Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 7th of February 2022

Case name: 2022_02_07-AEG858
Situation: 23 Travellers after arriving in Greek soil were beaten, thieved from and forced onto life-rafts by Hellenic Coastguard and pushed-back to Turkey
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Eastern Med

Summary of the Case:
In the late morning of the 7th of February, Alarm Phone received a call by a concerned relative, alerting us to a group of 1 woman, 3 children and 19 men in distress after having arrived on Kos island, Greece, and then been forced onto 2 life-rafts by Greek authorities, and pushed back towards Turkey adrift. The caller also related that he hadn’t managed to get contact with the people on board for some hours, we tried to establish direct contact to the boat but without success. In the early afternoon we received information from the relative that the two life-rafts had been rescued by the Turkish Coastguard, we promptly called the Turkish Coastguard and received information that they rescued the group at 11:00 CET and had taken them to Bodrum.

The next day, on the 8th of February we managed to contact some of the group, who told us that they were now in a camp in Turkey. During the push-back operation, the Hellenic Coastguard had injured several people by hitting them on the head and other parts of the body, as well as stealing their phones. Since they arrived in Turkey they had not received any medical attention for these injuries and hadn’t received any food.

Stop the illegal atrocities committed by the Hellenic Coastguard!