003-2007,” by Markus Sperl, Research Paper No. 144, New Issues in Refugee Research, October 1977, p. 11. 19 “Very Sharp Drop,” Migration News Sheet, p. 18. 20 The Dublin system is based on Council Regulation (EC) No 343/2003 establishing the criteria and mechanisms for determining the Member State responsible for examining an asylum application lodged in one of the Member States by a third-country national; OJ, L 50, February 25, 2003. 23 Human Rights Watch November 2008