Aegean Boat Report

At 9am on 26 April, a boat carrying 53 people landed on Agios Theodorous beach, east of Korakas, in north Lesvos. Thirty-five of the 53 travelling people were reported to be children. The group contacted Aegean Boat Report so their arrival could be documented.

They reported no medical needs, and because of this and the Greek government’s policy of illegally pushing men, women and children away from Greece’s borders, we did not inform the port police.

Instead, we advised the group to move together towards the village of Klio, so the villagers could see their arrival. Pictures, videos and location data received by the Aegean Boat Report show their presence on Lesvos: there is no doubt they arrived.

Due to the high number of very small children in the group, and three pregnant women, they moved slowly forward. They frequently sent their location, and they could also be followed on live location that was active. We received their pictures and videos while they moved towards the village.

A local person saw the new arrivals while walking towards Klio, and informed the port police of their whereabouts. Those police found the first people from the group on a dirt track at around 13.30, and from then it took them around one hour to round up all the 53 arrivals.

The police told the group they would be taken to a quarantine camp for COVID testing. Information from the arrivals had been sent to us from six different phone numbers. Between 13.37 and 14.23, all went offline. This could of course be a coincidence: they might all have run out of battery, or lost internet coverage. Unfortunately, this was not the case. The port police officers confiscated all their phones, so the group could not record what was about to happen.

We monitored quarantine camps’ information on arrivals, to see if the police had taken them to quarantine in Megala Therma or Kara Tepe. No information was registered during the afternoon or the following night. At this point, it was still possible that the port police on Lesvos had no plans to take them to the quarantine camp, as indeed they should have done.

A port police bus, filled with men, women and children thought by the observer to be refugees, was seen driving through Klio. The observer, a resident of the village, said he had seen this bus many times before, and it was used to transport new arrivals to the camps.

The bus was escorted by two police cars. The observer was unsure where it went.

The people on the bus, however, reported that they were taken to a port., where they were forced on a grey military vessel. Those who refused were beaten by men in dark uniforms wearing black balaclavas.

It was dark when the vessel set out, and after what seemed to be hours the boat stopped, and everyone was forced into a huge life raft. Once again, those who did not go willingly were beaten.

One man, a father with two small children, described the situation as ‘unreal’: ‘Children and women were screaming,’ he said. ‘People were beaten by men in uniform, who looked like commandos. Some of them were behaving like savages, it was a true nightmare.’

After hours drifting at sea, the group was found and rescued by the Turkish coast guard north of Kusadasi, Turkey.

The Turkish coastguard reported that ‘more than 30’ of the people on the boat were children, while pictures and videos we received while the group was on Lesvos, confirms it included many children. When we compare pictures from Lesvos with the pictures provided by the Turkish coast guard, of the moment they were found in the life raft drifting north of Kusadasi, there is no doubt it’s the same group.

And yet despite the clear evidence, which also proves that the group was on Lesvos, port police will no doubt once again claim they have ‘no knowledge’ of anyone arriving in this area, and anyone claiming otherwise are ‘pushing fake news’. We would simply ask how they can explain the pictures, geolocation data or testimonies.

It’s difficult to believe that any reasonable people could find it in their hearts to drag more than 30 children back out to sea and dump them in life rafts in the dark, but this is the reality: this happened and as in so many cases before it, we have the evidence.

Whenever confronted with these documented facts, Greek officials deny having anything to do with it, ‘it wasn’t us, our coast guard is acting according international laws and regulations,’ they say.

We know this is incorrect. That at best they are being deliberately kept in the dark about their own uniformed officers’ activities, and at worst, they are deliberately lying. But it seems as if, increasingly, no-one cares. It’s almost as if they think ‘it’s not Europeans, it’s not our people, so who cares?’

And the Greek government simply continues to deny any involvement in these atrocities.

A few days ago the Greek minister of migration and asylum, Notis Mitarachi once again said: ‘our country guards it’s maritime borders with full respect for international law, and everyone knows that.’

But who does he mean when he says ‘everyone’? Everyone who pays any attention, who is there or knows people who are, knows he’s lying.

Since March 2020, 231 life rafts have been found drifting in the Aegean Sea: not one of them came from a shipwreck. The Greek government claims it is the victim of Turkish propaganda, that organisations, international newspapers and TV stations are all tools of the Turkish government: it’s obviously not the case.

The Greek government dismisses thousands of victim statements, pictures and videos filmed by the refugees themselves showing vessels from the Hellenic coast guard performing these violations, as ‘fake news’.

We must ask how far the Greek government can go and still get away with it. More worryingly, how far are they willing to go?

What will it take to wake the rest of Europe up? One dead child did not do it, four men handcuffed and left to drown by the Greek coastguard did not do it, so what could possibly happen? What are we prepared to accept?

One of these days we will have a major accident with these life rafts, would pictures of dead children tangled up in ropes from these life rafts be enough to wake EU politicians up?

These violations of international law and human rights has been going on for far too long, blessed and financed by Europe. NATO and FRONTEX have massive presence in the Aegean Sea. It is impossible that they do not know what is happening here. So, when will someone do something? For how long is Greece going to be allowed to carry out these unjustified, illegal, and dangerous acts, and for how long will the EU and the rest of the world pretend not to see it?

Please share this with your friends, let them know what is happening on Europe’s ‘doorstep’. And if you want to help, please contact your representative in Europe, with letters/e-mails available from: https://www.koraki.org/end-pushbacks 

Fifty-one people on a boat north east of Korakas, Lesvos north were stopped by the Greek coastguard and towed from Greek waters on 14 April. Some of the people aboard called Aegean Boat Report at 7.30am. They were screaming on the phone, begging for help.

The videos and pictures they sent us clearly showed that the boat towing them was a Lambro-57 coastal patrol boat, identification number LS-609. It belongs to the Greek coast guard, and is stationed on Lesvos.

Aegean Boat Report received several locations over Whatsapp, both regular and live location, from three different phones. At this point, the boat was 1.6km from land on Lesvos. From the pictures the people sent us, we could clearly see Korakas in the background. The boat was definitely deep inside Greek territory waters, but still it was pushed back, even though this is absolutely illegal.

In direct breach of international law, these people were forcibly deported by the Greek coast guard.

The direct voice contact was lost for several hours, but Aegean Boat Report could still follow the boat’s live location, as it was towed slowly north, away from Lesvos towards Behram, Turkey.

The Turkish coast guard was informed of their location and the people were eventually found and picked up.

Two days later, 16 April, Aegean Boat Report received another emergency call from a boat carrying 48 people in the same area.

A small RIB, carrying three men wearing balaclavas, had stopped them at sea and destroyed their engine.

While Aegean Boat Report spoke on the phone with the people whose boat had been attacked and vandalised, they were being towed back towards Turkish waters. They sent us several videos in which we can clearly see a RIB carrying three men in balaclavas towing the rubber boat. The boat used in this incident is smaller than previously used boats we have seen, and so far we have not been able to identify it, or the men onboard.

The people who were attacked explained that after the men cut the rope, and left them drifting, the small boat carrying the three disguised men headed back in the direction of Lesvos at high speed.

In recent weeks, the Greek Minister of Migration & Asylum, Notis Mitarachi, has boasted in several interviews about the Greek government’s ‘border management policy’.

He said: “In 2021, flows have decreased by 89% on our island compared to 2020”.

Though this boast was carried by a number of media outlets, no-one appears to have asked, and Mr Mitarachis has not said anything about, how this was ‘achieved’.

Whenever confronted with questions about its border management issues, the Greek government proclaims that it has a “fair but strict border management policy”, and that they follow international regulations, laws, and human rights.

I guess if you go on record on international TV saying “we are doing nothing wrong” you have to stick to that line, but at some point it’s just futile to continue denying it.

It’s proven without any doubt that the Greek government is systematically deporting people who want to apply for asylum in Greece.

Since March last year, more than 12.000 men, woman and children, have been pushed back in the Aegean Sea, their right to apply for asylum denied by the Greek government.

A year ago, pushbacks in the Aegean Sea became headlines in the international press. The pushbacks then were usually performed under cover of darkness, so that nobody could see what was going on.

The Greek government of course denied any involvement, and most people found it difficult to believe that Greece could perform such outrages.

Today, we are long past the question “who is behind these pushbacks?”.

We have seen too many videos of Greek coast guard vessels towing rubber dinghies and inflatable life rafts, testimonies from victims and investigations to be fooled by the continuous denials by the Greek government. Even so, they still deny it.

But, perhaps because even the most blatant of crimes is no longer news if it is committed often enough, pushbacks no longer seem to make headlines in international media. It has become the new ‘normal’, performed in broad daylight, and even if we can see it happening, every single day, for some strange reason we can still hear Greek officials continue to deny being involved.

Just a few days ago, we spoke to a reporter for a story about this illegal practice. She asked us “did anybody die?” This is not a criticism of ‘the media’ alone. It reflects people’s interests and priorities at least as much as it shapes them. But we have to ask, is this where we are now? In a situation in which the consistent mass breaking of international law, stripping men, women and children – and in fact every single person on the planet – of their fundamental human rights, is only news if someone dies in the process? And of course people have died as a result of pushbacks.

On 19 March 2021, less than five weeks ago, four men drowned when the Greek coastguard handcuffed them and set them adrift on the Aegean Sea, according to a report from Turkish coast guard.

In 2020, the current Greek government’s first full year in charge of Greece’s ‘border policy’, one in every 93 people who tried to reach Greece by sea, died. The worst death-rate in the recorded history of people movement on the Aegean Sea.

We ask again, is this now where we are? Where the law is broken with impunity, in broad daylight, where people drowned, in handcuffs, five weeks ago, where the Greek government has ‘achieved’ the highest ever death-rate on its coast, and we still ask “yes, but has anyone died recently?”?

We have published hundreds of pushback reports over the last year. Since March 2020, we have documented 410 pushback cases involving 12.266 people. In the same period, 130 life rafts have been found drifting in the Aegean Sea, carrying over 3,700 people.

This is no longer even the “new normal”: it is just “normal”. There can be few more damning indictments of Europe and its people than that this is how we behave: risking and causing people to die, by attacking them, and denying them their fundamental human rights.

It is an attack on us all: when a government strips a Somali teen, a Syrian child, an Iraqi man, an Afghan woman of their human rights, you have to know that they are reserving the right to do the same to you, to your son, daughter, brother, sister, parents, grandfather and grandmother.

Those rights belong to us all: once they are taken from one of us, they can be taken from us all. It must stop. We cannot simply turn a blind eye to this – the disgrace of Europe. Instead, we must stand, together, and demand better: from our governments, from the EU, from the international community.

In the early hours of Saturday 3 April, a rubber boat started out from Balabanli, Ayvacik, carrying 27 people, 11 children and 16 adults, destination Lesvos north.

After several hours at sea in the dark, only 450 metres from land east of Megala Therma, Lesvos north, their engine started to malfunction, they contacted Aegean Boat Report for assistance. The time was 4.31am.

For almost an hour, the boat drifted slowly towards land, but at 5.20am a coast guard vessel arrived and stopped it. From videos, we have identified the boat as a Lambro-57 coastal patrol boat belonging to the Hellenic coast guard. But instead of rescuing the drifting refugees, they attached a rope to the rubber dinghy and started to tow it back out to sea. The time was now 5.49am.

In several videos and pictures provided by the refugees, we can see the vessel from the Greek coast guard towing the rubber boat. It’s dark but we can positively identify the vessel. “We were almost on land” they later explained, “we could see the beach when the Greek Coast Guard stopped us and forced us back to Turkey”, there is no doubt who was behind this illegal pushback.

The weather wasn’t good, and water was entering the rubber boat while it was being towed. The Greek Coast Guard decided transferred the passengers from the flimsy rubber dinghy to the coast guard vessel, punctured the rubber boat, and the remains of the boat and its engine were thrown in the sea. The refugees explained that the boat took them towards Turkey, and after a short while, they were forced into a life raft.

At 8.37 am Aegean Boat Report regained contact with the people from the boat, they were screaming on the phone, beginning to be rescued. Their position was now deep inside Turkish waters, and the Turkish coast guard was notified immediately.

While they were waiting to be rescued, they sent several voice messages and videos. The case is clear, and there is very little room for doubt about what happened to them, and who is responsible. Videos clearly show what happened, and their locations were sent both as regular and live location on Whatsapp.

After spending hours in the life raft, they were eventually found and rescued by the Turkish coast guard.

Why people trying to seek safety in Europe are tortured this way I can’t even begin to understand. What is driving humans to inflict so much suffering and pain upon others is beyond my comprehension. If this had been done to Europeans anywhere in the world, lawyers would have lined up, lawsuits against the people responsible would have tied them up in court for years, but for this and almost all of the hundreds of similar cases in the last year alone, not one single word is mentioned in any newspaper. It’s as if these people do not exist.

I wonder how the Greek Minister of Migration and Asylum, Notis Mitarachi, would try to squirm out of this one. Probably by saying that they had not been inside Greek territory waters, just as he said for the seven pushback incidents on Friday, and that the Hellenic Coast Guard complies with all international laws and regulations, an is not involved in any pushbacks whatsoever. And yes, he would probably also argue, as he has before, that these ‘unfounded allegations’ about pushbacks carried out by the Greek government are lies told by smugglers and organizations losing money on the decrease in arrivals on the Greek Aegean islands. It’s actually quite sad to see a man making a fool out of himself, by continuing to deny what has been proven over and over again. It’s perhaps difficult to stop lying when you have lied for so long, and lost touch with reality.

In the early hours of Tuesday, 30 March, 37 people started out from Ayvalik, Turkey, in a rubber boat and headed towards Lesvos north east. The wind and current in the area pushed them due south west.

After two hours the boat’s engine stopped and they called for help, still in Turkish waters, drifting slowly into Greek waters. The Turkish coast guard was informed, but by the time their vessel reached the location, the rubber boat had drifted into Greek waters, and detected and stopped by a boat belonging to the Hellenic coast guard (later in interview identified as a Lambro-57 coastal patrol vessel). The Time was 5.30am.

According to their testimony, while onboard the Hellenic coast guard vessel, they were beaten by men wearing black balaclavas and dark uniforms. Everyone, including the children, was placed at the front of the vessel, outside in the cold winds.

A second vessel was also on location, a larger military vessel (later in interview identified as a Vosper Europatrol 250 MK1 offshore patrol vessel identification mark ΛΣ 050, belonging to the Hellenic coast guard, and stationed in Petra, Lesvos).

After a while, everyone was transferred to this larger vessel. They were not allowed to take any of their belongings with them: what little they had, they were forced to leave behind.

One by one they were searched when taken onboard, and their phones, papers and money were confiscated. One girl managed to hide her phone, which she later used to again call for rescue and to document their situation. They were placed again at the front of the vessel, ordered to look down and be quiet.

For five hours, they were held captive on the vessel, and offered no support like food, water or blankets, even for the children.

The young woman I spoke with, still in shock after this traumatic experience, asked me “why Europe treat us like this, is it because you hate black people?” the question went unanswered. She told me she felt like an animal on the way to slaughter, horrible words to hear from a 15 year-old girl.

At 10.30am, Aegean Boat Report received a second emergency call, still from the same number. The men, women and children were now drifting in two life rafts, one of which was punctured and taking in water: everyone had to climb into one raft.

From the new location the girl sent, they were north east of Karaada island, Cesme, 63 nautical miles from the first location received south west of Ayvalik. There is no possible way they could manage this trip by themselves, not in a rubber dinghy, nor in a engineless life raft, there is no doubt who is responsible for this.

Aegean Boat Report again informed the Turkish coast guard, and shortly after they were found and rescued, 37 people picked up from a life raft in the Aegean Sea.

İzmir Açıklarında 37 Düzensiz Göçmen Kurtarılmıştır (sg.gov.tr)

Why people trying to seek safety in Europe are tortured this way I can’t even begin to understand. What is driving humans to inflict so much suffering and pain upon others? It is beyond my comprehension.

If this had been done to Europeans anywhere in the world, lawyers would have lined up, and lawsuits against the people responsible would have tied them up in court for years, but it seems as if in cases like this one, no-one even blinks: not one single word is mentioned in any newspaper, it’s as if these people do not exist.

Watching the news conference the other day from Lesvos with the Greek minister of Migration and Asylum, Notis Mitarachi and the European Commissioner for Home Affairs, Ylva Johansson made me physically sick.

Again, Mr. Mitarachi denied any involvement or wrongdoing by the Greek government or the Hellenic coast guard, using the same phrase he has so many times before, calling it fake news and propaganda to influence international public opinion, this time adding a new scenario, that it was manufactured by smugglers and organizations losing money when arrival numbers decreased.

Mr. Mitarachi can only be seen as a pathological liar, a puppet acting on behalf of the Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and the political agenda of the right-wing party New Democracy. Mr. Mitarachi is obviously not the brain behind this, he’s merely a tool, and someone who will take the fall for this when it goes sideways, which it will.

Any person of intelligence would see this coming and dodge the bullet, but Mr. Mitarachi is heading towards the inevitable with a smile, like a lamb to the slaughter.

And in a meeting yesterday in Athens, the Minister of Shipping and Island Policy, Mr. Ioannis Plakiotakis said that “on the basis of unsubstantiated complaints” he has already initiated the process of updating the internal mechanism in order to fully investigate each incident and to “put an end to the propaganda efforts against Greece.”

He added: “The European Union must take all necessary steps to ensure that the attempt to manipulate international public opinion, which results from specific centres and interest groups, fails.”

This is the same man who in in September last year, bragged in an international news conference. “Since the start of the year, the entry of more than 10,000 people has been prevented.” In August alone, he said, “we had 68 cases of prevention and we succeeded in 3,000 people not entering our country.”

Plakiotakis said nothing about how the boats were stopped from entering Greek waters, which also is the south-eastern border of the EU. But he stressed that the coast guard “operates based on international law and international legality, based on the rules of engagement at sea, and,.. with complete respect for human dignity and of course for human life.”

A rubber boat carrying 57 people contacted Aegean Boat Report at 2.30 this morning (Sunday 28 March 2021) for assistance. They reported that there were 28 children in the boat.

At 3.57am, they were stopped by a vessel from the Hellenic coast guard, an orange boat, they explained, with SAR 511 written on the side, flying a Greek flag on top and the European Union flag underneath. The boat is a Lambro Halmatic 60 SAR vessel: the 511 is stationed in Mytilíni.

Soon, a second boat arrived, described as grey underneath and white on top. The people abord the rubber boat sent a video of this second vessel, which is a Lambro-57 Mk1 coastal patrol vessel belonging to the Hellenic coast guard. All the men onboard this boat were wearing black balaclavas and dark uniforms.

All 57 people on board the rubber boat were transferred onto the coast guard vessel, where they were placed outside, in the front. They hoped that they were being rescued, but that hope disappeared quickly. Officers onboard shouted to them to “look down and shut up”, and any who didn’t obey were brutally beaten with batons. The people said the boat drove back and forth for hours, and many of the people were soaking wet, and freezing without cover in the front of the boat.

Aegean Boat Report received the last position from the refugees at 5.47am, north of Molivos, in the north of Lesvos. After that the people’s phones lost connection.

At first light, the coast guard vessel stopped in the middle of the sea, north west of Petra, in the north of Lesvos. The coastguard stripped the engine from the rubber boat from which the 57 people had been picked up, and ordered the men, women and children to get back into this boat. Those who resisted were beaten, children were screaming, terrified. This was another violent pushback by the Hellenic coast guard. The 57 people, who had hoped they were being rescued, were once again drifting in the Aegean Sea, in the same boat they had started out from Turkey with, but this time without an engine. No-one was given even a life vest, not even the children.

The Hellenic Coast Guard forced 57 people to drift helplessly, without life support, in a poorly made rubber boat that should never have been used at sea by anyone, and certainly not packed with 57 human beings.

After a few hours the group was found and rescued by the Turkish coast guard, back where they started, in Turkey.

This is not even a particularly unusual event on this stretch of water, carried out by a service which is supposed to save people’s lives. It took place on the day the European Union’s Commissioner for Home Affairs, Ylva Johansson, arrived in Greece for a three-day visit. We wonder whether the details of this incident have been shared with her.

Dear Madam Commissioner, Ms Johansson,

                Welcome back to Greece.

We hope you will enjoy your time here, but we are afraid we must let you know that since your last visit, just over a year ago, things have not been going well.

While you were away

From 1 March 2020 (which we know was a couple of weeks before your visit) to 21 March 2021, 4,554 men, women and children were registered as new arrivals at refugee camps on the Greek islands.

But in the same period, the Greek government has expelled 10,898 people from its waters and from its land territory, in total disregard for international law.

In one particularly terrible case, two teenage boys reached a refugee camp on Samos, in the Aegean Sea, where they intended to apply for asylum as is their legal right.

Uniformed Greek officers took them out of the camp, claiming they (the boys) were being taken for COVID-19 tests. Instead, they were forced onto a Greek coastguard vessel and taken out to sea, where they were dumped in an engineless life-raft – effectively an inflatable tent – and set adrift.

That case has been registered with the European Court of Human Rights.

In an even more savage and completely unacceptable defiance of international law, showing not only disdain for the human rights of men, women and children trying to find safe places to live – in fact just at this stage trying to be allowed to apply for the right to live somewhere safe – seven men were set adrift by Greek officials on Friday 19 March 2021. All seven had been put in plastic hand restraints.

Two of the seven drowned at sea. Their bodies have been recovered. One of the men died at Cesme hospital, Western Turkey, soon after the remaining members of the group were rescued by the Turkish Coastguard. A fourth man has still not been found.

In short, at least three – almost certainly four – people have been killed at sea having been handcuffed and then set adrift. Their crime? Attempting to reach a place of safety in which they could apply for asylum.

We are particularly keen to bring this to your attention because we know that just before your last visit to Greece, you specifically stated that the Greek government ‘must uphold the right to asylum’ and ‘you can’t beat them {refugees and asylum seekers}’.

With this in mind we must note that all pushbacks and all other efforts to prevent people from entering the proper legal process and apply for asylum are illegal. There are dozens of cases in which pushed-back men, women and children testify to having been beaten by uniformed Greek officers before being forced out of Greece, and in the 19 March 2021 case, at least three people were killed by the Greek government’s practice.

We must call upon you, as a representative of the European Union, to support international law, and to end this disgusting practice.

Unfortunately, that is not all.

As you know, on 9 September 2020, a fire destroyed Moria refugee camp on Lesvos.

The camp was a disgrace in every possibly term. Hot water and electricity were available sporadically at best, the food was atrocious, people died in the winter, and the camp was consistently at four or more times its safe capacity – the latter was in fact the reason why the fire was able to do so much damage.

Astonishing, given that this was a centre for extraordinarily vulnerable people, in the world’s richest-ever political bloc, in the 21^st Century.

But one might have hoped – especially given that the EU gave the Greek government €750,000 to deal with the disaster, that something better could have been provided.

In fact, the opposite is the case.

The Greek government has opened another tent camp, which flooded within three weeks of opening, and has flooded four times since, ruining people’s few remaining possessions.

There was no electricity whatsoever at the camp for almost four months, and no showers for almost as long: people had to was with buckets of cold water.

This would have been bad enough in a secluded site in the middle of summer (it would in fact have been absolutely unacceptable even then) but the reality is that this was mid-winter, in an exposed location on the sea-front, with the wind whipping across the site.

Sadly, that is not all. As well as tents being destroyed by extreme weather conditions, it has also been found that this site – a former military training ground littered with ordnance of the exact type these men, women and children have fled – has levels of lead far in excess of those safe for for human habitation. That is, these people, seeking somewhere decent to live, have instead been forced into a freezing, Mediaeval night mare, in which they risk lead poisoning simply by being alive.

That risk increases every day.

As an extra relevant note, we feel we should also inform you that on 25 March, the day before we put this short letter together for you, Vathy refugee camp on Samos was very nearly four times over its safe capacity: 3,179 men, women and children are crammed into a camp with a capacity of 648.

VIAL camp at Chios is also over capacity, with 1,344 people in a space which is allowed – by the safety regulations designed by the Greek state – to accommodate 1,014.

We must request, Madame Commissioner, that you act to end this dangerous, inhumane, illegal and immoral situation.

We are aware that since your last visit, you have liaised with Mr Notis Mitarachis, Greece’s Minister of Migration and Asylum, regarding a series of ‘new camps’ to be built on the Aegean islands of Lesvos, Chios, Samos, Leros and Kos.

We understand that these have been sold to you as ‘better-equipped’ than the tent camps currently in place here.

They may well be. They will also have rooves – something so far left out of the EU’s refugee response in the five years since the EU-Turkey Statement came into effect in March 2016.

For those reasons, we can understand that you may believe this is a ‘step forward’ for Greece, for the EU, and for the men, women and children seeking to build lives here having been forced from their homes by war, terror, chaos, disease, disaster and death.

But we feel we must inform you that the Greek government intends for these to be closed camps. That the people who enter them (those who get that far, we should say, as in the last 12 months more than twice as many people have been illegally pushed-back by the Greek government before getting the chance) will not be allowed to leave – at all – until their asylum applications have been processed.

We note this because we know you oppose this, and promised on 10 September 2020 that the EU ‘will not fund closed camps’. Yet, perhaps because you were not made aware of the full situation, you agreed less than three months later, that the EU would in fact fund these camps.

We know you know that locking up asylum seekers solely because they are asylum seekers is illegal. We also know that you do not want to fund closed camps.

We feel we should also remind you that the current ‘turnaround’ time for asylum applications – from the moment a person enters the system to the moment at which a decision is made – here in Greece is five years. These men, women and children will be imprisoned – locked in a building they are not allowed to leave – for five years. Having committed no crime.     

This means there will be children who will spend more time locked up for no reason whatsoever – than they have been alive up to the point they arrive in the EU.

We know you do not want this.

We must request you prevent these ‘closed camps’ – to all intents and purposes jails – from being opened.

On the mainland, too, things are extraordinarily bad.

The refugee camps all over the country have been on the strictest lockdown in periods during which the rest of Greece has seen shops, bars and restaurants open.

There is no excuse for this whatsoever.

The government is building walls around six camps in Northern Greece, for absolutely no sensible reason whatsoever. 

Meanwhile, when the government moves people from the islands to the mainland, it either forces them into the already overcrowded mainland camps – at Katsikas, in Epirus, men, women and children have had less then three square metres of living space per person for more than 12 months now – or it forces people out of those camps to make space for the arrivals from the islands, with no decent places for them to move to.

The result has been widespread homelessness across the country.

Once again, there is no excuse or reason for this. It would be horrifying in a small nation-state in the bottom ten percent of global economic strength. In the EU, it is simply impossible to accept.

We must request, Madam Commissioner, that you act to end this atrocious situation. Whether by helping Greece utilise the 500,000 buildings which currently sit empty within its borders, or by making sure other EU member states offer decent places for these men, women and children to live, we implore you to act to end the suffering of these people.

Madam Commissioner, we – like you – know that the EU can and should be a beacon of legal and decent behaviour towards people in need, and a protector and promoter of international law. But it will only be this if it acts to make it happen. And at present, here in Greece, it is very far from it.

Please help us to act to correct the horrifying, immoral, illegal, and dangerous reality which is the European Union as experienced by innocent men, women and children seeking a decent place to live.

Thank you very much,

Yours faithfully,

Koraki and concerned citizens from Greece, the EU and elsewhere

‘At least three – and in fact almost certainly four – men died on Friday 19 March 2021. They drowned having been adrift as part of a group of seven people in the Aegean Sea in a life-raft identical to those used by the Greek government for illegal push-backs. All seven had been cuffed with plastic hand restraints.

From 1 March to 31 December 2020, 3,973 men, women and children were registered as new arrivals at refugee camps on the Aegean islands. But in the same period, 9,741 people were pushed back via sea routes by the Greek government.

From 1 January to 21 March 2021, 581 men, women and children were registered at the island refugee camps. In the same period, 46 pushbacks, in which 1,157 men, women and children have – entirely against their will, and in direct breach of international law – been forced into engineless life rafts and set adrift.

People are dying as a result. And meanwhile, the Greek government tells the international community it is not pushing people back, but tells Greek people it IS, and is right to do so.

It is time for this disgraceful, unjustifiable and illegal activity to end.

We call upon all individual MEPs and all parts of the EU to pay attention to, and strongly oppose, the ongoing practice of pushbacks in the Aegean Sea.’

We want to invite you to take part in a project to engage MEPs with the issue of pushbacks.

There is only so much any of us can do alone. But together, there is nothing we can’t achieve.

If you are outraged by the Greek government’s illegal, dangerous and callous pushbacks, we invite you – as an individual or an organisation – to e-mail a letter to your local MEP/s to request they campaign to end this atrocious practice.

We would also really like you to share the letter with your friends and colloeagues, on your facebook or blog sites, and ask them to do the same.

Please download the individual letter here: https://7a9cd6a1-9bb6-44f2-9a56-948509fce51f.usrfiles.com…

Or if you are part of an organisation, use this link: https://7a9cd6a1-9bb6-44f2-9a56-948509fce51f.usrfiles.com…

To find your MEP’s e-mail address, visit: https://www.tttp.eu/

Initiated and written by Koraki: https://www.koraki.org/post/end-pushbacks-now