Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 22nd of December 2020
Case name: 2020_12_22-AEG738
Situation: A group stranded on Rhodos.
Status of WTM Investigation: Ongoing
Place of Incident: Aegean Sea

Summary of the Case:
On 22nd December we were contacted by a worried relative of somebody in a group of travelers who had been stranded on Rhodes. We were given a phone number, but we were never able to make contact with the group. We emailed the Hellenic coastguard, Frontex, NATO, the Greek ombudsman and various NGOs to alert them to this group. We phoned JRCC Piraeus who initially told us that they had already searched the area, but would not take further information. When we phoned them again an hour or so later, they told us that it was not their responsibility as the group was stranded on land. They would not give us a phone number of a relevant authority on Rhodes. We were unable to reach the Rhodes tourist police or the Rhodes Port authority. The airport police on Rhodes refused to speak to us. Without more concrete information we felt that there was little more that could be done.

Later, we got in touch with the travellers who were back in Turkey. We received the following testimony about the violent pushback they had endured: "When we arrived on the island we started walking. When we entered a forest the soldiers came. They put us in a small van and took us to the harbour. We arrived on the island around 10:00am in the morning and we stayed until 20:00pm in the night. We were around 20 people in total. On the harbour there were soldiers dressed in grey colour with a white number on the back and a covered face, they searched us and took all our belongings, our passports, identity cards, money and phones. They were violent with the children and touched the women. At night they transferred us to a ship, they were beating the women and children. The ship we entered had a European Union flag, it is a blue flag with stars. And this ship looked like an army ship. It took around 1-1,5 hours until they put us on a boat. We started shouting that they put us there at night and that it is dark but they did not listen to us. When they threw us in the boat, they put a 7 month old infant in a plastic bag and threw it to the people already in the boat. We had one phone left and we called the Turkish Coast Guard and they came to rescue us. When we arrived to the Turkish border land we stayed five days in the jail. Now we do not have any paper."