RHODES, Greece – The Greek government has expelled more than 1,000 refugees from the borders of Europe in recent months, many of them sailing to the edge of Greek territorial waters and then rescuing them in inflatable and sometimes exaggerated life flights.
Since March, at least 1,072 asylum seekers have been drowned at sea by Greek officials in at least 31 separate shootings, according to an analysis of evidence by The New York Times of three independent watchdogs, two academic researchers and the Turkish Coast Guard. The Times interviewed survivors from five of those episodes and examined photographically as video evidence of all 31.
“It was very inhuman,” said Najma al-Khatib, a 50-year-old Syrian teacher, who said masked Greek officials took her and 22 others, including two babies, from a detention center on the island of Rhodes under cover of darkness. July 26 and left them in a rudderless, motorless flight of life before being rescued by the Turkish Coast Guard.
“I left Syria for fear of bombings – but when this happened, I wished I had died under a bomb,” she told The Times.
Illegally under international law, the evictions are the most common direct and sustained efforts by a European country to block maritime migration using its own forces since the height of the migration crisis in 2015, when Greece was the main transit point for migrants and refugees seeking to enter Europe.
The Greek government has denied any wrongdoing.
“Greek authorities are not participating in clandestine activities, ” said a government spokesman, Stelios Petsas. Greece has a proven track record when it comes to observing international law, conventions and protocols. This includes the treatment of refugees and migrants. ”
Since 2015, European countries such as Greece and Italy have relied mainly on proxies, such as the Turkish and Libyan governments, to set up maritime migration. What is different now is that the Greek government is taking more and more matters into its own hands, say watchdog groups and researchers.
Migrants, for example, have been forced on sometimes leaking life flights and left to drift at the border between Turkish and Greek waters, while others have been left to drift in their own boats after Greek officials shut down their engines.
“These pushbacks are completely illegal in all their aspects, in international law and in European law,” said prof. François Crépeau, an expert on international law and a former United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants.
“It is a human rights and humanitarian disaster,” added Professor Crépeau.
Greeks used to be much more aware of the plight of migrants. But many have become frustrated and hostile after half a decade, in which other European countries offered Greece only modest assistance, as tens of thousands of asylum seekers left in vicious camps on landless Greek islands.
Since the election last year of a new conservative government under Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Greece has taken a much tougher line against the migrants – often refugees from the war in Syria – who are pushing Turkish coasts for Europe.
The tougher approach comes as tensions have increased with Turkey, even laden with 3.6 million refugees from the Syrian war, far more than any other nation.
Greece believes that Turkey has sought to arm migrants to increase pressure on Europe for aid and assistance in the Syrian war. But it has also added pressure on Greece at a time when the two peoples and others are sparing over disputed gas fields in the eastern Mediterranean.
For several days in late February and early March, Turkish authorities bussed thousands of migrants to the Greek border in a bid to stage a confrontation, leading to the shooting of at least one Syrian refugee and the immediate extrajudicial killings of hundreds of migrants. made it to Greek territory.
For years, Greek officials have been accused of interpreting and expelling migrants, on a sporadic and similar basis, mostly before the migrants land their boats on Greek soil.
But experts say Greece’s behavior during the pandemic has been much more systematic and coordinated. Hundreds of migrants have been denied the right to seek asylum, even after landing on Greek soil, and they have been barred from seeking redress through the legal system.
“They have occupied the moment,” Professor Crépeau said of the Greeks. “The coronavirus has provided a window of opportunity to close national borders to whoever they want.”
Embedded by the lack of persistent criticism from the European Union, where the migration problem has plagued politics, Greece has intensified its approach in the eastern Mediterranean.
Migrants who landed on the Greek islands from Turkey were often forced on sometimes leaky, inflatable life flights, sank at the border between Turkish and Greek waters, and left to dry until they were tracked down and rescued by the Turkish Coast Guard.
“This practice is completely unusual in Greece,” said Niamh Keady-Tabbal, a doctoral researcher at the Irish Center for Human Rights, and one of the first to document the phenomenon.
“Greek authorities are now equipping rescue equipment to illegally expel asylum seekers in a new, violent and highly visible pattern of pushbacks spanning various Aegean islands,” Ms Keady-Tabbal said.
Ms al-Khatib, who told her evidence to The Times, said she entered Turkey with her two sons, aged 14 and 12, last November, and fled advance of the Syrian army. Her husband, who had entered several weeks earlier, soon died of cancer, Ms. Al-Khatib said.
With a few perspectives in Turkey, the family tried to reach Greece by boat three times this summer, and failed once in May because their smugglers did not show up, and a second time in June, after being in Greek waters. picked up and towed back to the Turkish sea border, she said.
On her third attempt, on July 23 at 7 a.m., she landed on the Greek island of Rhodes, Ms. Al-Khatib said, an account confirmed by four other passengers interviewed by The Times. They were detained by Greek police and taken to a small detainee for detention after handing over their identification documents.
Using footage filmed on this site by two passengers, a Times reporter was able to identify the location of the facility next to the island’s main ferry and visit the camp.
A Coast Guard officer and an official at the island’s mayoral office both said the site fell under the jurisdiction of the Port Police, an arm of the Hellenic Coast Guard.
A Palestinian refugee, who lived in a slaughterhouse next to the camp, confirmed that Ms al-Khatib had been there, told how he had talked to her through the camp gate and bought her tablets to treat her hypertension , which Greek officials refused to supply.
On the evening of July 26, Ms al-Khatib and the other detainees said police had loaded them into a bus, saying they were being taken to a camp on another island, and then to Athens.
Instead, masked Greek officials transferred them to two ships that transported them to sea before crashing into rafters at the Turkish maritime border, they and other survivors said.
At noon of short waves, the group, which included two dolls, was forced to turn the flat with their hands when water hit the side, they said.
The group was rescued by the Turkish Coast Guard at 4.30am, according to a Coast Guard report that included a photo of Ms. al-Khatib as she left the rescue fleet.
Ms. al-Khatib tried to reach Greece for the fourth time, on August 6, but said its boat off the island of Lesbos was stopped by Greek officials, who spilled their fuel and dragged it back to Turkish waters.
Some groups of migrants were transferred to the flight of life even before landing on Greek soil.
On May 13, Amjad Naim, a 24-year-old Palestinian law student, was among a group of 30 migrants intercepted by Greek officials as they approached the shores of Samos, a Greek island near Turkey.
The migrants were soon transferred to two small life flights that began to deflate under the weight of so many people, Mr Naim said. Transferred to two other rafters, they were then towed to Turkey.
Videos captured by Mr. Naim on his phone show the two rafters being towed across the sea by a large white ship. Footage, later published by the Turkish Coast Guard, shows the same two rafters being rescued later in the day by Turkish officials.
Migrants were also left to drift in the boats where they arrived, after Greek officials switched off their engines, say survivors and investigators. And on at least two occasions, migrants have been abandoned on Ciplak, an uninhabited island within Turkish waters, instead of being placed on life flights.
“Finally, the Turkish Coast Guard came to rescue us,” said one Palestinian survivor who was on a Ciplak leave at Ciplak in early July, and who sent videos of her time on the island. A report by the Turkish Coast Guard confirmed his account.
In parallel, several rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch, have documented how the Greek authorities have migrants living legally in Greece, and secretly expelled them without legal action across the Evros River, which separates Greece from Turkey. .
Feras Fattouh, a 30-year-old Syrian X-ray technician, said he was arrested by Greek police on July 24 in Igoumenitsa, a port in western Greece. Mr Fattouh had been legally living in Greece with his wife and son since November 2019, and showed The Times documents to prove it.
But after being apprehended by police in Igoumenitsa, Mr Fattouh said, he was robbed and rode 400 miles east to the Turkish border, before being secretly juggled with 18 others and crossed the river to Turkey sent. His wife and son remain in Greece.
“Syrians are suffering in Turkey,” Mr Fattouh said. ‘We suffer in Greece. Where should we go? ‘
Ylva Johansson, who oversees migration policy at the European Commission, the official service of the European Union, said she was worried about the allegations but had no power to investigate.
“We can not protect our European border by infringing on European values and by violating the rights of the people, ‘Ms Johansson said in an email. “Border control can and must go hand in hand with respect for fundamental rights.”
Patrick Kingsley reported from Rhodes, Greece, and Karam Shoumali from Berlin.
