Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 01st December 2020

Case name: 2020_12_01-AEG730

Situation: 33 travellers on Lesvos island arrived at the camp. 

Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded

Place of Incident: Aegean Sea

Summary of the Case: The morning of Tuesday the 1st of December, the Alarm Phone was alerted by a worried relative to a group of people that had landed on the North of Lesvos Island and was stranded. The relative told us that they were 33 travellers that had splitted into 2 groups, one with 24 people including 3 children and 2 pregnant women and one with 9 people, all men. We managed to reach the first group of travellers. They told us they were 21 people from Yemen and Somalia, including 3 children and 2 pregnant women. The travellers had no food and water, they were very cold and some of them were injured. We were told that another 9 people had left the
group.

After having received their GPS position and a list of names of the
travellers at 10:51h CET we alerted UNHCR and Greek authorities about this case. At 12:15h we spoke to the travellers again, they were
extremely scared of a possible pushback from Greek police and also
told us they were “dying from cold”. We suggested they could call the emergency number 112. Around 16:10h CET in the afternoon we tried to call UNHCR several times but could not reach them. At 17:41h we
published a tweet informing about the situation. After this we could no longer reach the phones of the travellers.

In the evening we called both the Mytilene police and the office of
migration management to ask for information but nobody told us anything. Early the following morning one of the travellers told us that they were now in a camp, this information was later confirmed by a relative of one of the travellers, who told us some people form the group were in a quarantine camp, however it was not clear how many
people where there. After not being able to speak with the travellers, later in the morning a relative told us that 2 people were still missing from the group as 31 had arrived in the camp. At 13:16h  our shift team tried to get information from the Greek police but with no success. At 13:44h we published another tweet on the case. Finally, at 18:30h we managed to speak to the travelers who told us that the 2 missing people had been found. 

Twitter Chronology: 

01/12 
17:41:
https://twitter.com/alarm_phone/status/1333813461529325568 

02/12
17:10
https://twitter.com/alarm_phone/status/1334116143548801025