Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 21st of March 2021
Case name: 2021_03_21-AEG754
Situation: Alarm Phone alerted to six travellers who were pushed back to Turkey after entering Greece by land.
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Aegean Sea

Summary of the Case: On Sunday the 21st of March in the afternoon, the Alarm Phone shift team received a call from a relative, alerting us to a group of six travellers who had crossed the Greek-Turkish land border. Among the travellers was his brother, a 16 year old Syrian boy. He had last spoken to his brother at 08.12 CET the same morning, and he worried about them. At their last contact, the travellers had told him that they were cold and wet. They had been hiding outside for two nights, and were now trying to reach a police station in order to claim asylum. They had further sent a position, showing that they were between the Greek towns Soufli and Kornofolia.

At 16.12 CET, we sent an email to the responsible authorities as well as UNHCR, informing them about the situation of the travellers, asking for their assistance and that the travellers be brought to a place of safety where they could claim asylum. In addition, we tried to call the local police, but we were not able to reach anyone we could pass the information on to. Of all the numbers we could find, only one answered that we should call back the following day.

The next day, however, the brother of the travellers informed us that the group had been pushed back to Turkey. After talking to his brother, he gave us the following testimony about what had happened to the travellers: "When my brother was on the Greek side, it was much too cold and it rained without end.. They waited two days until they found the Greek police, most probably in Soufli, or to another village nearby, I don't know what it's called. They walked to the village and nobody helped them, the police didn't come either. All of a sudden the police came, maybe someone from the village called them. The police took them and their cell phones, they took everything away from them, they didn't have anything with them. And then they pushed them to the Turkish side. On the Turkish side, the Turkish police pushed them back to Greece. They were pushed back and forth 2-3 times. And at the end the Turkish police went somewhere, there were no more police and then they went into Turkey. They went to a village, took a cab and went back to Istanbul. That was the whole story."