On Saturday morning, February 5, a boat carrying approximately 20 people arrived on Samos. Aegean Boat Report called on local NGO’s, lawyers and organizations to intervene, to try to prevent them from being pushed back.
«A call for help on Samos⚠️
A group of 20 people arrived on Samos before first light this morning and are hiding on the island, scared to be pushed back by the police if found.
In the group there are three pregnant women, one in which have a severe injury to her leg, in need of medical assistance.
Aegean Boat Report is in contact with the group, they ask to be connected with a lawyer, so that they can get assistance to apply for asylum.
We fear that if not assisted, they will be found and deported in life rafts, as so many before them.
We ask for local organizations and lawyers to step up and intervene, to prevent further suffering of vulnerable people arriving on our doorstep, immediate action is needed!
Anyone who can assist contact Aegean Boat Report for future information!»
We posted five hours later another outcry for assistance!
“After 5 hours not one sign organization or lawyer on Samos have contacted Aegean Boat Report, to assist 20 new arrivals on the island, to try to prevent yet another pushback.
As I’m writing this 20 people are still in hiding on Samos, 11 men, 9 women. Three of the women are pregnant, 4, 8 and 9 months, one of them with a severe injury to her leg that need immediate medical attention.
We again ask organizations on the island to intervene, their situation is critical, they urgently need your help!”
Nobody answered our call for help, nobody even tried to intervene, everyone just closed their eyes, looked the other way, 20 vulnerable people in need of protection was left to fend for themselves.
No arrivals was registered on Samos on Saturday, nor the following days.
At 15.20, February 6, Turkish coast guard(TCG) found and rescued 9 people from a remote area on land in Kusadasi. The group had been left drifting in a life raft outside Kusadsi, Turkey by the Greek coast guard earlier this morning.
When we compare pictures taken on Samos the previous day, with the pictures published by TCG from the rescue operation in Kusadasi, there is no doubt, it’s the same people who the day before was on Samos.
Two hours later TCG found and rescued 8 people from a life raft drifting outside Kusadasi. The group explained that they had been removed from Samos by masked “commandos” carrying guns, and forced back to sea. The Greek coast guard had put them in two life rafts, but they had drifted apart.
Could this pushback have been prevented, if local resources on Samos had tried to intervene, it’s difficult to say yes. From experience any intervention by lawyers and NGOs have a very slim success rate, but it’s not impossible. In this case we will never know, because nobody even tried, we never gave these vulnerable people a chance, I believe they deserved better.
Today we learned what happened to the remaining 3 people who was not accounted for in the two pushbacks on February 6, one of them was the women with a severe leg injury.
In a video testimony published by the Turkish coast guard today, one of the survivors explain what happened after they arrived on Samos February 5.
They managed, after 17 from their group had been arrested, to escape from the police, and walked to the hospital in Samos.
They didn’t get any medical assistance, instead they were arrested by police, blindfolded, transported to the port, robbed of all their belongings and beaten, before taken out to sea.
They claim that the Greek coast guard threw them directly into the sea, no boat, no life jackets, if true, this is nothing but attempted murder.
After two days on land, on February 8, the men managed to reach a military outpost in Dipburun. The injured woman was later found by the Turkish coast guard after the men had informed them of her location, she was transported to hospital in Kusadasi.
The picture speaks for themselves, there is absolutely no doubt that the injured woman found and rescued by the Turkish coast guard is the same woman we see in the pictures from Samos two days prior.
Only one question remains, what kind of people can treat other human beings this cruel and inhuman? We must remember that this isn’t done in 1940 by the nazis, but in 2022 by the Greek government. How long can these atrocities be ignored by the rest of Europe, what will it take to force the European Commission to act against a member state, crimes against humanity is obviously not enough!
It’s actually difficult to know what to believe, because it’s just to cruller to be true. Unfortunately there are many similar reports from the area outside Chios and Samos where people claims to have been thrown directly into the sea by the Greek Coast Guard, some even handcuffed with plastic strips.
There seems to be no end to the cruelty inflicted on these poor souls, as if they mean nothing to anyone, non humans that can be disposed of without any consequences.
European values at a Crossroads.