Greece abandons migrants at sea

Asylum seekers had already traveled several countries for years to escape the war in the Horn of Africa. After setting foot in Europe, hoping to start a new life, they were rounded up by masked men and stripped of all their possessions.

They were crammed into a dinghy, out on the open waters trying to shelter from the bright sun. Naima Hassan Aden cried as she hugged her 6-month-old baby.

“We didn’t expect to survive that day,” said Naima Hassan Aden, a 27-year-old Somali.

In normal times, their ordeal might have remained largely unknown, like that of so many other asylum seekers whose accounts of mistreatment have been dismissed by the Greek government. Only, this time, it was filmed in its entirety by an activist who communicated it to the New York Times.

A survey of New York Times verified and corroborated the authenticity of the images. We also interviewed 11 asylum seekers from Somalia, Eritrea and Ethiopia whom we found in a detention center in Izmir, on the Turkish coast.

Many of them were still wearing the same clothes as in the video. They recounted in detail what had happened to them that matched the events of the video – before reporters from the New York Times don’t show them the pictures. The approximate size of adults and children also matched.

The Greek government did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Campaigning in Lesvos last week ahead of Sunday’s general election, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis defended his government’s “tough but fair” migration policies and touted a 90% drop in “illegal immigrant” arrivals.

The European Commission concerned

The government has always denied mistreating asylum seekers and stresses the fact that it bears a disproportionate share of the management of new arrivals in Europe.

But the video, provided by an Austrian aid worker, Fayad Mulla, who has spent the better part of the past two and a half years working on the island and trying to document the mistreatment of migrants, may well be the ultimate proof. most damning to date of the Greek authorities’ violation of international laws and European Union rules governing how asylum seekers are to be treated.

We showed the video in person to three senior European Commission officials in Brussels, describing how we verified it. Later, in written comments, the Commission expressed “concern about these images” and indicated that, although it had not verified the material itself, it would raise the matter with the Greek authorities.

Greece “must fully respect its obligations under EU asylum rules and international law, including ensuring access to asylum procedures”, said Anitta Hipper, word of the European Commission for migration issues.

Greek authorities declined requests to meet in person to review the video.

Rise of anti-immigration policies

Greece and the European Union have hardened their attitude towards migrants after the arrival in 2015 and 2016 of more than a million refugees from Syria, Iraq and elsewhere. The wave of newcomers reshaped European politics, inflaming hard-right populist forces that played on nativist angst.

Greece is far from alone in cracking down on migrants. Poland, Italy and Lithuania recently changed their legislation to make it easier to deport migrants and punish those who help them.

But the new videos suggest Greek authorities have gone even further, resorting to surreptitious extrajudicial evictions that sweep away even the most vulnerable with the involvement of its maritime forces.

“Thanks to God’s will, we managed to survive,” Aden said.

Anatomy of an extrajudicial eviction

On April 11, shortly after noon, an unmarked white van drove towards a small cove with a wooden dock at the southern tip of Lesbos, according to Mulla’s video.

As the van descended towards the coast, two men waiting in a speedboat covered their faces with what appear to be balaclavas. When the van stopped, three men got out, unlocked the rear doors and led 12 people out, including several small children.

Among the passengers were Aden and her baby, Awale, with whom she had fled Jilib, a small town in an area of ​​Somalia controlled by Al-Shabab, a militant group linked to al-Qaeda. Aden said they had landed on the island of Lesvos in a smugglers rubber dinghy a day earlier and spent a night hiding in the brush before being stopped by masked men.

Sulekha Abdullahi, 40, and her six children were also crammed into the van.

The same goes for Mahdi, 25, and Miliyen, 33, who said they arrived in Lesbos by dinghy and hid in the brush. They were captured after a short chase, and Miliyen’s ankles still bore deep scratches when we interviewed him a few days later.

They agreed to tell their story, but asked to be identified only by their first names, for fear of reprisals.

Minutes after the group was escorted out of the van, everyone was whisked out onto the waters of the Aegean on a speedboat. From a distance, it looked like a tourist walk. It was nothing.

Another three minutes passed, and then the speedboat approached coast guard vessel 617, which was largely financed with EU funds, according to archived lists of Greek coast guard assets. .

One by one, the migrants were disembarked from the speedboat and led to the back of the coastguard boat, escorted by six unmasked people, some of whom appeared to be wearing the usual dark blue uniform.

The coast guard boat then veered east, towards Turkey, and resumed its course. The boat was not sending its position, according to Marine Traffic, a live maritime data platform that tracks vessels. But the New York Times was able to roughly determine its position using location data from other nearby commercial vessels, visible in the footage.

The coastguard boat stopped when it approached the limit of Greek territorial waters. Video taken by Mulla from the coast of Lesbos is blurry due to the distance, but a black object can later be seen floating alongside the coast guard boat.

In interviews at the Izmir detention center, all of the migrants said they were pushed onto a black inflatable life raft and set adrift. The use of these motorless rafts has been documented in the past, but Greek authorities have denied leaving migrants adrift on these craft, as they are not seaworthy and can overturn.

Greek authorities often use a fax message to alert their counterparts to the presence of stranded migrants in Turkish territorial waters, according to Turkish officials, and about an hour after the migrants were abandoned, two Turkish Coast Guard boats appeared.

THE New York Times was able to determine the approximate location of the rescue thanks to the coordinates of the MSC Valenciaa large commercial vessel anchored nearby, visible in the background.

The April 11 rescue, like many others, was published on a regularly updated website by the Turkish authorities.

The Turkish Coast Guard said it rescued “12 irregular migrants on the lifeboat which was pushed back into Turkish territorial waters by Greek means”, off Dikili, opposite Lesbos, at 2:30 p.m. local time .

THE New York Times analyzed video provided by the Turkish Coast Guard and was able to identify the people visible in Mulla’s video in one of the shots, which shows migrants arriving at the port of Dikili in Turkey. THE New York Times was able to confirm that it was the same group based on its composition, the physical attributes of its members and their clothing.

In limbo

The group’s fate is unclear today.

Mahdi, the young Ethiopian was released in early May by court order, but he told the New York Times after his release that Miliyen, Somali women and children remained in detention.

When questioned, the Somali women and some of the older children described the Turkish facility as a prison and said they could not bear to stay there any longer.

“I am a mother raising children whose father died,” said Ms.^me Abdullahi. “I have heart problems and high cholesterol. I cannot continue to endure the conditions inside this prison. »

Ozge Oguz, a lawyer who works with people in the detention center, said many people languish there for months before a decision is made on whether to deport them.

Turkish authorities can rescue migrants at sea, but they only grant them limited rights.

On paper, asylum seekers have the right to seek international protection in Turkey, but the chances are slim. “They make requests, but they get turned down,” she said. Turkish authorities did not respond to requests for comment.

By contrast, more than 80 percent of Eritreans and more than half of Somalis who applied for protection in the European Union last year had their applications granted, according to official statistics.

“I just wanted to go somewhere where I could get to safety,” Mr Aden said.

This article was first published in the New York Times.