Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 25th of November 2022
Case name: 2022_11_24_Eastern Med_1065
Situation: 21 people pushed back after arrival on Samos
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Eastern Med / Aegean Sea
Summary of the Case:

In the late evening of the 24th of November 2022 we were alerted by relatives to a group of about 16 people including an unknown number of children and a woman who was 8 months pregnant. They had just arrived on the island of Samos. We could not manage to get in direct contact with the people, but as the relatives reported several small children and the woman in advanced pregnancy we did an immediate alert via email at 22:15 CET.

Also during the night we could not manage to establish a direct contact to the people. The next morning at 7:19 CET Doctors without borders (MSF) informed us via email that they were sending a team to provide medical and humanitarian assistance to these 16 persons. But later on they informed us that the MSF team went this morning on the location mentioned in our alert. However, they didn’t find anyone at the location.

Shortly afterwards we learned from the relatives that the people had been pushed back during the night.

The Turkish coastguard reported to have rescued 21 people from a life-raft off the coast of Aydın’s Kuşadası district at 8:20am local time on 25 November, who had obviously been pushed back from Greece.

We could never establish a direct contact to the people and so we could not get their reports about the human rights violations they have been facing.