Core read by Giorgos Christides
“...most importantly, the refugee crisis exists today mostly in the total disregard of human rights, international, EU and national law, especially after the current Greek government adopted a zero arrivals policy around March.
This was prompted by the events of February, when Erdogan opened the gates and the events in Evros. The policy is popular in Greece, where, per-corona, migration was considered the No1 problem facing the country. It is also popular in Europe, where Greece was described as Europe’s “shield” by Commission President Von der Leyen. Aggressive border surveillance by Greeks, combined with Turkish interceptions and corona restrictions that make it for asylum seekers to reach the Aegean shore anyway, the policy has proven effective. According to Greek government data, from March, when the new policy was adopted, until November 2020 only 4.344 asylum seekers had arrived at the five so-called hotspot islands in Greece - a 92% drop compared to the same period last year.
But at what cost? A series of investigations by Der Spiegel, ARD, Bellingcat, Lighthouse Reports and other publications like the NYT, the WSJ, DW, and the Guardian, presented solid evidence about pushbacks of migrants at sea. Der Spiegel further reported the indirect or direct involvement of Frontex assets in several incidents based on testimonies, verified audiovisual material, internal documents and whistleblower accounts.
In the most benign of cases, Greek coast guard assets will prevent migrant boats from reaching Greek land by disabling their boats or using dangerous evasive maneuvers to create waves and turn them back to Turkey.
In the worst ones, even asylum seekers who do make it to Greek soil are picked up, transported in secret to ports, and after being denied any access to asylum, are placed in life rafts, without any motor, drifting at sea, until someone picks them up. Consider that many of them are women, children and people who can't even swim. I was once in the Aegean on a state-of-the art rescue boat, equipped with full gear, captained by two experienced rescuers, our movements monitored from military outposts under broad daylight, and still I was spooked by the experience.
In a recent case we reported in Der Spiegel, a group of asylum seekers from Africa made the crossing from Turkey to Lesbos on the 28th of November. The next night, they were illegally deported to Turkey, after being arrested, mistreated, placed on a boa and left adrift at sea in a liferaft, before eventually being picked up by the Turkish Coast Guard.
The misadventures of this group of asylum seekers would have probably gone unreported, no one being the wiser, had it not been for three things: the migrants’ foresight to take and send photos and geolocation data and share them with an NGO; the fact that two members of the group managed to hide their phones while being brought to the North of the island for deportation; and, most crucially perhaps, their fortuitous encounter with a Greek citizen, a university professor willing to speak on the record under his name, about his meeting with two women. We located one of the women in Izmir and he identified beyond doubt she was the same one he had seen and photographs in Lesbos days before.”
