Since the start of 2024, 228 people have been arrested under suspicion of being ‘people smugglers’, a 53% increase compared to 2023, according to Hellenic Coast Guard official data.
If the people arrested had in fact been real hardcore smugglers, criminals whose only goal was to make money on others misery, I guess most of us would welcome this “achievement”. Unfortunately, most of those arrested are neither criminals nor smugglers.
In most cases – I’m not saying all, but most – the smugglers who sell spaces on boats simply do not travel on them themselves, especially in the case of rubber dinghies and small boats.
Instead, when people are getting on the boat, one of the refugees, normally a male, perhaps the last one onboard, or someone who looks capable enough to handle it, is told to steer the boat. They may be given a short instruction if they have no prior experience with boats, and pointed in the right direction.
There is no time to argue, everything must happen quickly to avoid detection, and suddenly the person is sitting there with the responsibility to get everyone across safely.
They are not paid to do this task, and most likely had no choice. They may even have tried to refuse, but are ‘persuaded’ by the real smuggler, carrying a gun.
In other cases, especially with larger vessels and sailboats, the real smugglers start by driving the boat, but before entering Greek waters, they abandon the vessel, and are picked up by a speedboat. The people on board are left on their own.
Those people are left with few options. Someone has to try to steer, as the alternative if nobody takes responsibility is that everyone could drown.
When arriving on the Greek islands or rescued by the coast guard in Greek waters, passengers are asked “who steered the boat”?” Fingers are easily pointed towards the one randomly picked by the smuggler on the Turkish shore, or the one brave and resourceful enough to have rescued all the other passengers. This person is then arrested, and charged with smuggling.
If a refugee with no experience in seafaring tries everything they can to prevent a shipwreck, but fails, and the boat goes down, they will be charged with “illegal transportation of third-country nationals into Greek territory” (smuggling), and with aggravating circumstances of endangering the life of people onboard.
If someone dies, which is often the case with shipwrecks, they will also be charged with causing the deaths.
Greek prisons are packed with thousands of people charged and convicted for smuggling. Most are not smugglers at all, just normal refugees trying to reach safety in Europe, but used as a tool of deterrence so that others would think twice before doing the same.
These charges against refugees arriving on the Greek islands have been used systematically by the Greek state for several years as a deterrent.
The Greek legislation used considers any person found to have driven a vehicle across Greek borders carrying people seeking protection to be a smuggler.
The arrests that follow these often-unfounded accusations of smuggling are arbitrary, and the trials flout basic standards of fairness. Police officers might accuse the person holding the tiller of steering the boat, the one who communicated with the coast guard to call for help, or simply anyone who speaks English, of being a smuggler.
Without sufficient evidence, they are usually arrested upon arrival, and kept in pre-trial detention – in jail – for several months.
When their case finally comes to court, their trials last on average only 30 minutes. The average prison sentence is 44 years, and some people have been jailed for more than 150 years.
Even those who are fined are deliberately done so in a way which means they can never ever pay: some people have been fined a ludicrous €400,000.
This is an obvious total lack of fair trial standards which would be expected in a European country.
When these cases have been taken up by real lawyers afterwards, sentences have been drastically reduced, and in many cases people have been released for time already served. But there are thousands of people in Greek prisons, who will never get a fair trial, and will spend the rest of their lives behind bars.
Most of these boats carrying people trying to seek protection on the Greek islands, come from Turkey, so if the smugglers were piloting the boats, it would perhaps be logical that at least some of the arrested would be Turkish nationals.
So, it’s interesting to note that none of the 228 people arrested for smuggling so far in 2024 were Turkish, while seven of them were Greek nationals.
In most cases, the real smugglers are rarely near the boats, and in most cases not on them. An overloaded standard rubber boat on its way to the Greek islands travels at an average speed of 5-7 km/h, so it’s only meant to reach the islands, or at least Greek waters, and never intended to go back to Turkey again.
It would be a strange “business model”, if the smugglers intentionally and willingly, drove these boats over, for them to spend the rest of their lives in a Greek prison: it’s not very logical, nor plausible.
There are certainly a few exceptions. There are speedboats going back and forth between the islands and Turkey, but those are actually trying to get back home to Turkey, not fleeing in fear of their lives.
Thousands of innocent people, all male, are rotting in Greek prisons, based on the idea that to transport yourself and your family across the border, with the intention to apply for asylum, is a crime, as long as it is done in a vehicle. If you walk or swim you are all good.
The Greek government – with the backing of the wider EU and many states outside the bloc – finds it convenient, and in the case of those fined, actually lucrative, to pretend that people seeking refuge, as is their legal right, are in fact ‘people smugglers’.
The result is not only a system of dishonesty, but one in which people are not only punished and vilified for seeking safety, but are also attacked for helping to save people from death at sea.
It is far from the only thing of which Greece, the EU and the wider world should currently be ashamed. But it is certainly one, and very far from a cause for ‘celebration’ as the Greek government pretends.