Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 15th of September 2015

Case name: 2015_09_15-AEG71
Situation: Eight boats in distress, one assaulted, three groups of travellers stranded
Status of WTM Investigation: Partly concluded / partly ongoing
Place of Incident: Aegean Sea

Summary of the Cases:: Tuesday the 15th of September 2015 was a very busy day for the shift teams of the Alarm Phone. We dealt with a total of eight cases in the Aegean Sea, partly with boats in distress at sea and partly with groups of travellers who had successfully crossed the sea but were stranded on remote Greek islands.

30 minutes past midnight, our shift team was informed about a boat in severe distress quite close to the Turkish coast, south of Izmir (case 1). We immediately alerted the Turkish coastguard. Although they promised to send a rescue boat within one hour, the situation became increasingly dangerous: at 1.30am a contact person reported to us that there were persons in the water already and that help had still not arrived. Again, the shift team reached out to the Turkish coastguard and explained the urgent distress situation. Finally, at 2.52am, the shift team got a WhatsApp message from a contact person stating that all 42 people on board had been rescued by the Turkish coastguard.

In the following hours, the shift team was engaged in three similar cases (cases 2, 3, 4). Via contact persons, we were informed about 43 people in distress near Cesme/Turkey, about 42 people in distress near Kos/Greece and about another boat in distress close to Chios/Greece. After direct contact with all three boats, the shift team alerted the respective coastguards. While the first boat was rescued by the Turkish authorities, the second one was rescued by the Greeks. In the third case, the boat even arrived by itself on the Greek island of Chios.

Around midday the Alarm Phone received a message via Facebook, informing us about a boat that had successfully reached Lesvos but, according to eyewitnesses, had been attacked by the Turkish coastguard on its way from Behram/Turkey to Lesvos/Greece (case 6, no GPS). At least one of its passengers is said to have fallen overboard during this assault. We called a contact person who met the group on Lesvos and passed our questions on to them. As our contact person recounts: “they do not know exactly where they left in Turkey, but when they were still close to the Turkish coast, a boat came (they said the Turkish coastguard). They described it as big and white with a Turkish flag and the people were dressed in white and as soldiers. They demanded money. The refugees gave them money, but still then they started to shoot. Out of panic some people jumped into the water. They continued to Lesvos, the 'Turkish' boat following them. The attackers took photos and filmed them, but the people themselves did not take any pictures. Immediately afterwards, we called the Turkish Maritime Rescue Coordination Center and at least got to know that two passengers who fall overboard were rescued and their families had been informed. The officer even knew the name of one of them, and this name matches the information that we have. The Alarm Phone will continue to investe this case.

On the same day we also supported three groups of travellers who had stranded on several remote Greek islands. At 10.35am the shift team was informed of a group of 30 women, 10 children and 60 men, who stranded in the very north east of Samos, far away from any road (case 5) We talked to the travellers and alerted the port authorities of Samos, the Greek coastguard in Piraeus, the Greek police as well as the UNHCR in Greece via mail and phone. At 1.42pm we learned from the travellers that the Greek coastguard had disappeared after providing them with water. At the other day, we were again in contact with the coastguard in Piraeus and with a Greek land operation centre and were informed that a large group of refugees was being evacuated from the north-eastern edge of Samos on Tuesday. But only on Thursday, 17th of September 2015, one of the travellers themselves finally confirmed to us the rescue of the whole group.

Tuesday night, two similar cases reached us. A man called us at 8.38pm and told us about his father who has run ashore with a group of 300 people on a small, uninhabited Greek island on Tuesday morning (case 7, no GPS). The man provided us with his fathers’ phone number, but we were neither able to reach the group at this moment, nor to locate them. We passed the phone numbers of the Greek coastguard and the UNHCR Greece to our contact person and he informed the coastguard already in the same night. On the next morning, we spoke to UNHCR Greece about this case. They noted down all the provided details and were very cooperative. Finally, on Wednesday at 2.50pm we again talked to our contact person: his father had told him that all 300 people safely arrived on Kos on Tuesday evening.

At 10.19pm on Tuesday, a phone number was forwarded to us, belonging to a group of about 50 people, including 20 children, who had stranded on the Greek military island Farmakonisi (case 8). After obtaining these information directly form the travellers, we alerted the port authorities and the police of Leros, the closest inhabited Greek island. But both authorities said that we should reach out to them again the next day. In the following two days, although unable to re-establish contact to the group itself, we stayed in touch with the police as well as the UNHCR Greece. Finally, on Thursday, both sides confirmed to us that the group from Farmakonisi would be brought to Leros in the early evening.