Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 15th of August 2022

Case name: 2022_08_15-EASTERN MED - 968

Situation: 110 travellers in distress in Greek waters, pushed-back by Greek Coastguard to Turkey

Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded

Place of Incident: Eastern Med

Summary of the Case:

In the afternoon of the 15th of August 2022, Alarm Phone received a call by a worried relative, alerting us to a group of 110 people, mostly families including many children, women and elderly people in distress. At the time of the alert, the caller reported that they were in a drifting sailing boat close to Neapoli Voion in southwest Greece. Their engine was broken, the boat was overcrowded and they had run out of water and food.

We managed to establish contact to the boat, the people told us that they fear being beaten and violently pushed back by the Greek police. We alerted Greek authorities at 17:28 CET, the travellers also called 112 themselves to ask for help. Later they made a distress call to the Greek police, who told them “we will not help you, go to hell”. Throughout the night we continued calling the Hellenic coastguard who completely denied finding the boat in question. Unfortunately we lost contact to the people on board but received news the next day at midday, that the Greek coastguard came, took away their mobile phones and money and then pushed them back to Turkey.

Again another pushback by the hands of the Hellenic coastguard which is not only a violation of international law, but also endangering people's lives. Stop these crimes against people on the move!

Twitter/news link: https://twitter.com/alarm_phone/status/ ... 9367350272