Il New York Times posted some videos which show how the Greek Coast Guard illegally expelled several migrants who had reached its territory, abandoning them in dangerous conditions on motorless rubber boats in the Aegean Sea. This type of expulsion is a violation of European and international laws on the treatment of migrants.
It is not the first time that Greece has been accused of illegal and dangerous practices in the management of migrants: it is the first time, however, that this type of clandestine expulsions has been documented with very evident videos, that journalists from the New York Times they checked thoroughly. The Greek government did not respond to the newspaper’s requests for clarification: its official position is that the migration policies it adopts are “harsh but correct”.
Video evidence shows asylum seekers in Greece, among them young children, being rounded up and stripped of their belongings, then taken to sea and abandoned on a raft by the Coast Guard.
“We didn’t expect to survive that day,” one woman said of the ordeal.https://t.co/lab38hgaqu
— The New York Times (@nytimes) May 19, 2023
The videos were shot by Fayad Mulla, an Austrian activist and politician, on the island of Lesvos, a popular tourist destination which is however also one of the main arrival points for irregular migrants due to its extreme proximity to the coasts of Turkey (less of 15 kilometers). Mulla shot the videos surreptitiously, lurking in the distance, and then handed them over to the New York Timeswhose journalists verified all the contents by analyzing the images and above all by managing to speak with the migrants involved.
The migrants are 12 people who come from Ethiopia, Somalia and Eritrea: among them there are six children, some of whom are very young. Considering that the places they come from are involved in violent clashes and civil wars (for example some of them come from an area of Somalia dominated by the violent terrorist group al Shabaab) it is likely that if they were allowed to apply for asylum at least some of them would get it.
Instead, on April 11 of this year, the migrants, who had just arrived in Lesbos on a small boat, were captured by some masked men and loaded onto a white van without writing or insignia. From there they were first taken to a motor boat, which in turn loaded them offshore onto a Greek Coast Guard patrol boat, marked number 617.
At that point the patrol boat headed towards the Turkish coast and stopped just before the border of Greek territorial waters. She unloaded the migrants on a rubber dinghy without an engine and left. These dinghies, explains the New York Timescannot be maneuvered and are at high risk of tipping over.
Shortly after, the migrants left on the dinghy were rescued by the Turkish authorities, who took them to a stay center in Izmir. Very often it is the Greek authorities themselves who warn Turkey of the presence of dinghies offshore.
In Izmir the migrants were traced by journalists from the New York Times, who spoke to them and were able to confirm all elements of the video (before the video was shown to them). Reporters also independently verified various other elements of the footage. For example, the Greek patrol boat that took the migrants offshore had the transponder turned off (that is, the system used to detect the position of the boats). But the reporters of the New York Times they still managed to verify its position because in the background of the video we can see a large container ship, the MSC Valencia, which was in the area at the time.
There has been talk for some time about the fact that Greece implements a whole series of illegal or unethical measures in its operations to combat illegal immigration. For example, among experts and activists who follow the issue of migration to Greece it is known that the Greek Coast Guard carries out this type of clandestine expulsions by leaving the migrants on rubber boats at sea. But it is the first time that the whole illegal operation has been filmed, documented and proven in such a complete way.
The Greek Coast Guard has been accused of various irregularities over the years. There is evidence that his patrol boats make gods “pushbacks” in the middle of the sea, in which patrol boats attack or threaten migrant boats. Greece has also carried out irregular pushbacks along its land border with Turkey. In 2020 there was also talk of the fact that the Greek government had built a secret prison to illegally and summarily detain asylum seekers arriving from Turkey, and then bring them back.