Following the resigned resignation of the head of Frontex, we refer to major reports and reports of international organizations for systematic illegal deportations of asylum seekers by the Greek authorities - a category that the latter stubbornly denies.
It was the "worst word of the year" for 2021: it's the word "pushback", according with the competent committee of linguists in Germany.
The title of "worst word", which is not only honorable, is usually given to words or expressions that dominate the public debate and indicate abominable behaviors or are used to disguise by embellishing a negative behavior. The word "pushback", used to refer to refugees, was chosen because it embellishes "an inhumane behavior that deprives these people of any opportunity to claim their constitutional right to asylum," her spokeswoman said. Constance Space Committee. In addition - it is noted - this term degrades the fact that "repatriation" means violent behavior with potentially tragic consequences, while concealing the responsibilities of those who commit these violent acts.
Pushback is the repulsion of refugees who have stepped on European soil or are in European waters, an act that is contrary to the principles of international law. More specifically, as they point out and human rights organizations, the deportations violate the prohibition of collective deportation under the European Convention on Human Rights, the right to a fair trial under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the right to seek asylum under the EU and the principle of non-refoulement under the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees.
And if Europe buried its head in the ground like an ostrich in terms of relaunches, this is no longer possible. Only at the end of April did the head of the European Frontex border guard, Fabrice Leggeri, submitted his resignation of the next postas one more shocking research by a group of international media, including the French Monde, the German Spiegel, the Swiss SRF et Republik and the NGO Lighthouse Reports.
According to the aforementioned survey, Frontex itself, one of the main EU Bodies with an annual budget of € 750 million, recorded at least 22 pushbacks as a "prevention of departure". "These concerned at least 950 immigrants and took place between March 2020 and September 2021 by Frontex and the Greek authorities in the Aegean", he noted Euronews. Refers typically, that "in at least 22 cases, they took the asylum seekers out of the inflatable boats and put them in Greek lifeboats that were left unmanned at sea".
Such as reports Spiegel, the aforementioned media group, "has clearly demonstrated in the last 18 months that Frontex participated in legal infringements committed by Greece. "Frontex crews would intercept dilapidated refugee boats in the Aegean and hand over asylum seekers to the Greek Coast Guard, which would then abandon men, women and children at sea - often in lifeboats without engines." According to its articles of association, Frontex should do everything in its power to stop these companies, now known as "pushbacks" - not to participate in them.
The European Anti-Fraud Office OLAF researched relevant data for over a year. When OLAF takes over, things get dark for those whose nest is dirty. The agency's investigators are acting independently and their mission is to uncover breaches of the regulations by EU officials. Usually, little evidence of their investigations reaches the press.
Such as reports Spiegel on December 7, 2020, just weeks after the German magazine published the first revelations, OLAF investigators searched Leggeri's office in Warsaw, as well as that of then-chief of staff Thibauld de la Haye Jousselin. They are also alleged to have confiscated their mobile phones. And so, in early March 2022, they presented a report of more than 200 pages, which has not been published.
The exhibition behaves to examine what the aforementioned media group had revealed: that Leggeri was covering the Greek pushbacks, and thus violating the regulations of his own service. He then lied to the European Parliament when asked specific questions. "In addition, according to the summary of the OLAF report by French officials, which is available to Spiegel, he was in consultation with the Greek government before answering growing questions." writes the German magazine.
The head of OLAF, Ville Itälä, presented some of the conclusions to the European Parliament Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs on 28 February. "According to the summary, the report - to which MEPs do not have access - reveals that the Frontex management was aware of the human rights violations and deliberately avoided mentioning them. "So far, they have denied all allegations, pointing to alleged ambiguities in EU regulations." he wrote Green MEP Erik Marquardt in a letter to the Commission, urging the latter to take action against Frontex's management.
"Love each other";
Shortly before the head of Frontex submits his resignation, the Journal of Authors published that 30 Syrian refugees who were trapped on the island of Evros on Poor Sunday are said to have been "repatriated by force by the Greek authorities to Turkey on Holy Wednesday, again forcibly taken by Turkish border guards to the island of Evros on Easter Sunday and a new informal operation of violent repatriation by the Greek authorities is underway since Easter Monday morning ".
According to the specific report, the geographical location sent by the refugees on Easter Monday afternoon showed that they were (detained?) In the border guard department of Orestiada, in the village of Neo Heimonio, at a time when the Greek authorities still claimed that they did not have manages to locate them (despite the fact that their geographical location was known).
And all this "while the European Court of Human Rights accepted on Holy Thursday the application for precautionary measures submitted by the Greek Council for Refugees" forcing Greece "not to remove them from Greek territory and to take care "immediately provide them with water, food, medical care and access to the asylum procedure", the newspaper noted.
The UN is concerned
There are many reports and researches that show pushbacks as a common practice, and generally converge on their conclusions.
In fact, the head of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees UNHCR Filippo Grandi published a statement on 22 February last year, that the UNHCR was concerned "about the repeated and converging reports from Greece's land and sea borders with Turkey, where the UNHCR has recorded almost 540 reported cases of unofficial returns ». The UNHCR was "deeply concerned" by the growing number of incidents of violence and serious human rights violations across various European borders, some of which have resulted in tragic loss of life.
UNHCR said it had interviewed thousands of people across Europe who had suffered pushbacks, citing "a disturbing pattern of threats, intimidation, violence and humiliation", with the statement stressing that at least three people had been reported dead. in the Aegean since September 2021, including an incident in January, in pushback incidents in which they were left in unmanned boats or sometimes pushed directly into the water.
"With few exceptions, European countries have not investigated such complaints, despite growing, credible evidence," Grandi said.
Two "mysterious" drownings
In the same month, February 2022, was published told the Guardian that a repatriation by Greek authorities in September 2021 was probably responsible for the drowning of two refugees, Sidy Keita from Cλεte d'Ivoire and Didier Martial Kouamou Nana from Cameroon.
An investigation by the Guardian, Lighthouse Reports, Mediapart and Der Spiegel claimed the following: that the two men had boarded an inflatable from Turkey for Greece on September 15, 2021. And that, although they managed to reach Samos, a few days later the sea would wash away their lifeless bodies on the shores of the Turkish province of Aydin, in the Aegean.
"Interviews with more than a dozen witnesses, analysis of classified documents, satellite imagery, social media accounts and Internet material, as well as discussions with officials in Turkey and Greece, helped to reconstruct what happened during the five days of September. ", during which the two men died, possibly victims of a repatriation by the Greek authorities", wrote the Guardian and described what allegedly had happened.
Is the "biggest pushback" "made in Greece"?
A few months earlier, on November 5, 2021, the Guardian published article entitled "Greece is accused of the 'biggest deportation in years' on a ship with refugees that was damaged". According to the report, a cargo ship carrying 382 refugees from Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Iran and Lebanon "was towed at sea for four days before Athens was forced to make a rescue call for help."
According to the report, the Turkish-flagged ship was sailing to Italy until on October 28 it presented a mechanical problem off the coast of Crete and issued a signal for help. At 8.30am on the same day, the head of the NGO Aegean Boat Report, which monitors the movement of people in the area, Tommy Olsen, had already received the first photos and videos from passengers asking for help. "You could see the boat sailing away from the island and next to it a Greek Coast Guard patrol," Olsen told the Guardian. "It was crowded and the coast of Crete was clear," he added. What troubled Olsen, who claimed to be in contact with people at risk up to 10 times a week - the so-called "pushback victims" - was that local authorities did not admit to locating the ship. "Why Greek officials would insist they had not found the ship, and then start towing it away from Crete was very strange," he told the Guardian. "It made me think that what we were seeing was not just another repatriation, but the biggest repatriation in years."
For the next three days, according to the specific publication, the damaged ship was "crawling" in the seas from the Greek coast guard, heading towards Turkey.
The Greek authorities finally stated on October 29 that the ship was in international waters off Crete, and that Greece had asked Turkey to accept it back. The Guardian notes that the Greek Ministry of Immigration has shown that Turkey is responsible and its refusal to respond to repeated calls for the return of the ship. After the rescue, Minister Notis Mitarakis stated that "Greece stepped forward, providing immediate humanitarian assistance to people in need, as we always do." On the other hand, humanitarian organizations - says the Guardian - say that things are a little different. And that when it finally turned out that the ship was too big to be sent back and that something like this would require the Greek coast guard to enter Turkish waters, then only Greece appealed to Turkey.
The ship, according to the British newspaper, was carrying 136 children as well as people with special needs.
The Aegean Boat Report is part of a network of NGOs accused by Greek authorities of helping smugglers - something Olsen categorically denies.
The persistent work of Forensic Architecture
The Forensic Architecture organization has also dealt with the relaunches. Composing audiovisual material and other elements, and employing cutting-edge technologies to cross-reference events, the organization for example presented the alleged repatriation of young Iranian Parvin. According to videos and data released by Forensic Architecture, Parvin entered Greece six times in order to be able to apply for asylum in Europe, "only to be deported to Turkey", while the violence she suffered during the The duration of these relapses varies, it is noted. Parvin "digitally recorded several of its transit attempts through location notification, video recording, voice and chat messaging, and photos. "Forensic Architecture analyzed this material in order to confirm Parvin's testimony and to reconstruct her journey and experiences from 'repatriation'."
Such as he wrote the Journal of the Authors, Stefanos Levidis from research group Forensic Architecture noted that in 2020 "repatriation operations have multiplied and become more violent. "Parvin's case is very important because it sums up what we know about the other cases."
Recruiting immigrants against immigrants?
On April 7, Human Rights Watch published a 29-page survey entitled "Their faces were covered». In this she claimed that Greece uses immigrants in the role of police for deportations.
"The Greek authorities, themselves and with the help of others, are attacking, stealing and stripping Afghan asylum seekers and other migrants, including children, before sending them back to Turkey via summary proceedings via the Evros River," the report said. was based on the testimonies of 26 Afghans (including two women and a boy), "23 of whom were repatriated between September 2021 and February 2022 on Greece's land border with Turkey". He added: "They use men who seem to come from the Middle East or South Asia to force naked or half-naked migrants to board small boats, to take them to the middle of Evros, which is the land border between Greece and Turkey, and to force them into the icy water, forcing them to cross the river to reach the Turkish shore. "These men often wear balaclavas to hide their faces and black clothes or camouflage clothing."
The "elephant" in the room
These are just a few of the pushback reports. For example, the organization Refugee Support Aegean records in a chronology the most important relaunches of 2020, as reported in the press.
The Greek government systematically denies that our country repatriates asylum seekers. For example, the Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis speaking in June 2021 to the French France 24, he declared categorically that Greece does not repel refugees and immigrants, but at the same time made it clear that "our job is to defend our borders" and we will use all the tools at our arsenal with the utmost respect for international law and human rights to protect them ".
The incident that has been recorded in history, of course, is when the Dutch journalist and producer of the documentary Ingeborg Begel during a joint press conference of Kyriakos Mitsotakis with his Dutch counterpart Mark Rutte blamed the Greek Prime Minister that he is lying and that he is insulting the intelligence of all the journalists in the world by denying that the government is indulging in barbaric deportations. The Prime Minister, obviously irritated, blamed the journalist that he insults himself and the country with what he says.
Even now that the head of Frontex has resigned in the wake of the investigations that saw the light of day, for Greece the "elephant in the room" remains "invisible". In topical question On May 6, MeRA25 MP Kritonas Arsenis asked how the illegal deportations might not exist for the government but cause the resignation of the FRONTEX director. He also referred to the first results of the investigation of the European Anti-Fraud Office, which shows the involvement of FRONTEX in 222 companies of the Coast Guard (3 / 2020-4 / 2021) that led to the deportation of 1,000 to 8,500 refugees. The issue is not whether there are illegal deportations but whether the order is given by Mr. Mitarakis or Mr. Mitsotakis, said the MP of MERA25.
For his part, the Minister of Immigration & Asylum, Notis Mitarakis, once again denied that there were pushbacks and more or less attributed the reports to a "Turkish finger". More specifically, he replied among other things, that border protection "is our constitutional obligation", that government policy "protects human lives" and that some "indiscriminately adopt and reproduce complaints from NGOs and news organizations, serving a specific narrative, the so-called" pushbacks ". The minister noted that the issues were duly examined by the same body and by a special audit committee of the European Parliament, "without confirming the validity of any of these complaints, and without finding anything against FRONTEX".
Regarding the complaints of journalistic organizations that were made in October 2021, Notis Mitarakis he said that "the National Transparency Authority [..] was contacted and came to the conclusion of March 24 that there is insufficient documentation of repatriation actions". We, however, if we understood well by reading the report of the National Transparency Authority (p. 5), its bodies were services of the Ministry of Shipping and Island Policy -specifically the Coast Guard-, services of the Ministry of Citizen Protection and Reception and Identification Structures of the Ministry of Immigration and Asylum. That is, the state.
Notis Mitarakis stressed "The French political institute, Thomas More, recalled that these journalistic investigations are based solely on material provided by Turkey or obtained from people in Turkey."
We wonder, is anyone really convinced now? Is it possible for such serious organizations to lie, to be accused more or less as "minions of Turkey", and for the Greek government to be the sole owner of the absolute truth?
Citizens now have enough information at their disposal about pushbacks so that they can form their own opinion on what is happening. As they have (we have) responsibility for what history will write about the attitude of the modern Greek state towards the poor and the oppressed.
Despina Papageorgiou
Source: popaganda