Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 30th of June 2018

Case name: 2018_06_30-AEG401
Situation: Distress situation at Evros land border
Status of WTM Investigation: Open
Place of Incident: Evros Region

Summary of the Case: On Saturday, the 30th of June 2018, at 4.30am, the Alarm Phone was informed by a contact person about a group of people at the Turkish-Greek land border, in need of support. We were told that the communication between the contact person and the travellers had broken down, but we received a list of their names. Five of them were from Syria, five from Sierra Leone, six men, two women, and two children. We contacted the travellers, received their GPS position, and notified the police to their whereabouts, as the travellers had asked us to do. We also informed the UNHCR Greece. At 6.44am we received the information that one of the children had a liver problem and suffered a lot due to the cold. Afterwards we lost contact to the travellers. At 8.56am, the regional police station informed us that they had been searching for 2 hours but had not been able to find them.

At 1.45pm we received a message from the contact person that had initially alerted us to the case. He said that the Greek officers had beaten the travellers and stolen their phones. Apparently, they had been forced onto a boat and returned to the Turkish side, across the Evros river. We tried to contact the UNHCR but were unable to reach them. We were able to contact one of the members of the group of travellers at 2.18pm, who had been able to hide her phone. She told us that they were on their way back to Istanbul. They had been beaten up by people in blue and black uniforms at about 9am local time. Their belongings had been taken away, and at least 5 of them had been forced back to Turkey by boat. They had not taken any pictures as their phones had been taken away. They were kept in confinement in Greece for about one hour and treated badly, “like dogs” she said, before being forced onto a boat that returned them illegally to Turkey. At 3.20pm, she confirmed to us that those who had attacked and pushed them back had been Greek authorities. At 4.05pm, she told us that she was now on a bus and would arrive in Istanbul in the evening. In a short statement we denounced this serious violation of the group's basic human rights and demanded immediate actions to stop these illegal push back practices at the Turkish-Greek border.

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