Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 11th of April 2019

Case name: 2019_04_11-AEG506
Situation: Push-Back of 35 travellers by Greek Coast Guard, 28 people rescued to Farmakonisi
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Aegean Sea

Summary of the Cases:

On Thursday, 11th of April, the Alarm Phone was alerted to two boats in the Aegean Sea. One group of 35 travellers was refouled by the Greek Coast Guard into Turkish Waters and then picked up by the Turkish authorities, although the Alarm Phone had sent evidence to the Greek authorities that the boat had been in Greek waters. The second boat we were alerted to carried 28 people, they were eventually rescued by the Greek Coast Guard to Farmakonisi.


Case 1: At 4:31am CEST, a contact person alerted us to a boat in distress carrying 35 passengers, among them 10 children and 5 women. The boat was going towards the Greek island of Nera. At 4:52am we reached the travellers and received their GPS position. They were asking for assistance. At 4:57am we called the Greek Coast Guard and alerted them to the distress situation. We also sent an email to the respective authorities to document the alert. At 5:10am we received an updated GPS position that we also transferred to the authorities. The contact person informed us that the situation on board was worsening and transferred us a new positions of the boat at 5:30am and 5:47am, that we both immediately passed to the authorities via email. At 5:51am, the contact person informed us that the Coast Guard had reached the boat in distress. We wrote an email to the Greek authorities passing on the information that the Coast Guard had arrived on scene. At 6:01am, the Alarm Phone was called by the Greek Coast Guard that asked us to confirm the rescue, we referred to the email that we had sent. We couldn’t reach the travellers to find out more about the situation. At 6:29am the Greek Coast Guard called again, stating that they would see a boat, but not at the position we passed to them, but it would be in Turkish waters. We still could not establish a connection to the travellers. At 6:46am the Greek Coast Guard stated that they observed the boat being picked up by the Turkish Coast Guard. At 7:06am the Greek authorities called us to ask us whether we closed the case, which we denied as we had not reached the travellers directly yet.
We were able only a few days later to reconnect with the migrant travelers. They stated that the Greek Coast Guard tricked them by telling them they would rescue the boat. The Coast Guard asked them to follow the CG asset. When the travellers realised that they were driving towards Turkey, they stopped. After 30 minutes the Turkish Coast Guard had arrived and the Greek Coast Guard left the scene. The travellers were arrested by the Turkish authorities and brought to a Turkish police station.
The actions of the Greek Coast Guard were a clear refoulement of the travellers.
The Alarm Phone denounces strongly these illegitimate measures taken by the Greek Coastguard who tricked people in acute distress at sea into returning to a place where they cannot find protection.
We denounced the push back on social media, find the links here :
AP Homepage : https://alarmphone.org/en/2019/04/15/re ... ce-turkey/
Facebook: http://tiny.cc/tgc84y
Twitter: https://twitter.com/alarm_phone/status/ ... 4851433473


Case 2 : At 8:58pm CEST, we were alerted to a boat in distress in the north of Farmakonisi, carrying 28 people. We couldn’t reach the travellers. At 9:15pm we nevertheless informed the Greek Coast Guard in Piraeus. They said they already knew about a boat north of Farmakonisi and had sent a rescue boat. At 9:26pm, we sent an email to the respective authorities to document the alert. We couldn’t establish a connection to the travellers and neither the contact person had been able to reach them. At 9:51pm, we called the Coast Guard again, that informed us that they had rescued a boat in the respective vicinity. At 10:02pm the contact person confirmed the rescue.