Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 23rd of August 2020

Case name: 2020_08_23-AEG701
Situation: 16 travelers landed on Farmakonisi island, beaten up by the Greek police, put back to the sea on inflatable boats and brought back to Turkey.
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Aegean Sea

Summary of the Case:
On the 23rd of August at 12:45h CEST, a relative of an Afghan family in distress contacted the Alarm Phone. She transmitted us a message from the travelers, asking for help and saying they had been on Farmakonisi Island and what she assumed to be “the police” had sent them back to the sea. She explained that there were 16 people, among them young children, younger and older women, and men on board. At least one of the women, the caller’s sister, was pregnant, and several older people had health issues. The relative did not have a GPS location from her family. At 12:57h, she sent us a contact number from the boat, but we could not reach the people. At 13:20h, the relative reported again that there was no news of them since the Greek police had put them back to the water. She specified that they had told her that they had landed on the island and the police had beaten them up, taken all their belongings and sent them back to the middle of the sea in two small inflatable boats without engine. After this, she had lost contact. Our shift team could still not reach them, either. After many tries to find out a location of the boats, at 15:43h, we called the port authority of Leros and were told that there was no incident around Farmakonisi, and the call was ended fast. At 16:05h, we called the Turkish coastguard and learned that they had picked up around 20 Afghan people from inflatable life rafts who had been pushed back by Greek authorities near Farmakonisi. Reportedly, they were all safe. We asked for details about the people to be able to identify them more closely, but the officer did not have any. We assumed that these were the people we had been informed about and reported this to their relative. We could not get a direct confirmation from the travelers themselves.

Alarm Phone is still investigating the details of this case and will include potential updates into this report.