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

Case name: 2022_12_12-Eastern Med - 1089

Situation: 20 people stranded on Lipsi and pushed back to Turkey

Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded

Place of Incident: Eastern Mediterranean / Aegean Sea

Summary of the Case:
On 15 December 2022, we were alerted by relatives of a group of 20 people who were stranded on Lipsi. They were 20 people, among them 5 women, two of them pregnant and one child with cancer.

At 16:07 CET, we alerted Greek authorities and several NGOs by email. We informed them about the need of medical assistance of the pregnant women and the child suffering from cancer, and about their need of international protection. We also provided a list of with the people’s names.

Frontex confirmed in an email from 16:20 CET that they had received the message and had relayed it to the Greek authorities.

At 16:48 CET, the Leros Port Authority confirmed in a phone call that they would arrive in the given position in 10 minutes. At 17:03 CET, when our team called back as agreed on the previous call, a different officer answers the phone and insists that Lipsi Port Authority would be in charge. So at 17:09 CET we call Lipsi Port Authority, whose officer confirms that the people are fine, but they cannot give us any more information as Leros is in charge. At 17:14 CET, we call again the Leros Port Authority whose officer then states that they got informed by Lipsi Port Authority that they did not find the people at the location that was provided.

We still could not manage to get in direct contact with the people.

At 18:22 CET, we published the following tweet:
“SOS from the island of #Leipsοi, near #Leros, #Greece We received a call from 18 people stranded on Leipsoi. We informed @HCoastGuard & port authorities at Leipsoi & Leros. According to Leipsoi port authority, rescue was underway.”

At 18:31 CET, we call again Leros Port Authority. They state that they could not find anybody.

The next morning (16 December 2022) at 10:16 CET in the morning, relatives inform us that the people are back in Izmir/Turkey. They report that “the group was violently beaten by the Greek border guards and sent back to Turkey. One person's nose was broken by the assault, their phones and all the money were stolen and they were returned to Turkey on rafts.”
At 10:50 CET, we called the Turkish Coastguard asking about any incidents that might fit the relatives’ account. They confirmed a rescue the last night that appeared to have taken place after a pushback.

On 17 December, we managed to establish a direct contact to the people who confirmed the violent pushback. They reported that one person got kicked in the face and that all people were robbed of different belongings with the use of violence (“they stole our mobiles, money and bags and were fighting us”), afterwards they were “thrown” into life-rafts and were left abandoned in the middle of the sea.

Twitter:
https://twitter.com/alarm_phone/status/1603440288688738304