Page Not Found | Human Rights Watch

Pushback helpers: A new level of violence

In October 2020, Salam*, together with 15 people from Syria and Afghanistan, crossed the Evros River from #Edirne, Turkey to Greece. They walked until the next morning through the forest on the Greek side of the border area. When they rested for a few hours, they were discovered by the Greek border police.

“At 10 a.m., after two hours, I was very tired. When I slept, the ’commando’ [Greek border police] told us ’Wake-up! Wake-up!’ They had sticks. One of our group ran away and two ’commandos’ caught him and struck him again and again.”

The Greek police officers threatened the group, beat them, and robbed them of all their belongings. After an hour all were brought to a prison. There the group was searched again and threatened with being killed if they hid any belongings. There were about 70 to 80 people in the prison none of the detainees was provided with water or food.

“The prison was not a [real] prison. It was a waiting room. No Food, no water, no beds. There were only two toilets, which were not clean. We stayed there from 1 p.m. and waited until midnight.”

At midnight, armed officers whom the respondent identified not as police but rather as a private army force, came to the prison. Using brutal violence, the people were forced to undress down to their underwear and all 70 to 80 were crammed into a van without windows. For an hour the group had to wait in the overloaded van until they were taken back to the river Evros.

Back at the river, the group had to sit in a row, still stripped to their underwear and without shoes, and were not allowed to look up. The officers tortured people for at least one hour.

„He [the ’commando’] told us: ’If you come back, another time to Greece, I will kill you! We will kill you!’ We were around 80 and there were two [officers] on each side of us. [They struck us] for one hour or two hours, I don’t remember about this.“

They were then forced back onto a boat driven by two people who did not appear to be members of the Greek police:

„Two people were talking in Arabic and Turkish languages. They were not from the ’commandos’ or the Greek police. They [drove] the boat across to the other side to Turkey. One took a rope from the trees on the Turkish side to the tree on the Greek side. He didn’t have to row, he could just pull the boat with the rope. […] When we got inside the boat, the ’commando’ struck us and when we were in the boat, this person struck us. Struck, struck, struck us. All the time they struck us. My eye was swollen, and my leg, and my hand all were bad from this. After we crossed the river, he went back to the ’commandos’.“

Back on the Turkish side, Salam and others of the group were discovered by the Turkish police. The officers chased the group. Fortunately, Salam was able to escape.

The Pushback Helper System

Salam’s experience of a pushback by the Greek police assisted by migrants is not an isolated case. The exploitation of the so-called Pushback Helpers, migrants who are coerced to work for the Greek police at the Turkish-Greek border and illegally push back other migrants, has been known for a long time.

Since 2020, the Border Violence Monitoring Network has been publishing testimonies from people on the move who have had similar experiences to Salam. In April 2022, Human Rights Watch published a report based on the experiences of 16 pushback survivors on the Evros River. They reported that the boats that brought them back to Turkey were steered by non-Greek men who spoke Arabic or South Asian languages common among migrants in this area. They all reported that Greek police were nearby when the men forced the migrants onto small boats. These non-Greek men were often described as wearing black or commando uniforms, as well as balaclavas to disguise their identities. An investigation by Der Spiegel published in June 2022 came to similar findings. The testimonies of six men who reported being forced to participate in pushbacks to Turkey were affirmed with the help of the reporter team.

The numerous testimonies of pushback survivors and the published investigations on the topic reveal a very precise pattern. The system behind the so-called pushback helpers is as follows:

When the Greek authorities arrest a group of people on the move who have just crossed the border into Greece from Turkey, they usually choose young men who speak English, but also Arabic or Turkish. They offer them money, reportedly around $200 per month, sometimes more, and a so-called “exit document” that allows them to stay in Greece or leave for another European country. In exchange, they have to help the Greek border police with illegal pushbacks for about three to six months. For many people on the move, the fear of another pushback to Turkey and the lack of prospects to get Asylum in Greece eventually leads them to cooperate with the Greek authorities. However, most have no choice but to accept, because if migrants refuse this offer, they are reportedly beaten up and deported back to Turkey. Also, not all people receive money for such “deals”, but are forced to work for the Greek border police without payment. There are reports that people cannot move freely because the Greek police is controlling them. Some people are detained by the Greek police almost all the time and were only released at night to carry out pushbacks.

Their task is to push other migrants who have been caught by the Greek authorities and are detained in Greek security points or -centres back across the border. The pushback helpers drive the boats to cross the river Evros and bring the protection seekers back to Turkey. They are often forced to rob the helpless people and take their money, their mobile phones and their clothes or they get to keep the stolen things that the Greek authorities have taken beforehand. When the helpers are released after a few months, some get the promised papers and make their way to Europe. However, some migrants are reported to work for the Greek border police on a long-term basis. Gangs are formed to take care of the pushback of people on the move. They also serve as a deterrent for people who are still in Turkey and considering crossing the border.

This is a cruel, but profitable business for the Greek border police. The Greek officers do not have to cross the river Evros themselves. Firstly, it is life-threatening to cross the wide river with a small boat, and secondly, they do not have to go near the Turkish border themselves, which would lead to conflicts with the Turkish military during the pushbacks. The two countries have been in a territorial conflict for a long time.

Modern slavery of people on the move

Forcing people seeking protection back over a border is not only inhumane but also illegal. Pushbacks violate numerous human rights norms, such as the prohibition of collective expulsion, the right to asylum, and the principle of non-refoulment. This practice has become a regular pattern of human rights violations against people on the move by the European border regime. Although it has been proven several times in Greece that pushbacks are regularly carried out by the Hellenic Coast Guard and the Greek Border Police, the Greek government categorically denies that pushbacks exist, calling such claims “fake news” or “Turkish propaganda”.

The fact that people on the move themselves are forced to carry out pushbacks represents a new level of brutality in the Greek pushback campaign. Not only are migrants systematically denied human rights, but they are also forced to participate in these illegal practices. Those seeking protection are exploited by the Greek authorities to carry out illegal operations on other people seeking protection. The dimension of the deployment is unknown. What is clear is that the Greek authorities are using the fear of pushbacks to Turkey by people on the move and the repressive asylum system to force people seeking protection to do their dirty work. This practice is effectively modern slavery and the dreadful reality of migrants trying to seek safety in Europe.

Since there are no safe and legal corridors into the EU and the asylum system in Greece is extremely restrictive, most people seeking protection have no choice but to try to cross the border between Turkey and Greece clandestinely. This lack of safe and legal corridors thus makes spaces for abuse of power and exploitation of people on the move possible in the first place. Those responsible for these human rights crimes must be held accountable immediately for these human rights crimes.

*Name changed

▻https://mare-liberum.org/en/pushback-helpers-a-new-level-of-violence

#refoulement #push-backs #refoulements #exploitation

Engineered migration at the Greek–Turkish border: A spectacle of violence and humanitarian space

In February 2020, Turkey announced that the country would no longer prevent refugees and migrants from crossing into the European Union. The announcement resulted in mass human mobility heading to the Turkish border city of Edirne. Relying on freshly collected data through interviews and field visits, this article argues that the 2020 events were part of a state-led execution of ‘engineered migration’ through a constellation of actors, technologies and practices. Turkey’s performative act of engineered migration created a spectacle in ways that differ from the spectacle’s usual materialization at the EU’s external borders. By breaking from its earlier role as a partner, the Turkish state engaged in a countermove fundamentally altering the dyadic process through which the spectacle routinely materializes at EU external borders around the hypervisibilization of migrant illegality. Reconceptualizing the spectacle through engineered migration, the article identifies two complementary acts by Turkish actors: the spectacularization of European (Greek) violence and the creation of a humanitarian space to showcase Turkey as the ‘benevolent’ actor. The article also discusses how the sort of hypervisibility achieved through the spectacle has displaced violence from its points of emergence and creation and becomes the routinized form of border security in Turkey.

▻https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/09670106231194911
#spectacle #violence #engineered_migration #ingénierie_migratoire #technologie #performativité #matérialisation #visibilité #hyper-visibilisation #espace_humanitaire

Migrants trapped in Ukrainian detention center while war rages on

Several dozen irregular migrants were reportedly trapped in a detention center in northwestern Ukraine weeks into the Russian invasion, an investigation by several media outlets found. An unconfirmed number of migrants appear to remain in the EU-funded facility, from where migrants are usually deported.

Imagine you are detained without being accused of a crime and wait to be deported to somewhere while an invading army bombs the neighboring town. This horrific scenario has been the reality for scores of migrants in northwestern Ukraine for weeks.

A joint investigation between Dutch non-profit Lighthouse Reports, which specializes on transnational investigations, Al Jazeera and German publication Der Spiegel found that over five weeks after the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Afghani, Pakistani, Indian, Sudanese and Bangladeshi migrants were still detained in a EU-funded detention center near the northwestern Ukrainian city of #Lutsk.

Although several people were recently released with the support of their embassies, Der Spiegel reported there were still dozens of who remained there at the end of March.

According to the wife of one detainee who was released last week, the detention center offered no air raid shelter. Moreover, guards “ran down the street when the siren sounded,” both Der Spiegel and Al Jazeera reported.

“The guards took away the detainees’ phones,” the woman told reporters. She also said that power outlets in the cells were no longer working and the whole situation was extremely dangerous. In fact, the nearby city of Lutsk has repeatedly come under attack since March 12.

According to the investigation, the Zhuravychi Migrant Accommodation Centre is located in a pine forest in the Volyn region, near the Belarusian border. Constructed in 1961 as an army barracks, the facility was converted into a migrant detention center in 2007 with EU funds, Al Jazeera reported.

Reporters involved in the investigation spoke with recently released detainees’ relatives. They also analyzed photos and documents, which “verified the detainees’ presence in Ukraine before being placed in the center,” according to Al Jazeera.
Calls for release of detainees

Some detainees have been released since the beginning of the Russian invasion, including several Ethiopian citizens and an Afghan family, Al Jazeera reported. But politicians and NGOs have voice fear over those who remain in the Zhuravychi Migrant Accommodation Center.

“It is extremely concerning that migrants and refugees are still locked up in detention centers in war zones, with the risk of being attacked without any possibility to flee,” Tineke Strik, a Dutch member of the European Parliament from the Greens/EFA Group told reporters involved in the investigation.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) also decried the ongoing detention of migrants at the facility during the war. In a report published on Monday (April 4), HRW said its staff interviewed four men by telephone who are being held in that Zhuravychi in early March. According to HRW, all four men said they had been detained in the months prior to the Russian invasion for irregularly trying to cross the border into Poland.

“Migrants and asylum seekers are currently locked up in the middle of a war zone and justifiably terrified,” said Nadia Hardman, a refugee and migrant rights researcher with HRW. “There is no excuse, over a month into this conflict, for keeping civilians in immigration detention. They should be immediately released and allowed to seek refuge and safety like all other civilians.”

According to the four interviewees, people from Afghanistan, Algeria, Bangladesh, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Gambia, Ghana, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Syria and four other nationalities were being held at the facility.

Michael Flynn from the Global Detention Project told Der Spiegel that the Geneva Conventions (not to be confused with the Geneva Refugee Convention) “obliges all warring parties to protect civilians under their control from the dangers of the conflict.” He stressed that the detainees needed to be released as soon as possible.
The EU’s bouncer

According to the investigation, the European Union has funded at least three detention centers in Ukraine “for years,” effectively making the non-EU country a gatekeeper. The facility in question near Lutsk that’s apparently still in operation received EU support “to confine asylum seekers, many of them pushed back from the EU,” according to Lighthouse Reports.

Der Spiegel reported that up to 150 foreigners were detained in the facility last year. Most of them tried in vain to reach the European Union irregularly and have to stay in deportation detention for up to 18 months.

Since the turn of the millennium, according to Der Spiegel, the EU has invested more than €30 million in three detention centers.

At the facility in Zhuravychi, Der Spiegel reported, the EU provided €1.7 million for electronic door locks and protection elements on the windows. While the EU called it an “accommodation”, Der Spiegel said was a refugee prison in reality.

The European Commission did not respond to a request for comment about the facility and the detained migrants, Al Jazeera said. Ukrainian authorities also did not answer any questions.

In early March, InfoMigrants talked to several Bangladeshi migrants who had been given deportation orders and were stuck inside detention centers, including in said Zhuravychi Migrant Accommodation Centre. Around a hundred migrants were staying there back then, according to Bangladeshi and Indian citizens detained there. They were released a few days later.

“Russia has been particularly bombing military bases. That’s why we have been living in constant fear of getting bombed,” Riadh Malik, a Bangladeshi migrant told InfoMigrants. According to the New York Times, the military airfield in Lutsk was bombed on March 11.

▻https://www.infomigrants.net/en/post/39678/migrants-trapped-in-ukrainian-detention-center-while-war-rages-on

Immigration Detention amidst War: The Case of Ukraine’s Volyn Detention Centre

A Global Detention Project Special Report

In early March, shortly into Russia’s war on Ukraine, the Global Detention Project (GDP) began receiving email messages and videos from individuals claiming to know people who remained trapped in an immigration detention centre inside Ukraine, even as the war approached. We also received messages from a representative of the humanitarian group Alight based in Poland, who said that they too were receiving messages from detainees at Volyn, as well as identity documents, photos, and videos.

The information we received indicated that there were several dozen detainees still at the Volyn detention centre (formally, “#Volyn_PTPI,” but also referred to as the “#Zhuravychi_Migrant_Accommodation_Centre”), including people from Pakistan, India, Eritrea, Sudan, Afghanistan, among other countries. They had grown particularly desperate after the start of the war and had held a demonstration to demand their release when the nearby town was shelled, which reportedly was violently broken up by detention centre guards.

The GDP located a webpage on the official website of Ukraine’s State Secretariat of Migration that provided confirmation of the operational status of the Volyn facility as well as of two others. Although the official webpage was subsequently taken down, as of late March it continued to indicate that there were three operational migration-related detention centres in Ukraine, called Temporary Stay for Foreigners or #PTPI (Пункти тимчасового перебування іноземців та осіб без громадянства): Volyn PTPI (#Zhuravychi); #Chernihiv PTPI; and #Nikolaev PTPI (also referred to as the Mykolaiv detention centre).

We learned that the Chernihiv PTPI, located north of Kyiv, was emptied shortly after the start of the war. However, as of the end of March 2022, it appeared that both the Volyn PTPI and Nikolaev PTPI remained operational and were holding detainees. We understood that the situation at the detention centres had been brought to the attention of relevant authorities in Ukraine and that the embassies of at least some of the detainees—including India—had begun arranging the removal of their nationals. Detainees from some countries, however, reportedly indicated that they did not want assistance from their embassies because they did not wish to return and were seeking asylum.

In our communications and reporting on this situation, including on social media and through direct outreach to officials and media outlets, the GDP consistently called for the release of all migrants trapped in detention centres in Ukraine and for international efforts to assist migrants to seek safety. We highlighted important international legal standards that underscore the necessity of releasing detainees in administrative detention in situations of ongoing warfare. Important among these is Additional Protocol 1, Article 58C, of the Geneva Conventions, which requires all parties to a conflict to take necessary measures to protect civilians under their control from the effects of the war.

We also pointed to relevant human rights standards pertaining to administrative detention. For example, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, in their seminal Revised Deliberation No. 5 on the deprivation of liberty of migrants, conclude that in “instances when the obstacle for identifying or removal of persons in an irregular situation from the territory is not attributable to them … rendering expulsion impossible … the detainee must be released to avoid potentially indefinite detention from occurring, which would be arbitrary.” Similarly, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has repeatedly found that when the purpose of such detention is no longer possible, detainees must be released (see ECHR, “Guide on Article 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights: Right to Liberty and Security,” paragraph 149.).

In April, a consortium of press outlets—including Lighthouse Reports, Al Jazeera English, and Der Spiegel—jointly undertook an investigation into migrants trapped in detention in Ukraine and published separate reports simultaneously on 4 April. Human Rights Watch (HRW) also published their own report on 4 April, which called on authorities to immediately release the detainees. All these reports cited information provided by the GDP and interviewed GDP staff.

HRW reported that they had spoken to some of the detainees at Volyn (Zhuravychi) and were able to confirm numerous details, including that “people of up to 15 nationalities were being held there, including people from Afghanistan, Algeria, Bangladesh, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Gambia, Ghana, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Syria.” According to HRW, the detainees claimed to have “been detained in the months prior to the Russian invasion for irregularly trying to cross the border into Poland.” They said that there were more than 100 men and women at the facility, though according to Lighthouse Reports only an estimated 45 people remained at the centre as of 21 March.

The interviewees said that conditions at the detention centre deteriorated after 24 February when members of the Ukrainian military moved into the centre and guards relocated the detainees to one of the two buildings in the complex, freeing the second building for the soldiers. When detainees protested and demanded to be released, the guards refused, forcibly putting an end to the protest and beating detainees. Some detainees claimed to have been told that they could leave the centre if they agreed to fight alongside the Ukrainian military, which they refused.

An issue addressed in many of these reports is the EU’s role in financing immigration detention centres in Ukraine, which the GDP had previously noted in a report about Ukraine in 2012. According to that report, “In 2011, 30 million Euros were allocated to build nine new detention centres in Ukraine. According to the EU delegation to Ukraine, this project will ‘enable’ the application of the EU-Ukraine readmission by providing detention space for ‘readmitted’ migrants sent back to Ukraine from EU countries.”

In its report on the situation, Al Jazeera quoted Niamh Ní Bhriain of the Transnational Institute, who said that the EU had allocated 1.7 million euros ($1.8m) for the securitisation of the Volyn centre in 2009. She added, “The EU drove the policies and funded the infrastructure which sees up to 45 people being detained today inside this facility in Ukraine and therefore it must call on Ukraine to immediately release those being held and guarantee them the same protection inside the EU as others fleeing the same war.”

Efforts to get clarity on EU financing from officials in Brussels were stymied by lack of responsiveness on the part of EU officials. According to Al Jazeera, “The European Commission did not answer questions from Al Jazeera regarding its operation and whether there were plans to help evacuate any remaining people. Ukrainian authorities also did not respond to a request for comment.” The Guardian also reported in mid-April they had “approached the Zhuravychi detention facility and the Ukrainian authorities for comment” but had yet to receive a response as of 12 April.

However, on 5 April, two MEPs, Tineke Strik and Erik Marquardt, raised the issue during a joint session of the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice, and Home Affairs (LIBE) and the Committee on Development (DEVE). The MEPs urged the EU to take steps to assist the release of the detainees.

In mid-April, reports emerged that some detainees who had been released from the Volyn PTPI in Zhuravychi were later re-detained in Poland. In its 14 April report, The Guardian reported that “some of those that were released from the centre in the first few days of the war are now being held in a detention centre in Poland, after they were arrested attempting to cross the Polish border, but these claims could not be verified.” On 22 April, Lighthouse Reports cited Tigrayan diaspora representatives as saying that two former detainees at the facility were refugees fleeing Ethiopia’s war in the region, where human rights groups report evidence of a campaign of ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. Despite being provided documents by Ukraine stipulating that they were stateless persons and being promised safe passage, Polish border guards detained the pair, arguing that there was an “extreme probability of escape.”

Separately, human rights campaigners following the case informed the GDP in late April that they had evidence of immigration detainees still being locked up in Ukraine’s detention centres, including in particular the Nikolaev (Mykolaiv) PTPI.

The GDP continues to call for the release of all migrants detained in Ukraine during ongoing warfare and for international efforts to help detainees to find safety, in accordance with international humanitarian and human rights law. Recognizing the huge efforts Poland is making to assist refugees from Ukraine, we nevertheless call on the Polish government to treat all people fleeing Ukraine equally and without discrimination based on race, nationality, or ethnic origin. Everyone fleeing the conflict in Ukraine is entitled to international protection and assistance and no one should be detained on arrival in Poland.

▻https://www.globaldetentionproject.org/immigration-detention-amidst-war-the-case-of-ukraines-volyn-