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Inside Frontex: Die geheime Datenbank der EU – und was sie damit vertuscht

Die Grenzbehörde der EU war in illegale Pushbacks von Hunderten, wahrscheinlich sogar Tausenden Flüchtlingen in der Ägäis involviert. Die illegalen Praktiken klassifizierte sie regelmässig falsch und verhinderte so ihre Aufklärung.

Sie hatten es geschafft. In den frühen Morgenstunden des 28. Mai 2021 landete eine Gruppe von Männern, Frauen und Kindern an einem Strand nördlich des Dorfs Panagiouda auf der griechischen Insel Lesbos. Um 3 Uhr in der Nacht waren sie an der türkischen Küste in ein Gummiboot gestiegen, um die Überfahrt nach Europa zu wagen.

Ganz vorne im hoffnungslos überfüllten Boot hatte Aziz Berati Platz genommen, ein 44-jähriger Mann aus Afghanistan, der mit seiner Frau und seinen Kindern im Alter von 6 und 8 Jahren nach Europa fliehen wollte. Seine Familie hatte es schon ein paar Mal versucht, aber sie war immer gescheitert. An diesem Morgen Ende Mai jedoch war die Familie ihrem Ziel, Asyl in Europa zu beantragen, so nah wie noch nie.

Die Sonne stand noch nicht am Himmel, als die Flüchtenden griechischen Boden betraten. Sofort teilte sich die Gruppe auf und floh in ein Wäldchen, das rund 200 Meter vom Strand entfernt war. Eigentlich hätten die Flüchtenden das Recht gehabt, in Griechenland um Asyl zu ersuchen. Aber sie fürchteten, die griechische Polizei könnte sie aufgreifen und in die Türkei zurückschaffen.

Sie sollten recht behalten.

Einem kleineren Teil der Gruppe gelang die Flucht bis in ein Asylcamp. Aber 32 Personen wurden von uniformierten Männern entdeckt, festgenommen, in Kleinbusse gesteckt und an einen anderen Strand gefahren.

Aziz Berati vermutet, die Männer seien bereits über ihre Ankunft im Bild gewesen, so schnell waren sie aufgetaucht. Sie trugen dunkle Uniformen ohne Abzeichen, waren maskiert und mit Pistolen bewaffnet, sagt Berati. Sie hätten ihnen alle Habseligkeiten abgenommen: Taschen, Pässe, selbst die Spielsachen der Kinder. Später, als sie auf ein Schiff der griechischen Küstenwache gebracht worden waren, wurden sie noch einmal durchsucht. Dort wurde ihnen auch das Geld abgenommen, das sie versteckt hatten.

«Wir hatten Angst», sagt Berati heute. «Die Kinder weinten. Aber die Männer sagten uns, wir dürften nicht reden.»

Wer ein Handy versteckt hielt oder in unerlaubter Weise den Kopf hob, steckte Schläge von den maskierten Männern ein. Ein Mann, der es wagte, mit seiner Frau zu sprechen, schickte der Republik ein Bild seines zerschundenen Beins: Eine blutige Fleischwunde zeugt davon, wie schwer er verprügelt wurde. Einige Smartphones entdeckten die maskierten Männer nicht. Die Fotos schickten die Flüchtenden der NGO Aegean Boat Report, die Menschenrechts­verstösse in der Ägäis sammelt. Sie belegen die mutmasslich schweren Menschenrechts­verletzungen dieses Tages.

Aziz Berati erzählt, die vermummten Männer hätten ihnen vorgegaukelt, sie würden sie wegen der Covid-Pandemie zuerst in ein Isolations­camp bringen. «Sie sagten, wenn die Isolation zu Ende ist, würden sie uns in ein Flüchtlings­camp schicken.»

Auf die Frage, ob er ihnen geglaubt habe, lächelt Berati schwach: «Nein.»
Nur eine «Verhinderung der Ausreise»?

Der Fall der 32 Migrantinnen, die Lesbos erreichten, aber trotzdem in die Türkei zurückgeschafft wurden, ist ein klarer Fall eines illegalen Pushbacks.

Auch die europäische Grenzagentur Frontex hatte vom Vorfall Kenntnis und speicherte ihn in ihrer internen Datenbank namens Jora, was für «Joint Operations Reporting Application» steht. In der geheimen Datenbank werden alle Zwischenfälle an den EU-Aussengrenzen minutiös festgehalten. Den Fall vom 28. Mai 2021 legte Frontex allerdings nicht als Pushback ab, sondern unter dem irreführenden und verharmlosenden Begriff prevention of departure – «Verhinderung der Ausreise».

Der Pushback vom 28. Mai 2021 ist nur ein Beispiel von vielen, welche die Republik in einer gemeinsamen Recherche mit «Lighthouse Reports», der «Rundschau» von SRF, dem «Spiegel» und «Le Monde» aufgedeckt und verifiziert hat.

Erstmals haben die Medienpartner dabei die interne Frontex-Datenbank Jora auswerten können – und sie mit Datenbanken der türkischen Küstenwache sowie solchen von NGOs abgeglichen. Zudem analysierten sie geleakte Frontex-Dokumente, befragten Überlebende und sprachen vertraulich mit Quellen bei Frontex und Küstenwachen.

Die Recherche zeigt: Frontex war in illegale Pushbacks von mindestens 957 Menschen beteiligt, die zwischen März 2020 und September 2021 in Europa Schutz suchten. Überwachungs­flugzeuge und Schiffe von Frontex entdeckten die Flüchtenden in Schlauchbooten und informierten die griechische Küstenwache, welche sie auf aufblasbare Rettungs­flosse ohne Motor setzte und auf offenem Meer in türkischen Gewässern zurückliess – eine Praxis, die selbst in einem Frontex-internen Untersuchungs­bericht kritisiert wurde.

Als Pushbacks gelten staatliche Massnahmen, bei denen Schutzsuchende zurückgedrängt werden, ohne dass ihnen das Recht auf ein Asylverfahren gewährt wird. Pushbacks verstossen etwa gegen das Verbot von Kollektiv­ausweisungen, das in der Europäischen Menschenrechts­konvention festgeschrieben ist; und sie können auch das Non-Refoulement-Prinzip berühren, wonach niemand in ein Land geschickt werden darf, wo ihm ein ernsthaftes Risiko unmenschlicher Behandlung droht.

In mindestens zwei Fällen waren die Asylsuchenden, darunter Frauen und Kinder, bereits auf einer griechischen Insel gelandet und wurden danach verbotenerweise in türkischen Gewässern ausgesetzt.

Selbst diese eindeutig rechtswidrigen Fälle sind in der Frontex-Datenbank unter dem Titel «Verhinderung der Ausreise» abgelegt. Zwei Quellen bei Frontex bestätigen, dass illegale Pushbacks in der Ägäis in der Datenbank Jora regelmässig als «Verhinderung der Ausreise» eingetragen wurden.

Frontex selbst hat stets bestritten, an den illegalen Pushbacks beteiligt zu sein. Die Grenzagentur sagt auf Anfrage: «Frontex gewährleistet und fördert die Achtung der Grundrechte bei all seinen Grenzschutz­aktivitäten. Die Grundrechte stehen im Mittelpunkt aller Aktivitäten der Agentur.» (Die komplette Stellungnahme finden Sie am Ende des Beitrags.)

Die griechische Küstenwache hält fest, dass die Kategorie «Verhinderung der Ausreise» gewählt werde, wenn die türkische Küstenwache sich um «Zwischen­fälle in ihrer Jurisdiktion kümmere». Das beinhalte auch Fälle, bei denen Flüchtlings­boote von sich aus in türkische Gewässer zurückkehrten, um den Griechen auszuweichen. Sie verweigert die Beantwortung von Fragen, die unter anderem auf türkischen Belegen basieren, da die türkischen Behörden systematisch versuchten, «die immense humanitäre Arbeit der griechischen Küstenwache zu beschädigen». Bezüglich des Pushbacks vom 28. Mai 2021 halten die griechischen Behörden fest, dass die beschriebenen Vorkommnisse nie stattgefunden hätten. (Die komplette Stellungnahme finden Sie am Ende des Beitrags.)

Medienberichte erhöhten den Druck auf den Frontex-Chef

Die Zahl der illegalen Pushbacks in der Ägäis hatte im Frühling 2020 markant zugenommen. Das war kein Zufall: Nachdem der syrische Diktator Bashar al-Assad mithilfe Russlands die Angriffe in der Region um Idlib verstärkt hatte, waren in den ersten Monaten des Jahres Zehntausende, wenn nicht Hunderttausende in die Türkei geflüchtet. Doch der türkische Staatschef Recep Erdoğan sagte am 29. Februar 2020: «Es ist nicht unsere Aufgabe, uns um so viele Flüchtlinge zu kümmern.» Er kündigte das vier Jahre vorher abgeschlossene Migrations­abkommen mit der EU auf und öffnete die Grenzen zu Europa.

Auch aus diesem Grund machten sich im Frühling 2020 immer mehr Menschen über die Ägäis nach Griechenland auf – und wurden immer wieder mit illegalen Pushbacks zurück in die Türkei getrieben.

Allerdings nahmen gleichzeitig kritische Recherchen und Berichte über Pushbacks und andere Menschenrechts­verletzungen in der Ägäis zu. Vor allem eine Recherche, welche die Investigativ­plattform «Bellingcat» im Oktober 2020 mit «Lighthouse Reports» veröffentlichte, sollte Frontex noch länger beschäftigen.

Auch wegen der zahlreichen Medienberichte wuchs der Druck auf Frontex und auf Fabrice Leggeri. Der 54-jährige Franzose ist seit 2015 Direktor und der starke Mann der EU-Grenzbehörde.

Es war der 10. November 2020, als Leggeri sich, seinen Ruf und sein Amt wegen der Pushback-Vorwürfe vor dem höchsten Frontex-Gremium, dem Verwaltungsrat, verteidigen musste. Seither ist die Kritik an ihm nur noch grösser geworden.

An der Videokonferenz an jenem Tag nahmen rund dreissig Frontex-Verwaltungsräte, ein halbes Dutzend EU-Beamtinnen sowie Leggeri selbst teil. Auch eine Schweizer Vertretung war an der ausserordentlichen Sitzung anwesend, so wie bei allen Sitzungen des Verwaltungsrats. Zum Meeting gedrängt hatte die Kommission der Europäischen Union, die sich nicht nur um den Ruf ihrer Grenzbehörde sorgte, sondern auch – oder vor allem – um den eigenen.

Es bestehe ein «hohes Reputationsrisiko», sagte eine EU-Beamtin gemäss dem geheimen Protokoll der Konferenz. Dieses und die Protokolle zahlreicher weiterer Verwaltungsrats­sitzungen von Frontex liegen der Republik vor.

Leggeri stellte an der Konferenz drei Dinge klar:

Erstens: Frontex habe die sechs Pushbacks, über die «Bellingcat» berichtet hatte, abgeklärt.

Zweitens: Der Bericht enthalte kaum Fakten. Namentlich zum genauen zeitlichen Ablauf der Vorfälle gebe es keine Angaben.

Drittens: Es lasse sich nicht folgern, dass Frontex von den Pushbacks gewusst habe – und dass die Behörde in diese verwickelt gewesen sei.

Das alles geht aus einer Präsentation hervor, die Frontex für die Verwaltungsrats­sitzung vom 10. November 2020 erstellt hatte, sowie aus dem Protokoll dazu. Darin steht geschrieben: «Der Exekutiv­direktor von Frontex bekräftigte, dass es zum gegenwärtigen Zeitpunkt keine Hinweise auf eine direkte oder indirekte Beteiligung der Frontex-Mitarbeiter oder des von den Mitgliedstaaten entsandten Personals an Pushback-Aktivitäten gibt.»

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Leggeris damalige Aussagen wirken heute wie ein Hohn. Oder wie eine Lüge. Denn zumindest in zwei Fällen, über die «Bellingcat» berichtet hat, bestätigen jetzt die Einträge in der Datenbank Jora, dass Frontex – entgegen Leggeris Äusserungen – in die Pushbacks involviert war.

Leggeri schilderte an diesem Tag seinen Verwaltungsräten auch, wie es im März 2020 zu den Spannungen zwischen der EU und der Türkei kam, wie diese die Menschen plötzlich nicht mehr daran hinderte, nach Europa überzusetzen, und wie sich so «in zwei bis drei Tagen fast 100’000 Personen der EU-Grenze genähert» hätten.

Dieses Muster kennt man von ihm:

Leggeri verweist auf eine drohende Massenflucht nach Europa.

Leggeri bestreitet, dass es Pushbacks gibt. Oder, wenn dem alle Fakten entgegenstehen, dass Frontex in Pushbacks verwickelt ist.

Leggeri geht Hinweisen auf Pushbacks kaum nach. Ja, noch mehr: Er lässt zu, dass seine Behörde Pushbacks vertuscht.

Mit anderen Worten: Alles deutet darauf hin, dass dem starken Mann von Frontex die Wahrung der Grundrechte nicht wichtig ist. Oder jedenfalls weniger wichtig als die Sicherung der europäischen Aussengrenze und die Abschottung Europas.

Was das Vertuschen der Pushbacks in den Jahren 2020 und 2021 begünstigte, war das Meldesystem von Frontex, das mittlerweile angepasst worden sein soll. Damals funktionierte es wie folgt:

Ein griechischer Beamter erfasste jeden Vorfall an der Grenze zur Türkei in der Frontex-Datenbank Jora. Dort trug er die Eckdaten des Falls ein und ordnete ihn einer der rund dreissig Kategorien zu – etwa der Kategorie «Illegaler Grenzübertritt», «Menschenhandel», «Warenschmuggel», «Asylantrag» oder eben «Verhinderung der Ausreise». Anschliessend prüften zwei weitere griechische Beamte sowie eine Frontex-Mitarbeiterin den Eintrag und segneten ihn ab. Zuletzt landete der Eintrag in der Frontex-Zentrale in Warschau, wo die Jora-Einträge vor allem für statistische Zwecke genutzt werden, etwa für sogenannte Risiko­analysen.

Nur: Eine Kategorie «Grundrechts­verletzung» oder «Pushback» gab es in der Datenbank nicht. Auch aus diesem Grund klassifizierten die Beamten von Griechenland und der EU die Pushbacks in der Ägäis kurzerhand als «Verhinderung der Ausreise».

Das führte selbst innerhalb von Frontex zu Kritik. So sagte die interimistische Grundrechts­beauftragte an der Verwaltungsrats­sitzung vom 10. November 2020, sie erachte die Klassifizierung von Pushbacks als «Verhinderung der Ausreise» als «fragwürdig». In einem anderen internen Frontex-Dokument spricht sie davon, dass sie mit dem Begriff «nicht einverstanden» sei, und stellte die Kategorie in einem Fall infrage.

Auch eine Frontex-interne Untersuchungs­gruppe hatte Kenntnis von der fragwürdigen Praxis. In ihrem Bericht vom 1. März 2021 zu mutmasslichen Pushbacks bezeichnete sie diese Klassifizierung in zwei Fällen, in denen sich die Geflüchteten bereits in griechischen Gewässern befanden, als «widersprüchlich».

Europäische Grenzbeamte, welche die griechischen Kollegen im Rahmen der Frontex-Operation Poseidon unterstützten, hatten eine andere Möglichkeit, mutmassliche Menschenrechts­verletzungen an Frontex zu melden: als sogenannte serious incidents – «schwerwiegende Vorfälle».

Dabei gab es vier Unterkategorien. Eine davon: «Mögliche Verletzung von Grundrechten und von internationalen Schutz­verpflichtungen». Diese Fälle sollten in der Regel bei der Menschenrechts­beauftragten von Frontex landen, was allerdings nicht in jedem Fall geschieht.

Tatsächlich machten europäische Grenzwächter denn auch sehr selten von dieser Möglichkeit Gebrauch. So landeten für das ganze Jahr 2020 lediglich zehn schwerwiegende Zwischenfälle auf dem Tisch der Frontex-Grundrechts­beauftragten; wie viele davon Menschenrechts­verletzungen betrafen, wies Frontex öffentlich nicht aus. In einem internen Dokument der Grundrechts­beauftragten heisst es, acht Fälle hätten Grundrechts­verletzungen betroffen. Das Dokument liegt der Republik vor.

Mehr noch: Im Dezember 2020 leitete das Europäische Amt für Betrugs­bekämpfung (Olaf) eine Untersuchung gegen Frontex ein. Dabei geht es um Betrugsvorwürfe gegen drei Frontex-Kaderleute, im Zentrum steht der Direktor Fabrice Leggeri. In der Zwischenzeit ist diese abgeschlossen und der Bericht fertig. Aber er bleibt bis auf weiteres unter Verschluss.

Die niederländische EU-Parlamentarierin Tineke Strik, die über die Untersuchungs­ergebnisse informiert worden ist, sagt: «Olaf fand mehrere Fälle, bei denen serious incident reports über mutmassliche Pushbacks nicht an den Grundrechts­beauftragten von Frontex weitergeleitet worden waren.»

Spätestens an dieser Stelle ist ein kurzer Exkurs ins Grund-, Asyl- und EU-Recht nötig. Die europäische Grenzbehörde Frontex verteidigte ihr Vorgehen nämlich immer wieder mit dem Verweis auf die EU-Verordnung 656/2014. Deren Artikel 6 sei rechtliche Grundlage dafür, dass Griechenland Boote mit Asylsuchenden in die Türkei zurückdrängen dürfe.

Allerdings stehen dieser Verordnung zahlreiche andere Rechtsnormen entgegen. Die wichtigste: die Allgemeine Erklärung der Menschenrechte, welche die Uno 1948 verabschiedet hat. In deren Artikel 14 heisst es: «Jeder hat das Recht, in anderen Ländern vor Verfolgung Asyl zu suchen und zu geniessen.»

Rechtswissenschaftlerinnen aus dem In- und Ausland erklären, dass eine Bestimmung des Völkerrechts selbstredend wichtiger sei als eine aus einer EU-Verordnung. Frontex selbst weist hingegen auf ein noch ungeklärtes Verhältnis zweier unterschiedlicher Rechtsnormen hin, gewissermassen ein juristisches Schlupfloch, womit Pushbacks nicht in jedem Fall illegal seien.

Die Juristin Nula Frei ist Expertin für Migrations- und Europarecht an der Universität Fribourg. Sie sagt: «Sobald eine Person irgendwie zu erkennen gibt, dass sie Schutz braucht, muss man ihr die Möglichkeit geben, in ein Asylverfahren hineinzukommen.»

Würden die Migrantinnen aus Griechenland in die Türkei zurückgedrängt und auf Rettungsinseln ausgesetzt, sei das nicht nur ein Pushback, «es ist auch noch ein Aussetzen in einer Notlage, was völkerrechtlich höchst problematisch ist».
Neun Frontex-Sitzungen, eine Schweizer Äusserung

Am 2. März 2022 warben Bundesrat Ueli Maurer und Bundesrätin Karin Keller-Sutter an einer Medienkonferenz in Bern für Frontex. Die Grenzbehörde der EU soll in den nächsten fünf Jahren von rund 1500 auf rund 10’000 Beamte ausgebaut werden; dafür braucht es eine deutliche Erhöhung des Budgets auf mehr als fünf Milliarden Franken.

Weil die Schweiz Schengen- und damit auch Frontex-Mitglied ist, soll sie 61 Millionen Franken an diesen Ausbau zahlen. Das Parlament hatte den Beitrag im letzten Oktober bewilligt. Weil ein Komitee aber das Referendum ergriff, kommt die Vorlage am 15. Mai zur Abstimmung.

Wer Ueli Maurer am 2. März reden hörte, staunte nicht schlecht. In der Vergangenheit hatte sich der SVP-Bundesrat kaum je für Grund- und Menschenrechte eingesetzt. Dieses Mal schon. Zu den Pushbacks von Frontex sagte er: «Es gibt da nichts zu beschönigen. Es gab hier Verstösse, die wir nicht akzeptieren wollen und nicht akzeptieren können.»

Genau aus diesem Grund aber müsse die Schweiz, so Maurers überraschendes Argument, bei Frontex mitmachen und sich am Ausbau beteiligen: «Wir versuchen hier alles, um die Qualität zu stärken. Die Frage des Referendums ist vielleicht einfach die: Schauen wir weg, Augen zu, Ohren zu und Mund zu (…), oder greifen wir dort mit ein und setzen uns dort für Verbesserungen ein, wo das notwendig ist? Ich glaube, die Rolle der Schweiz ist es, für diese Verbesserungen zu sorgen.»

Noch deutlicher wurde am 2. März Marco Benz, der Grenzbeamte des Bundes, der die Schweiz im Verwaltungsrat von Frontex vertritt. «Im Management-Board», sagte er, «werden diese Themen wie insbesondere die Einhaltung des Grundrechts­schutzes permanent thematisiert.» Dort habe die Schweiz die Möglichkeit, ihre Anliegen einzubringen. «Und das ist ein zentrales Anliegen der Schweiz, dass ebendieser Grundrechts­schutz eingehalten wird.»

Überdies betonte Benz, dass eine Vertreterin der Schweiz Mitglied der Frontex-Arbeitsgruppe war, die verschiedene Pushback-Fälle aufarbeitete.

Was Benz nicht sagte: Die Arbeitsgruppe kam nur wegen der Pushback-Vorwürfe der Medien zustande. Und sie hatte bloss einen sehr beschränkten Auftrag. Ziel der Untersuchungs­gruppe war es laut internen Sitzungs­protokollen, Klarheit über die Vorfälle zu schaffen. Dagegen war eine «Interpretation, ob das richtig oder falsch war», ausdrücklich unerwünscht, wie es im Mandat der Untersuchungs­gruppe heisst.

Entsprechend fiel das Ergebnis aus: 8 von 13 Vorfällen wurden bereits in einem vorläufigen Bericht ausgesondert. Bei 6 davon begründete die Untersuchungs­gruppe den Ausschluss damit, dass sich die Vorfälle in türkischen Küstengewässern abgespielt hätten und damit nicht als potenzielle Grundrechts­verletzung infrage kämen.

Eine zumindest streitbare Behauptung, da man davon ausgehen kann, dass die Flüchtenden, die häufig in überfüllten und seeuntauglichen Booten über die Ägäis fuhren, in Europa Asyl beantragen wollten, aber in vielen Fällen vor Grenzübertritt von Frontex entdeckt und von der griechischen Küstenwache daran gehindert wurden.

Dass die griechische Küstenwache dabei auch zu fragwürdigen Methoden greift, zeigt ein Zwischenfall, der sich am 27. Juli 2020 ereignete.

An diesem Tag entdeckte ein dänischer Helikopter, der im Rahmen der Joint Operation Poseidon die Ägäis überwachte, in den frühen Morgenstunden ein Gummiboot, das sich in griechischen Gewässern südlich der Insel Chios befand. Die griechische Küstenwache übernahm den Fall, nahm die Migrantinnen auf dem Boot aber nicht an Bord, sondern drängte sie ab und verständigte die türkischen Kollegen, die sie zurück in die Türkei brachten.

Die Griechen sollen daraufhin die Dänen aufgefordert haben, ihren Bericht so zu ändern, dass sie das Flüchtlings­boot nicht in griechischen, sondern in türkischen Gewässern entdeckt hätten, womit – zumindest in den Augen von Frontex und der griechischen Küstenwache – kein Pushback vorläge.

Die Dänen aber weigerten sich und reichten einen serious incident report ein mit Verdacht auf eine mutmassliche Grundrechts­verletzung.

Die Griechen stritten das ab (die Flüchtenden hätten von sich aus den Kurs in Richtung Türkei geändert) und verteidigten sich damit, es habe ein Missverständnis in der Kommunikation vorgelegen.

Auch diesen Fall legte Frontex in der internen Datenbank Jora als «Verhinderung der Ausreise» ab.

Und obwohl die griechische Küstenwache ihren Fallbeschrieb in der internen Datenbank Mitte Februar aufgrund des serious incident report anpasste und präzisierte, kam die Frontex-interne Untersuchungs­gruppe, der auch die Schweizer Vertreterin angehörte, zum Schluss: Man habe den Fall nicht ausreichend klären können.
Grossflächig geschwärzte Dokumente

Auch im Frontex-Verwaltungsrat hielt sich das Engagement der Schweiz für die Wahrung der Menschen­rechte in engen Grenzen. Im Jahr 2020, als es in der Ägäis zu zahlreichen Pushbacks kam, tagte das Management-Board neun Mal. Die Schweizer Vertretung äusserte sich aber lediglich vereinzelt zu Grundrechtsfragen.

Einmal geschah das an der Sitzung vom 10. November 2020. Im Protokoll dazu heisst es: «Die Schweiz sagte, dass alle Anschuldigungen in den Medien sehr ernst genommen werden sollten (…). Sie vertrat die Auffassung, dass der weitere Umgang mit diesen Vorwürfen eine klare Strategie erfordert, da sonst das Image der Agentur leiden könnte.» Es ging um Grundrechte – aber vor allem um den Ruf von Frontex.

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Das Bundesamt für Zoll und Grenzsicherheit (BAZG) sagt auf Anfrage, diese Darstellung sei «grundlegend falsch». Auf Nachfrage präzisiert die Bundesbehörde, sie habe sich zu späteren Zeitpunkten im Jahr 2021 und auch im laufenden Jahr «wiederholt zum Thema Grundrechte geäussert», sich direkt an Frontex-Direktor Leggeri gewandt und «schriftliche Eingaben» gemacht. Die Interventionen seien jedoch «vertraulich und können nicht herausgegeben werden». «Schliesslich geben wir zu bedenken, dass sich Grundrechts­politik nicht anhand von Sitzungsberichten qualifizieren lässt.»

Was die Recherche der Republik und ihrer Partnermedien zeigt: Bei Frontex und deren Mitgliedstaaten blieb vieles lang im Dunkeln.

Dieser Eindruck wurde durch die Schweizer Behörden zumindest nicht entkräftet. Die Republik hatte das BAZG schon vor mehreren Monaten um Einsicht in Dokumente gebeten, welche die Rolle der Schweiz in der EU-Grenzbehörde beleuchten. Dazu stellte die Republik ein umfassendes Gesuch im Rahmen des Öffentlichkeits­gesetzes und forderte Einblick in Einsatzpläne, Korrespondenzen, Aktennotizen, Einsatz­berichte, Arbeits­verträge, Unterlagen zum Schweizer Engagement in Sachen Menschenrechte.

Vordergründig gab sich die Behörde auskunftsbereit und lud mehrmals zu Treffen, um das Gesuch einzugrenzen, zu präzisieren und letztlich einfacher bewältigbar zu machen. Tatsächlich aber rückte es bis jetzt nur einzelne und zudem grossflächig geschwärzte Dokumente heraus.

Die Schweizer Rolle in Frontex – sie bleibt in einer Blackbox.
Noch einmal zurück zum 28. Mai 2021

Am 28. Mai 2021, kurz nach 13 Uhr, erblickte Aziz Berati ein Schiff der türkischen Küstenwache. Es war kurz zuvor darüber verständigt worden, dass ein Rettungs­floss im Meer treibe. Auf einem Bild, das die türkische Küstenwache später veröffentlichte, ist Berati auf dem Rettungsfloss zu sehen, gemeinsam mit einem seiner Kinder. Eine Person hielt die Hand in die Höhe: Hilfe!

Kurz darauf machten drei Männer der türkischen Küstenwache das Floss an ihrem Schiff fest. Sie trugen schwarze Schutzanzüge, Handschuhe und blaue Mützen. Dann holten sie einen kleinen Jungen vom Boot. Er war vielleicht drei Jahre alt.

Es folgten weitere Kinder, Frauen, Männer: 32 Personen insgesamt, die frühmorgens von der Türkei nach Lesbos aufgebrochen und es geschafft hatten.

Trotzdem verwehrte man ihnen das Recht auf ein Asylverfahren in Europa. Stattdessen wurden sie festgenommen, unter Vorspiegelung falscher Tatsachen weggebracht und schliesslich auf offenem Meer ausgesetzt.

Die türkische Küstenwache meldete den Fall als Pushback. So wie sie es fast jeden Tag tut.

Frontex hingegen deklarierte den Fall als «Verhinderung der Ausreise». So wie sie es sehr häufig tut.

Ein Offizier der griechischen Küstenwache sagt dazu: «Warum nennen sie es nicht einfach Pushbacks und bringen es hinter sich?»

Aziz Berati lebt heute mit seiner Familie in der Türkei. Bisher hat er die Flucht nicht wieder gewagt. Noch nicht.

Wenn er an den 28. Mai 2021 denkt, wird er wütend und traurig. Man habe ihn, seine Familie und seine Begleiterinnen unmenschlich behandelt – «bloss weil wir illegal über die Grenze gehen wollten».

«Es ist kein Verbrechen, Schutz zu suchen», sagt Berati. «Sie hätten sich wenigstens anständig verhalten können, uns mit ein wenig Menschlichkeit begegnen.»

Beratis Kinder weinten, als die griechischen Küstenwächter die Migrantinnen aufforderten, über eine grosse Leiter auf ein Rettungsfloss zu steigen. Sie hatten Angst. Ein Mann wollte sich weigern, da stiessen ihn die Küstenwächter, sagt Berati. Er wäre beinahe ins Wasser gefallen.

Dann trieben die Menschen rund zwei Stunden auf offenem Meer – ohne Sonnenschutz, ohne Gepäck, ohne Motor.

▻https://www.republik.ch/2022/04/27/inside-frontex-die-geheime-datenbank-der-eu

#push-backs #refoulements #asile #migrations #réfugiés #Frontex #Egée #mer_Egée #Grèce #prévention_au_départ #statistiques #Joint_Operations_Reporting_Application #JORA #base_de_données #opération_Poseidon #mensonge

sur les #life_rafts, ces « canots de couleur orange » dont parle Le Monde notamment, un fil de discussion sur seenthis :

https://seenthis.net/local/cache-vignettes/L600xH450/15Mayis2020s7427-22428.jpg

Haaa ça manquait de Lama ces temps-ci, cette news va faire le weekend de quelqu’un(e) !

Juste pour faire plaisir au « tintinophile » @simplicissimus :

▻http://www.capsurlemonde.org/andes/lamas/tintin.html

Utilisation de #hotspots_mobiles en #Italie
▻https://seenthis.net/messages/849512#message849606
►https://seenthis.net/messages/471637
►https://seenthis.net/messages/471340

#life_rats dans la #Mer_Egée (#Grèce)

https://seenthis.net/local/cache-vignettes/L600xH451/202007_refugfe72-46156.jpg

Greece : Investigate Pushbacks, Collective Expulsions (fil de discussion) :
►https://seenthis.net/messages/868362

Beaucoup d’articles/document sur ce fil de discussion :
►https://seenthis.net/messages/840285

Afghan Families Left Drifting in #Life_Rafts Outside Lesvos
▻https://seenthis.net/messages/980784

Une idée importée d’#Australie :

https://seenthis.net/local/cache-vignettes/L600xH338/cn-boat-wide4a96-4dcbd.jpg https://seenthis.net/local/cache-vignettes/L600xH338/Dan-201403018a0a-70346.jpg

Sur seenthis (c’était 2014) :
▻https://seenthis.net/messages/275404#message282774
▻https://seenthis.net/messages/233722
▻https://seenthis.net/messages/840285#message840287

Projet #UK / #Angleterre :

The Times reported that the government was also giving serious consideration to the idea of creating #floating_asylum_centres in disused ferries moored off the UK coast.

►https://seenthis.net/messages/879221

Press Release: New Legal Centre Lesvos report details collective expulsions in the Aegean Sea

Greek authorities are unlawfully expelling migrants who have arrived in Greece, and abandoning them at sea on motorless, inflatable vessels. In a report released today by Legal Centre Lesvos, testimonies from 30 survivors detail the systematic, unlawful and inherently violent nature of these collective expulsions.

Since the Greek authorities’ one month suspension of the right to seek asylum on 1 March 2020, the Greek government has adopted various unlawful practices that are openly geared towards the deterrence and violent disruption of migrant crossings, with little regard for its obligations deriving from international law and specifically from the non refoulement principle – and even less for the lives of those seeking sanctuary.

While collective expulsions from Greece to Turkey are not new, in recent months Greek authorities have been using rescue equipment – namely inflatable, motorless life rafts – in a new type of dystopic expulsion. Migrants are violently transferred from Greek islands, or from the dinghy upon which they are travelling, to such rafts, which are then left adrift in open water.

In addition to the well-documented practice of non-assistance to migrant dinghies, the Greek authorities have damaged the motor or gasoline tank of migrant dinghies before returning the vessel – and the people on board – to open waters, where they are subsequently abandoned.

These collective expulsions, happening in the Aegean region, are not isolated events. Direct testimonies from survivors, collected by the Legal Centre Lesvos, demonstrate that they are part of a widespread and systematic practice, with a clear modus operandi implemented across various locations in the Aegean Sea and on the Eastern Aegean islands.
The information shared with the Legal Centre Lesvos is from 30 survivors, and testimonies from 7 individuals who were in direct contact with survivors, or were witness to, a collective expulsion. These testimonies, related to eight separate collective expulsions, were collected between March and June 2020, directly by the Legal Centre Lesvos.

Collective expulsions are putting peoples’ lives at risk, are contrary to Greece’ international legal obligations and violate survivors’ fundamental and human rights, including their right to life and the jus cogens prohibitions on torture and refoulement. When carried out as part of a widespread and systematic practice, as documented in our report, these amount to a crime against humanity.

Collective expulsions should undoubtedly be condemned, in the strongest possible terms; however, this is not sufficient: it is only through the immediate cessation of such illegal practices that the protection of human rights and access to asylum will be restored at the European Union’s external borders.

Lorraine Leete, attorney and one of the Legal Centre Lesvos’ coordinators, said that:
“The Greek authorities are abandoning people in open water, on inflatable and motorless life rafts – that are designed for rescue – with no regard for their basic safety, let alone their right to apply for asylum. Such audacious acts show the violence at the core of the European border regime, and the disregard that it has for human life.

Greek authorities have denied reports of collective expulsions as “fake news”, despite a plethora of undeniable evidence, from survivors and various media outlets. This is untenable: evidence shared with the Legal Centre has shown that collective expulsions are happening in the Aegean sea, with a systematic and widespread modus operandi that amounts to crimes against humanity. They are being carried out in the open, in plain view – if not with the participation – of the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, Frontex. European Authorities are complicit in these crimes as they have thus far failed to act to prevent further pushbacks, or hold Greek authorities accountable.”

▻https://legalcentrelesvos.org/2020/07/13/press-release-new-legal-centre-lesvos-report-details-collective-e

–---

Pour télécharger le #rapport:

https://i.imgur.com/wplKCUu.png

#Mer_Egée #Méditerranée

BVMN Visual Investigation: Analysis of Video Footage Showing Involvement of Hellenic Coast Guard in Maritime Pushback

The following piece is a product of a joint-investigation by Josoor and No Name Kitchen on behalf of the Border Violence Monitoring Network.

Introduction

Since the spring, consistent and well-documented reports have shown masked men aggressively pursuing boats full of refugees, migrants, and asylum seekers in the Aegean Sea, before either destroying or off-loading the boats and initiating illegal return operations to Turkey.

One investigation which Josoor contributed to, analyzed a set of materials documenting masked men operating from an inflatable boat off the island of Lesvos in early June. Testimonies recorded on the BVMN database [June 5th; June 3rd] as well as other media reports describe a series of incidents where Hellenic Coast Guard [HCG] vessels approach boats carrying men, women and children in the Aegean between Turkey and Greece and variably drove them back, intimidated them, or destroyed and removed their engines. Several of these operations have been marked by direct physical violence at the hands of the HCG. A more recent report from the New York Times referenced at least 1,072 asylum seekers being abandoned at sea by Greek officials in at least 31 separate expulsions since March.

The consistency of these reports underscore a broader pattern of maritime pushbacks which, in many ways, mirrors the similarly illegal procedures which have become commonplace throughout Greece and along the Balkan Route.

Despite numerous witness testimonies of this behavior, direct evidence linking specific Hellenic Coast Guard Vessels to these illegal practices remain sparse. New video evidence obtained by the association Josoor [a BVMN-member based in Turkey] from an incident on July 11th, may provide a crucial new perspective in the analysis of this behavior.

▻https://giphy.com/gifs/U6MK9HH9ZdM33U74aA

In this investigation, we will focus on a series of four videos [Link to videos 1, 2, 3, & 4] filmed on July 11th and obtained on the same day, showing masked men on a medium-sized vessel approaching a dingy filled with women and children. The man who filmed this video sent the materials over to Josoor while still on the dinghy, after this he reported being returned to Turkey and held in detention for a period of two weeks. The purpose of this analysis is to better identify the individuals and the vessel involved in the operation which resulted in the pushback of the group.

Given the initial lack of a witness testimony for this event [which was unable to be obtained for several weeks due to the respondent’s detention in Turkey], we had limited material to work with. In order to address these shortcomings, we utilized various open-source techniques such as geolocating the video using topographic satellite renders, stitching together the scene with compiled images, and conducting research on the origins of the vessel carrying the masked men.

Geolocating of the 11 July Incident

An important part of this investigation was the geolocation of the incident in order to better understand the dynamics at play, and verify the pushback element.

A useful hint in geolocating these videos was the distinct mountain lines featured in the background in two of the clips. In order to do this, we first isolated the ridge-lines shown in the backgrounds of these two clips by using a photo-stitching technique to produce a panorama of the scene.

https://www.borderviolence.eu/wp-content/uploads/Video2-600x547.png https://www.borderviolence.eu/wp-content/uploads/Video1-600x452.png

Using Google Earth’s topographic satellite renders of the Aegean Sea around the coastlines of Lesvos, we were then able to geolocate these two clips. In the background of the alleged pushback operation is the shore of Lesvos; Mytilini can be seen in the center right as the populated area in the background of the videos. This indicates that the dinghy was being chased east towards Diliki, Turkey as it was intercepted by the HCG vessel.

This geolocated area matches with information posted from Turkish Coast Guard of a rescue operation on July 11th at 10:00 am off the coast of Dikili, Turkey. This was their only reported rescue of that day.

https://www.borderviolence.eu/wp-content/uploads/Myti2-600x338.jpg

Identification Of HCG Vessel Involved in the July 11th Incident

The vessel in question’s colour is light grey and features a white and blue striped symbol towards the bow on the starboard side: the symbol of the Hellenic Coast Guard.

Slightly farther towards the bow of the boat on its starboard side, the lettering marking the vehicle’s identification within the HCG can also be seen: ΛΣ-618

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The boat in question is one of two Faiakas-class fast patrol crafts (FPCs) currently operated by the Hellenic Coast Guard (HCG) – this one being the ΛΣ-618 and the other being ΛΣ-617. Under a contract awarded by the HCG in April 2014, the Montmontaza-Greben shipyard, located on the island of Korcula, Croatia, was awarded a 13.3 million euro ($15.5 million) contract to supply six of these vessels which are listed as POB-24G.

The POB-24 vessels are 24.6 meters long, and are equipped with two diesel engines that enable a maximum speed of 30 knots and a range of 400 miles. The vessels are staffed by a crew of seven but can be augmented by up to 25 additional personnel if needed.

Importantly, the acquisition of these vessels by the HCG was majority financed via the European Commission’s External Borders Fund which provided for 75% of the cost, with the rest consisting of domestic funding. The first of POB-24G vessels, ΛΣ-617, was delivered in February 2015 whereas ΛΣ-618 was launched into service several months later in August 2015. These boats have enhanced the operational capacity of the HCG by relieving pressure from its aging Dilos-Class patrol vessels.

Identification of the officers present in the 11 July Incident

While the men seen approaching the dinghy on board the ΛΣ-618 took steps to conceal their identities, context clues within the videos allowed us to draw a better picture of who exactly they were and what their behavior was.

https://www.borderviolence.eu/wp-content/uploads/HCGMen-600x519.png

Six men can be counted standing on board the ΛΣ-618. The men wear dark colored clothing with short-sleeved shirts marked with a logo on their upper right torsos and have either dark colored shorts or long trousers on. All six have their faces covered with either black balaclava masks or neck gaiters – an important point to keep in mind when considering that in June, the Hellenic Coast Guard’s spokesperson stated that “under no circumstances do the officers of the Coast Guard wear full face masks during the performance of their duties”.

The men in the image above are wearing clothes which share similarities with the uniforms worn by the Hellenic Coast Guard, as the picture below shows.

https://www.borderviolence.eu/wp-content/uploads/MenHCG-600x592.jpg https://www.borderviolence.eu/wp-content/uploads/HCRAE-118-600x400.jpg https://www.borderviolence.eu/wp-content/uploads/limani2-600x400.jpg

The man closest to the bow of the boat holds a weapon which appears to be an FN FAL assault rifle whereas the man second from the stern looks at the group with either a camera or a pair of binoculars. FN-FAL rifles have been carried by Greek government forces since the 1970s, thus falling in line with the scene we are shown in the videos.

Treatment of the refugees, migrants, and asylum seekers on board the dingy

https://www.borderviolence.eu/wp-content/uploads/fal-1-600x340.png https://www.borderviolence.eu/wp-content/uploads/zoomhcg-325x600.jpg

Our investigation of the events documented in this video, and what happened next to the refugees, migrants, and asylum seekers on board the dingy, prioritized a fact-finding search within the clips themselves. On the day of the incident, a Syrian man on board the dinghy sent four videos to Josoor. He claimed to have sent them from the dinghy as they were being approached by the vessels initially and then later after they were cast afloat into Turkish waters.

In one of the videos, at least 32 people on board the now motorless dingy can be seen floating in largely calm waters. The video shows a largely mixed passenger demographic with the men, women, and children on the boat having a varied representation of skin colors. Turkish Coast Guard records from their single intervention of the coast of Dikili on July 11th reports a group of 40 refugees assisted of which 21 were Syrian, 8 Congolese, 4 Somali,
 3 Central African, 2 Palestinian, 
1 Senegalese, and 1 Eritrean. Accounting for the boat passengers not shown within the video, these numbers correspond with the video footage inside the dinghy.

Giving his testimony of the event several weeks later to Josoor, the man who filmed these videos described that upon its initial approach of their dinghy, the AE-618 had a rigid-hulled inflatable boat (RHIB) deployed next to it which approached them. Allegedly, one of the officers spoke in English to a member of the dinghy group, who expressed their intention to claim asylum. The officer responded negatively to this request and told them that because of COVID-19, they would not be allowed to enter the island and had to return to Turkey. The respondent described that at first, the driver of the dinghy did not follow that order and subsequently the officers destroyed the engine of the dinghy and beat its driver with batons. As other group members tried to protect the driver, they were also beaten with batons.

https://www.borderviolence.eu/wp-content/uploads/Motor1-328x600.jpg https://www.borderviolence.eu/wp-content/uploads/Motor2-336x600.jpg

The officers subsequently dragged them to Turkish waters and then left the group floating there with the broken engine. After spending several more hours in the water, the Turkish Coast Guard arrived at the scene to rescue the passengers aboard the dingy. They took them to a quarantine detention center, from where they were released after 15 days.

With closer analysis, the video footage is able to corroborate this account. In the final video sent by the Syrian dinghy passenger, the dinghy is shown to be floating quietly in the ocean. There is no indication of the ΛΣ-618 being present at this point and the group inside the dinghy appears uncertain. At one point in the video, the cameraman pans towards the stern of the boat and briefly shows its motor. When comparing a still of the motor in the final video to a still from the dinghy’s motor during its initial flight from the ΛΣ-618, it becomes clear that it was tampered with in the intervening time. Given the many substantiated reports of boat motor destruction at the hands of the HCG, it is most likely that the balaclava-clad men on the ΛΣ-618 destroyed the dinghy’s motor before setting it adrift towards Turkey

Contextualizing the incident on 11 July

In contextualizing the incident of 11 July in the broader practices of the HCG in the Aegean, it is important to look at the documented history of aggression of the ΛΣ-618. On March 7th, 2020 the boat ΛΣ-618 was involved in an incident with a Turkish Coast Guard boat wherein the Greek boat entered Turkish waters and was chased in close proximity at high speeds by the Turkish boat. More recently, in the early morning hours of August 15th, the boat was documented participating in an incident along with Nato and Frontex vessels [and several helicopters], blocking a boat carrying women and children from entering into Greek waters.

Pushbacks in the Aegean Sea have been reported on a daily basis these past few months. Given the persistence of pushbacks in the area as well as the strong presence of Frontex vessels on the Aegean Sea, the tacit support that the European Union lends to the Hellenic Coastguard in these illegal practices must be considered. The EU-funded acquisition of the ΛΣ-618 represents just a portion of the close to 40 million euros which the EU has afforded the HCG to procure new vessels within the last five years. These boats, as it has been shown in this investigation, are being used to illegally push vulnerable people back to Turkish waters – a gross misuse of power.

▻https://giphy.com/gifs/J4ClIZSSzrAUjmFySd

https://www.borderviolence.eu/wp-content/uploads/ABR-338x600.jpg

Conclusion

This investigation began by analysing a series of four videos showing masked men in a vessel approaching a small dinghy filled with refugees, migrants, and asylum seekers on the Aegean Sea who later claimed to be pushed back to Turkey from Greek waters. Using Earth Studio and photo-stitching techniques, we were first able to geolocate the video to somewhere on the Aegean between Mytilini, Greece and Diliki, Turkey. We were then able to identify the vessel as the Hellenic Coast Guard’s ΛΣ-618 Faiakas-class fast patrol craft by highlighting the clear HCG emblem visible on its side and it’s ship identification number. This allowed us to make a strong conclusion that the masked men on this boat, who wore uniforms identical to those previously worn by the vessel’s crew-members, were acting in an official capacity. Finally, we were also able to contextualize the ΛΣ-618 documented history of aggressive pursuits of boats carrying refugees and asylum seekers in Greek waters and also highlighted the vessel’s EU-linked acquisition from a Croatian boatbuilder.

When put together, this analysis clearly links the materials shown in the videos to the well documented trend of maritime push-backs by the HCG in the last months. To be clear, the findings of this investigation directly contradicts the claims of the Hellenic Coast Guard’s spokesperson who recently stated that “under no circumstances do the officers of the Coast Guard wear full face masks during the performance of their duties”. Going even further, this investigation disproves the statement of Greek government spokesman Stelios Petsas who told the New York Times in August that “Greek authorities do not engage in clandestine activities.” This investigation also further confirms the conclusion of previous investigations that the Hellenic Coastguard is engaging in pushbacks, casting strong doubt on Prime Minister Mitsotakis statement from August 19 that “it has not happened.”Pushbacks, whether they be on land or on sea, are illegal procedures, emboldened and made more efficient by EU funding mechanisms.

▻https://www.borderviolence.eu/bvmn-investigations-analysis-of-video-footage-showing-involvement-of-
#analyse_visuelle #architecture_forensiques

Small Children Left Drifting In Life Rafts In The Aegean Sea!

In yet another shocking breach of international law, men, women and children have been beaten, robbed and forced onto a life raft by Greek authorities, despite repeated government claims that it does not undertake ‘pushbacks’ of refugees into Turkey. Thirteen men, women and children were forcibly removed from a refugee camp in Lesvos on Wednesday night by uniformed operatives, who claimed the refugees were being taken to be tested for COVID-19. Instead, they were forced into an isobox, repeatedly beaten with batons, stripped of their possessions and forced into the sea on an inflatable life raft.

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On Wednesday night (17th February 2021) at around 19.00 EET, a boat carrying 13 people – 5 children, 3 women and 5 men – landed east of Eftalou, in northern Lesvos. They came ashore and walked into the woods to avoid being seen by people, because they were afraid of being found and pushed back to Turkey by the Hellenic coast guard.

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At 20.00, they contacted Aegean Boat Report on Whatsapp for help. It was a cold night and the children were freezing so the group needed to find shelter. At 20.10 they sent both their live location and regular location on Whatsapp, which showed they were just 300 meters from the quarantine camp in Megala Therma, Lesvos.

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At 20.18 the new arrivals were sent the camp’s location, and directions to it from their position. At first, they were scared of the police, but they decided to listen to the advice they were given, and walked to the camp. Infuriatingly and unforgivably, in light of what happened next, the refugees were proven correct to mistrust the Greek port police to accept and protect their rights as human beings.

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At 21.15, the 13 people arrived outside the Megala Therma camp, where they were met by that night’s port police duty officers, were told to wait inside the camp, while one officer made a phone call on his mobile phone. While the officer made this call, camp residents gave the new arrivals blankets and raisins, because the 13 were freezing and no support was provided by the police. At this point, the new arrivals were inside the camp, and the women and children used the toilets. This detail is important, because what happened next means these people were removed by force from a camp managed by the Greek Ministry of Migration, and illegally deported.

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When the officer returned, he told the new arrivals they were going to be taken to be tested for COVID-19, which camp residents who overheard found odd, because this is not usually done at night. On Wednesday evening there where 29 residents in the quarantine camp, so there are many witnesses of their arrival and later removal by police. There is no doubt that the 13 people later deported were inside Megala Therma camp.

Aegean Boat Report has obtained a detailed description of the two officers on duty that night, and in coordination with a shift protocol from the port police, it would be fairly easy to determine the identity of these two officers in any official investigation.

Police told the new arrivals to hand over their phones. They had eight phones between them, but at this stage they only handed three to the police. The officers then demanded that they walk west on the dirt track, but the people refused. They didn’t trust the police, because residents in the camp had told them that testing was not performed at night. The police insisted and the 13 people, five of them children, did not feel they could resist officer carrying guns.

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They walked for about 15 minutes, and arrived at a small white container. They were told to wait outside the container, and about 30 minutes later an officer arrived with a key and locked them inside. When they had calmed down enough, they wrapped the children in blankets, helped them to sleep, and at 22.36 EET, made a video which they sent, along with their location, to Aegean Boat Report.

Local residents in the area confirm that police have placed a white container/Isobox next to the dirt track in this exact location, and the video sent by the new arrivals from inside the container, combined with the location sent at the same time, confirm that this was where they were locked up.

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After about one hour, a black or dark blue van arrived, and four men wearing unmarked dark blue or black, seemingly military, uniforms and balaclavas, and carrying batons entered the container shouting. The refugees, particularly the children, were very frightened, and the uniformed men screamed “Get up! Get up!” and hit people with batons to force them to stand. They immediately frisked them one by one, even the children, and stole their belongings, bags, money and three of the remaining mobile phones. The refugees report that the men paid particular attention to the women, putting their hands in private areas by force, which was especially humiliating, a violation which they were powerless to prevent. The officers next forced the men, women and children one by one into the back of the van like cattle. Those who resisted were again beaten with batons.

The refugees said it felt like they had travelled for hours in the van, but it was difficult to get a real feeling of time in their situation. When they eventually arrived, they were taken out of the van, each struck 2-3 times with batons and ordered to look at the ground. Those who didn’t were beaten again. They had arrived in a port, made of concrete, which had floodlights, a fence, and a flat roofed square building. But as they were beaten every time they tried to look around, it was hard for them to be certain about their surroundings. From their description, travel time from the container, and the travel time in the boat to the point they were abandoned in a life raft, it’s fairly certain that the port is the Schengen port in Petra, north-east Lesvos, which has been used frequently in the last months for illegal deportations by the Hellenic coast guard. (Another Proven Pushback!)

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In similar previous cases, people have been taken from the port in large vessels, but this time they were put on a small boat, described by the refugees as a grey rubber speedboat with two engines and a four-man crew. They were placed in the front of the boat, which was piloted by one crew member in its centre. The boat described is almost certainly a Lambro coastal patrol RIB used by the Hellenic coast guard, usually to help people in distress. The five children, three women and five men were forced onto this RIB by four men in the same dark military uniforms and balaclavas as those who had robbed, beaten and forced them into a van. The refugees could not say if they were the same four men who had picked them up and beaten them at the container, but they, too, beat the men, women and children as they forced them into the RIB, ordering them to “look down”.

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They were travelling in the boat for less than 30 minutes, including a short stop close to a large grey vessel, after only 10 minutes. One of the officers spoke on the radio with the large vessel in a language the refugees thought was Greek, and was certainly not English. They described the vessel as grey with blue and white stripes on the front – a description which matches the appearance of the Hellenic Coast Guard vessels which patrol the border area.

The boat stopped after approximately 30 minutes, and then an orange tent shaped inflatable life raft was cast over the side. One of the officers went into the raft and put up a small light inside, then the officers pushed the people into the raft one by one. This took only a few minutes, and as soon as all 13 people had been forced into the raft, the boat with the Greek officers left the men, women and children alone, in the dark, helplessly drifting in the sea. Not one of the people – even the children – in the life raft were given life jackets, and sea water had already found its way into the life raft.

At 01.29, they a video was sent to Aegean Boat Report, showing the people inside the life raft. Soon after, alone, cold, tired, powerless, and vulnerable, the refugees began to panic. Using one of the phones they had managed to hide when they were robbed by the uniformed officers, they called the Turkish coast guard.

At 04.10 the Turkish coast guard reported they had found and rescued 13 people from a life raft drifting outside Behram, Turkey.

Aegean Boat Report received a third video the following day, this time from inside a bus, and a location that showed they were heading towards Ayvacik, Turkey.

This video is of the same people in the video from the container on Lesvos, and from the life raft helplessly drifting in the Aegean Sea.

And there is absolutely no doubt who is responsible for their illegal deportation. Despite the fact that the Greek government continues to claim to follow all international laws and regulations.

Last week, the minister of asylum and immigration, Notis Mitarachis, once again denied claims that Greece is pushing refugees back to Turkey, calling the allegations “fake news,” and claiming they are part of a strategy promoted by Turkey. For some reason he has not chosen to explain this strategy. (Greek migration minister calls allegations of migrant pushbacks ‘fake news’)

And yet, even as Mitarachis and his government continues to make these claims, more and more people are illegally set adrift in the Aegean Sea, having been forcibly removed from refugee camps, beaten, stripped of their possessions, and forced onto inflatable rafts by uniformed people operating in Greece.

▻https://aegeanboatreport.com/2021/02/22/small-children-left-drifting-in-a-life-raft-in-the-aegean-sea-appr

Uno-Flüchtlingshilfswerk zählt Hunderte mutmaßliche Pushbacks

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Das Uno-Flüchtlingshilfswerk (UNHCR) erhöht wegen der Rechtsverletzungen in der Ägäis den Druck auf die griechische Regierung. Seit Beginn des vergangenen Jahres habe man »mehrere Hundert Fälle« von mutmaßlichen Pushbacks registriert, sagte die UNHCR-Repräsentantin in Griechenland, Mireille Girard, dem SPIEGEL.

Das UNHCR habe den Behörden die entsprechenden Hinweise übergeben. In allen Fällen lägen der Organisation eigene Informationen vor, die auf illegale Pushbacks an Land oder auf See hindeuten. »Wir erwarten, dass die griechischen Behörden diese Vorfälle untersuchen«, sagte Girard. »Das Recht auf Asyl wird in Europa angegriffen.«
Pushbacks verstoßen gegen internationales Recht

Der SPIEGEL hat seit Juni 2020 in gemeinsamen Recherchen mit »Report Mainz« und Lighthouse Reports gezeigt, dass die griechische Küstenwache Flüchtlingsboote in der Ägäis stoppt, den Motor der Schlauchboote kaputt macht und die Menschen wieder in türkische Gewässer zieht. Anschließend setzen die griechischen Beamten die Migrantinnen und Migranten auf manövrierunfähigen Schlauchbooten auf dem Meer aus. Manchmal benutzen sie auch aufblasbare orange Rettungsflöße. Am griechisch-türkischen Grenzfluss Evros kommt es zu ähnlichen Aktionen.

DER SPIEGEL

Diese sogenannten Pushbacks verstoßen gegen internationales und europäisches Recht – unter anderem, weil den Schutzsuchenden kein Zugang zu einem Asylverfahren gewährt wird. Griechenland bestreitet die Anschuldigungen pauschal, bei den Augenzeugenberichten und geolokalisierten Videos handele es sich um »Fake News«.

Auch die europäische Grenzschutzagentur Frontex ist in die Pushbacks verwickelt, sie führt in der Ägäis gemeinsame Operationen mit der griechischen Küstenwache durch. In mindestens sieben Fällen befanden sich Frontex-Einheiten in der Nähe von Pushbacks, in einigen Fällen übergaben die europäischen Grenzschützer den Griechen die Flüchtlinge sogar, diese übernahmen dann den Pushback. Ein deutscher Bundespolizist im Frontex-Einsatz verweigerte deswegen den Dienst.

Die EU-Antibetrugsbehörde Olaf, das EU-Parlament und die Ombudsfrau der EU untersuchen derzeit die Pushbacks. Eine interne Frontex-Untersuchung konnte nicht alle Vorfälle aufklären.

Die griechischen Behörden schleppen selbst Geflüchtete zurück aufs Meer, die bereits europäischen Boden erreichen konnten. Der SPIEGEL konnte zwei dieser Fälle zweifelsfrei nachweisen. Im April 2020 war eine Gruppe Asylsuchender auf Samos angekommen, im November eine auf Lesbos.
UNHCR dokumentierte Pushback von Lesbos

Das UNHCR hat nun ebenfalls einen solchen Fall aufgezeichnet. Am 17. Februar 2021 seien 13 Asylsuchende auf Lesbos angelandet, sagte Girard. Griechische Inselbewohner hätten das UNHCR alarmiert, die Organisation habe dann den lokalen Behörden Bescheid gegeben.

Die griechische Polizei habe die Geflüchteten in einen Container in einem Quarantänecamp im Norden der Insel geführt. Dann seien vermummte Männer gekommen, hätten die Migrantinnen und Migranten, darunter Frauen und Kinder, zum Hafen gefahren und die Menschen in einem aufblasbaren Rettungsfloß antriebslos auf dem Meer zurückgelassen. Später wurden sie von der türkischen Küstenwache gerettet.

Das UNHCR habe den Fall detailliert rekonstruiert sowie Zeugen und die Überlebenden interviewt. Es bestehe kein Zweifel, dass die Menschen auf Lesbos angekommen und illegal in die Türkei zurückgeführt worden seien, sagt Girard. Solche Aktionen seien illegal. »Der Vorfall muss untersucht werden und Konsequenzen haben.«

Die teilweise gewalttätigen Aktionen führten dazu, dass Geflüchtete sich inzwischen oft vor den Behörden versteckten, so Girard weiter. »Die Asylsuchenden sind ohnehin schon traumatisiert, wenn ihnen nun in Europa wieder Gewalt angetan wird, retraumatisiert sie das«, sagt Girard. »Besonders die Kinder haben damit noch jahrelang zu kämpfen.«

▻https://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/uno-fluechtlingshilfswerk-zaehlt-hunderte-mutmassliche-pushbacks-a-01b3fb03-

#vidéo

The new normality: Continuous push-backs of third country nationals on the Evros river

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The Greek Council for Refugees, ARSIS-Association for the Social Support of Youth and HumanRights360 publish this report containing 39 testimonies of people who attempted to enter Greece from the Evros border with Turkey, in order to draw the attention of the responsible authorities and public bodies to the frequent practice of push-backs that take place in violation of national, EU law and international law.

The frequency and repeated nature of the testimonies that come to our attention by people in detention centres, under protective custody, and in reception and identification centres, constitutes evidence of the practice of pushbacks being used extensively and not decreasing, regardless of the silence and denial by the responsible public bodies and authorities, and despite reports and complaints denouncements that have come to light in the recent past.
The testimonies that follow substantiate a continuous and uninterrupted use of the illegal practice of push-backs. They also reveal an even more alarming array of practices and patterns calling for further investigation; it is particularly alarming that the persons involved in implementing the practice of push-backs speak Greek, as well as other languages, while reportedly wearing either police or military clothing. In short, we observe that the practice of push-backs constitutes a particularly wide-spread practice, often employing violence in the process, leaving the State exposed and posing a threat for the rule of law in the country.
Τhe organizations signing this report urge the competent authorities to investigate the incidents described, and to refrain from engaging in any similar action that violates Greek, EU law, and International law.

►https://www.gcr.gr/en/news/press-releases-announcements/item/1028-the-new-normality-continuous-push-backs-of-third-country-nationals-on-the-e

Pour télécharger le #rapport:

https://i.imgur.com/5Xtkexy.png

Ces engins utilisés pour refouler ressemblent fortement au #lifeboats utilisés par l’#Australie dans le même but :
▻https://seenthis.net/messages/879396#message879399

#modèle_australien

https://i.imgur.com/FpnrseO.png

More images published by @ABoatReport
this morning: a floating deportation camp.

▻https://twitter.com/itamann/status/1265202422177320960?s=03

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Tents at Sea: How Greek Officials Use Rescue Equipment for Illegal Deportations

Back in 2013, Australia introduced strange new machinery in its campaign against unauthorized migration: a dozen bright-orange and windowless life vessels, shaped like missiles. These were equipped with navigational systems, air conditioning, and an engine. Each vessel, asylum seekers said, was given “just enough fuel” to reach Indonesia. When they washed ashore in February 2014, Indonesian locals were initially unsure what they were looking at. It was a piece of new deportation infrastructure, designed to launch migrants intercepted at sea back to where they had come from.

In the shadow of the coronavirus pandemic, Greek authorities have put in place comparable deportation machinery. In at least 11 incidents since March 23, migrants have been found drifting in orange, tent-like inflatable life rafts without motors or propellants and that cannot be steered. Members of the Turkish Coast Guard reported these apparitions, but Greek authorities neither explained nor documented them. Images of these life rafts, fluorescent triangular structures afloat between black sea and dark sky, looked strange enough to seem superimposed. Relying on testimony and footage we obtained from multiple sources, including asylum seekers in the area, our investigation verifies this latest show of violence at the Greek-Turkish maritime border.

Far from Australia’s flashier orange vessels from five years back, these are more modest structures. Importantly, the Greek life rafts have appeared in a very different maritime environment: compared to the oceans surrounding Australia, the Aegean Sea is a relatively placid and narrow body of water. Yet like the Australian vessels, these too have been put in place by State authorities, in an organized way, violating fundamental rules of international law. The two sets of deportation craft share visible similarities and are each used in dangerous ways, shedding light on the legal and moral risks that states are now willing to take, just to keep out unwanted populations.

Maximum Deterrence

On Nov. 27, Greek Member of Parliament Kyriakos Velopoulos, leader of the right-wing Greek Solution party, appeared on a popular TV talk show on ERT, a Greek state-owned public broadcaster. He advanced a policy first adopted by the United States in Guantanamo Bay, where Haitian asylum-seekers were detained long before 9/11, and later expanded upon by Australia: open-air detention of asylum seekers on “uninhabited” islands. For those whose applications are rejected, Velopoulos suggested unilateral pushbacks to Turkey: Greek authorities should simply remove arriving migrants from the country and send them back to where they came from. Holding photos of the oblong orange vessels Australia had used, he explained: “This here … is a raft made by the Australian government … with food, actual food, and it never sinks.” An interviewer gasped: “There’s a humanitarian aspect to it!”

The relevant background to Velopoulos’s suggestions goes back to 1990, when the Dublin Convention introduced a system whereby asylum seekers must remain in the first European Union member State they access and have their requests processed there. This created an enormous and unjust burden on states at the “external borders” of the EU, such as Greece.

The latest version of this arrangement, the Dublin III Regulation, was adopted in 2013. In June 2015, the EU further exacerbated the disproportionate role given to Greece in “migration management”: with the announcement of the “hotspot” approach, several Aegean islands became locations for asylum-seeker screening, with departures to the mainland prohibited. By August, the flow of refugees from conflicts in the Middle East and Africa, particularly the Syrian civil war, began to surge, generating a crisis within the EU as Member States argued over how to handle the arrivals.

The influx of migrants generated a legal challenge to the Dublin rules, but the Court of Justice of the European Union upheld them in a 2017 ruling. In the meantime, in 2016, the EU and Turkey issued a joint statement saying Turkey would prevent unauthorized migrants from leaving its territory, in return for as much as 6 billion euros from the EU. Refugees and migrants thus became a bargaining chip that Ankara continuously used in its diplomatic wrangles with Brussels.

Earlier this year, as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan pressed for Western approval of his military operation against Syrian and Russian forces in northern Syria, he intensified his exploitative bargaining. On Feb. 29, he declared that the country would no longer prevent migrants from reaching Europe.

As thousands of migrants gathered at the Turkish-Greek border, seeking to enter, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis warned in a tweet, “Once more, do not attempt to enter Greece illegally – you will be turned back.” On March 1, the Greek government issued an emergency decree suspending asylum applications. According to Human Rights Watch, the Greek National Security Council announced that unauthorized migrants would be immediately returned, without registration, “where possible, to their countries of origin or transit,” such as Turkey. As in other countries in the Mediterranean basin, which also resorted to emergency measures, the ongoing coronavirus pandemic has provided a convenient pretext for cracking down on migrants.

Adrift on the Aegean

According to a report from the Turkish Coast Guard, the first of at least 11 alleged pushback incidents involving life rafts occurred on March 23. One of the Turkish Coast Guard’s March 23 reports on “irregular migration” stated that the Guard had rescued 31 Syrian asylum seekers found floating in a life raft off the coast of Muğla’s Datça district in the Aegean Sea. The raft in question can clearly be seen in a press release photograph published by the Coast Guard about the incident.

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The refugees contacted the Consolidated Rescue Group, a grassroots organization run by Arabic-speaking volunteers who operate an emergency hotline for migrants in distress. In a statement obtained by the group and forwarded to us, the asylum seekers rescued on March 23 said they landed on the Greek island of Symi on March 22, at approximately 6 am. At certain points, the island is less than 8 km (or 5 miles) from the Turkish shore. The next day, the Greek authorities forced them onto “a small raft that looked like a tent and was orange in color” and left them to drift.

“Up until then, we had no idea that this was what they are going to do,” one of those on board, a construction worker (name withheld for security reasons) from the southeastern outskirts of Damascus, told us in a follow-up interview over WhatsApp.

The Greek Coast Guard had brought them to the main port of Symi and boarded them onto a ship: “They told us they would take us for a Corona test, and then we would be given our belongings back and transferred to Athens,” he said. Instead, after two hours onboard the Greek Coast Guard vessel, the authorities forced them down into a small raft: “They put everyone in … children, women, elderly, and young people. They didn’t leave anyone in the ship,” he said, telling us that they were left to drift “for over three hours,” until they were eventually rescued by the Turkish Coast Guard.

He provided us with video footage that he recorded of the group’s arrival on the island of Symi, as well as footage recorded from inside the raft, while awaiting rescue (see below).

The Greek government’s daily public statistics of arrivals contains no record of their arrival on the Greek island or their deportation to Turkey.

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A series of similar incidents were reported by the Turkish Coast Guard in the following days. On March 27, the Coast Guard reported rescuing 10 migrants (eight Palestinian, two Egyptian, consisting of 3 men, 2 women and 5 children) in a “life raft” off the coast of Muğla’s Datça district (the Turkish version is written as “Can Salı”). Again, photographs accompanying the Coast Guard’s official press release show people being rescued from a tent-like raft. According to the Turkish Coast Guard’s statements, the migrants had been “pushed back towards Turkish territorial waters by Greek Coast Guard.”

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The next day, on March 28, nine Syrians (4 men, 2 women and 3 children) rescued were reported found in a “life boat” off the coast of Aydın’s Didim district, again with clear photographs of the distinctive tent-like raft accompanying the Guard’s report.

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We interviewed a Kurdish couple from Hasaka, Syria, who were among the group. According to the couple, on the morning of March 27, “around 7 or 8 a.m.,” they arrived on the Greek island of Farmakonisi. Unlike the larger Aegean islands of Chios, Lesvos, Samos, and Kos, where refugees most commonly arrive, Farmakonisi is an uninhabited island and a military base. There are no camps or reception facilities for asylum seekers.

The couple told us they were held by the army in terrible conditions. They described being “treated like animals, … [t]he army took our phones, money, clothes, and documents then threw them into the sea. Around 3 a.m., they took us toward the sea border. Then they made us take a boat shaped like a square tent, 2 meters wide. Then we were rescued by the Turkish Coast Guard.”

Again, on March 29, the Turkish Coast Guard reported rescuing 18 migrants (7 men, 4 women and 7 children) at 11:40 p.m. The Coast Guard issued a press release, complete with clear photos of the migrants being rescued from a life raft.

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This is consistent with statements from migrants claiming to have been among those rescued. We interviewed a Syrian man who provided us with photographs of his arrival on Rhodes on March 27. The man told us he arrived with a group of 18 people: seven Palestinians, six Syrians and five Iranians, including children and a pregnant woman. After arriving on Rhodes, the man and the rest of the group were held by the Greek police on the roadside from 7 a.m. until 3 p.m.

“The weather was really cold and they did not let us light a fire to warm the women and children who were with us,” he said. The group was then transferred to the port by bus: “They gave us two tents, without anything in them. We were under full surveillance,” he added.

“They [Greek authorities] were suspicious that we had corona, so we wrote a sign that none of us has corona so that we could reassure them, hoping they would treat us in a humane way,” he said. “But this changed nothing.”

The group stayed in the makeshift camp for 2 1/2 days, until the night of March 29. He said that was when “a military van with army officers transferred us to the port and handed us over to the Greek Coast Guard.”

They were on board the Greek Coast Guard boat for about one hour: “Then they switched off the engine of the boat and made us go down, in the middle of the sea, in a rubber boat shaped like a tent.” They were left to drift for what he describes as approximately two hours, when they were intercepted by the Turkish Coast Guard:

When the Turkish Coast Guard found us and took us to the Turkish land, they registered our information and transferred us to the police station. They split us in half. One half was Syrians and Palestinians and the other half is the other nationalities. For us, we were detained for like 15 days and after that we were released without any rights as refugees, such as having a Kimlik [Temporary Protection Identification Document].

Without the proper registration, he explains, he is now hiding from the Turkish authorities as he fears being forcibly returned to Syria, where he fled.

Contravening International Rules

“Shaped like a tent,” as migrants repeatedly describe them, the life rafts the Greek Coast Guard appears to be employing to expel migrants are, in fact, designed for emergency evacuation in the case of shipwreck. They are manufactured not for transportation, but for rescue in case of a boat or ship sinking, to keep survivors afloat and alive until assistance arrives. They are not equipped with an engine or other propellant, cannot be steered, and provide minimal protection from the elements.

As Paul Crowley, a former captain for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution in Ireland, explained to us, such life rafts are never to be deployed “for any other reason other than to preserve life if no other option is available. It would contravene any internationally recognized standard to take people from a non-life-threatening location, either land or vessel, and place them in a raft.”

As far as the law goes, these returns risk violating the international standard of non-refoulement. This principle is at the centerpiece of international refugee protection, and prohibits returns of asylum seekers to any place where they may suffer persecution, torture, or inhuman and degrading treatment. The returns also violate Greece’s obligations under human rights law, including the prohibition of torture and inhuman and degrading treatment, and the right to life (see Articles 3 and 2, respectively, of the European Convention on Human Rights). Inasmuch as these violations constitute a “widespread or systematic attack” directed against a “civilian population,” they may raise concerns under international criminal law. Evidence continues to surface that these days, when it comes to the treatment of migrants, the Greek authorities violate fundamental edicts of international law unabated.

While the use of rescue equipment for deportations appears to be a new development, pushbacks on the Aegean are not. On March 23, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants Felipe González Morales stated that he is “very concerned about the reported pushbacks of asylum seekers and migrants” by Greek authorities at both land and maritime borders. He also referenced recent violence committed by Greek authorities against those seeking to aid migrants in the Aegean Sea area. The Germany-based human-rights monitoring organization Mare Liberum (“The Free Sea”) told us that a more common tactic of the Greek Coast Guard is to remove the engines of migrants’ boats and leave them to drift. Likewise, reports of the Turkish Coast Guard resorting to violence have arisen since Turkey’s implementation of the 2016 deal with the EU. Examples reported to the authors by migrants and NGO workers include driving rings around boats and throwing stones to stop boats from leaving Turkish waters.

Clearly both countries have geostrategic motives for their treatment of migrants related to their fraught relationships with the EU – including aid money and various benefits for their own citizens. Often, it seems like the two countries are playing a violent game of ping-pong across the Aegean with migrant bodies.

An Iraqi refugee whom we interviewed over WhatsApp — we will refer to as “Hatim” for safety reasons — told us that he has been pushed back to Turkey by Greek authorities on three occasions since July 2019. Hatim and his family fled to Turkey in 2014, when ISIS took over their home city of Mosul. They were selected for resettlement in the United States, and had just finished their first interview when Trump’s January 2017 Executive Order interrupted the program. On the night of April 1, 2020, he and his family made four separate attempts to reach the Greek island of Chios. On the last attempt, their rubber dinghy, carrying approximately 40 people, entered Greek territorial waters and was intercepted by the Greek Coast Guard. The Coast Guard confiscated the fuel from their boat and returned them to Turkish waters, leaving them to drift.

The systemic nature of such violations by the Greek authorities was recently highlighted by whistleblowers working under Frontex, the European border enforcement agency. In early March, the crew of a Danish patrol boat participating in “Operation Poseidon,” an EU maritime border patrol mission coordinated by Frontex, revealed that the Hellenic Coast Guard has explicit orders to stop migrant boats from crossing the sea border between Turkey to Greece. The Danish unit had refused to obey a pushback order from Operation Poseidon headquarters. Since then, NGOs Alarmphone and Mare Liberum have documented a series of pushbacks by Greek authorities along the Greece-Turkey border, including in the Aegean, that have become increasingly visible and severe.

Most notably, Greek newspaper EFSYN reported an incident involving 26 migrants whose arrival on Mourtia Beach on the Greek island of Samos April 1 was documented by a resident. The arrival was not reported by the Greek authorities. In fact, government statistics recorded no new arrivals to Samos on that date.

However, photographs taken by the Samos resident (and reproduced in EFSYN’s reporting) show the deflated dinghy and newly arrived migrants heading away from the shore. One member of the group is distinguished by bright red trousers while another carries a red duffle bag. EFSYN published photographs obtained from the Turkish Coast Guard of the same group who had arrived on Mourtia Beach aboard a Turkish Coast Guard boat after their rescue later that day, noting the marked similarities in the appearance, clothing and baggage of the migrants in the two sets of photographs. On the same day, the Turkish Coast Guard reported rescuing 26 migrants (found with a life raft) on the shore near Kuşadası national park, in a location that cannot be reached by land. According to the Turkish Coast Guard, the migrants said they had landed on Samos, were rounded up by the Greek Coast Guard and left to drift in the raft.

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On May 12, EFSYN published a video of a life raft like the ones pictured above (but without the cover) being dragged by a Greek Coast Guard boat off the southeast coast of Samos. The video was originally published by the Turkish Coast Guard on April 29, at which time it announced rescuing 22 people found drifting off the coast of Aydin province, bordering the Greek island of Samos. According to Bellingcat’s recent investigation into the incident, the group of 22 migrants rescued on April 29 (pictured in the video) had, in fact, arrived on Samos the previous day, on April 28.

Most recently, a video surfaced on YouTube appearing to show the Turkish Coast Guard rescuing a group of 30 migrants aboard two life rafts. According to Turkish records and reports, including photographs, the Coast Guard rescued 30 migrants in two life rafts on May 13, consisting of 13 Congolese, eight Syrians, five Bangladeshis and three Palestinian nationals, along with a Lebanese national. The rescue occurred off the coast of the district of Menderes in Turkey’s İzmir province.

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On May 15, yet another group of migrants were rescued by the Turkish Coast Guard after being found in these distinctive life rafts. This group of 25 migrants also reported having been repelled by Greek authorities, again with photographic evidence.

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The Tent and the Missile

Australians eventually replaced their orange lifeboats with fishing boats, although the intention was the same – pushing migrants away from Australian shores. But there was something chillingly memorable about that episode. It embodied the often-hypocritical moral stance of liberal democracies regarding strangers in need: a willingness to engage in extreme measures, even violence, to enforce borders, coupled with an emphasis on efficiency and a pretense of safety.

While the Australian deportation vessels appear to have been custom-made and reportedly were purchased for $40,000 AUD each (about $25,000 USD), the Greek life raft “tents” are considerably more modest. They are the kind of equipment a yacht owner might purchase online for around $2,000. Under the 1974 Safety of Life as Sea Convention, maritime vessels are required to have such protective gear available. The Hellenic Coast Guard has now repurposed them for the opposite ends – putting people in danger.

The Greek orange rafts seen in pictures appear to be a model manufactured by a Greek company called LALIZAS, which specialize in rescue equipment. A November 2019 LALIZAS newsletter includes an article entitled “24 hours in a LALIZAS Liferaft: Mission accomplished!” It describes a training in which members of Greece’s Hellenic Rescue Team and Hellenic Air Force carried out a simulated “‘actual’ case of emergency” by relying on a LALIZAS life raft and its food and survival equipment for a full 24 hours (see the story on the LALIZAS website here, and official video of the simulation, here). The life raft in question, code named “MEDUSSA” for the simulation, appears identical to those in many of the images of the tent-like rafts migrants have been rescued from while adrift in the Aegean.

According to the Greek government’s procurement records available online, it purchased the life rafts for the Greek Navy in 2017. Several government ministries appear to have contracts with this company.

The Australian life raft most closely resembles a missile. Its very image conveys the omnipotence of a regional superpower. By using such a machine, Australia effectively said to those attempting unauthorized maritime entry, “We will shoot you away.” To be sure, this missile is not fired at the migrants. It’s as if they become part of its ammunition; shot back at Indonesia’s shores, they are expected to crawl out of the shell once the missile crashes on one of the country’s countless atolls.

Compared to the grandeur of the Australian missile-like object, and its mechanical cruelty, the Greek tent-like raft is a poignant symbol of inhumanity. Set adrift on the Aegean, its disquieting quality emerges from the fact that it becomes a kind of metaphor for the refugee’s condition. Asylum seekers describing it had often used the Arabic word ḵēma (خيمة), which is the tent one would use in a camp (and typically not a home, even if that too is a tent). It echoes the word mūẖym, which means refugee camp. No fuel is rationed to reach a destination, and the expectation appears to be that the life raft will simply drift across the relatively narrow waterway.

The act of putting migrants to sea in inflatable tents is in line with the broader EU contemporary response to the “refugee crisis” – rejection and abandonment. This is, at least, how asylum seekers protesting at Moria camp, on the Greek island of Lesvos, see it: “We have been abandoned here,” said one asylum seeker on April 22.

Like the Australian example, the tent too is an instrument of deterrence: “We will shoot you away” is replaced with a threat of an even more perilous exile on water. This aspect, however, does not make the Greek use of the life rafts any better than the Australian display of technological might. Both are utilized to perform what is almost an act of murder, but ultimately not quite there.

▻https://www.justsecurity.org/70309/tents-at-sea-how-greek-officials-use-rescue-equipment-for-illegal-depo

–-> #camps_flottants #camp_flottant

A terrifying video of a push-back in the Aegean sea; men, women –two of them pregnant- and children abandoned at sea on a liferaft by the greek coast-guards

▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKsEHZKGsSE&feature=emb_title

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Le reportage complet du quotidien grec Efimerida tôn Syntaktôn:

Επαναπροώθηση με ελληνική σφραγίδα

Ένα ακόμα περιστατικό παράνομης επαναπροώθησης που σημειώθηκε στις 25 Μαΐου στο Αιγαίο, στη θαλάσσια περιοχή ανοιχτά της Λέσβου, έρχεται στη δημοσιότητα για να επιβεβαιώσει την σύνδεση της χρήσης σχεδιών τύπου liferafts, με τις ελληνικές λιμενικές αρχές.

Όπως είχε αποκαλύψει πρόσφατη έρευνα που δημοσιεύτηκε στον ιστότοπο justsecurity.org από τους δρ. Itamar Mann και Niamh Keady Tabal, και παραθέτει στοιχεία και για παράνομες επαναπροωθήσεις, το Ελληνικό Δημόσιο συνεργάζεται στενά με την ελληνική εταιρεία LALIZAS, σωστικές συσκευές της οποίας προμηθεύτηκε και το Πολεμικό Ναυτικό, σύμφωνα με αρχεία αναρτημένα στη Διαύγεια, το 2017.

Η έρευνα συζητήθηκε διεθνώς και ανάγκασε τον επικεφαλής της Frontex Φαμπρίς Λεγκέρι να παραδεχτεί τις ελληνικές παράνομες επιχειρήσεις επαναπροώθησης.

Το βίντεο που δημοσιοποιεί σήμερα η « Εφ.Συν. » εξετάστηκε από την ερευνητική ομάδα Disinfaux, η οποία συμμετείχε στην έρευνα του justsecurity.org. Στο βίντεο διακρίνεται καθαρά πάνω στη σχεδία η επιγραφή LALIZAS ISO-RAFT. Διακρίνεται επίσης ο σειριακός αριθμός και η ημερομηνία κατασκευής της σχεδίας, βάσει της διαθέσιμης ανάλυσης (ISO 96-50-1, LALIZAS ISO-RAFT, Date of Manufacture 10/2016 Serial Number 161012174). Το προϊόν με αυτά τα χαρακτηριστικά διαφημίζεται στην ιστοσελίδα της εταιρείας.

Σε άλλο απόσπασμα του βίντεο φαίνονται σε κοντινή απόσταση οι άλλες 3 παρόμοιες πλωτές σχεδίες, γεγονός που συνάδει με τα διαθέσιμα στοιχεία για το περιστατικό της 25ης Μαΐου, όπως είχε δημοσιευτεί το ίδιο πρωί, από τη Τουρκική Ακτοφυλακή.

Ελληνικές σχεδίες

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Ανήκε η συγκεκριμένη σχεδία στον επίσημο εξοπλισμό του Πολεμικού Ναυτικού ή άλλων ελληνικών δυνάμεων ; Πώς βρέθηκε καταμεσής του Αιγαίου ως μέσο επαναπροώθησης προς την Τουρκία προσφύγων που είχαν βρεθεί σε κίνδυνο ; Τι αναφέρουν τα πρωτόκολλα διάσωσης για όσους βρίσκονται σε κίνδυνο στη θάλασσα ;

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Τα βίντεο τραβήχτηκαν από πρόσφυγα πάνω στη σχεδία την ώρα της επαναπροώθησης. Σε ανάρτησή του στα μέσα κοινωνικής δικτύωσης περιγράφει τις δραματικές στιγμές που έζησε αυτός και άλλοι περίπου 70 πρόσφυγες στις 25 Μαΐου, από τη στιγμή που έπεσαν στα χέρια του Λιμενικού μέχρι που τους εγκατέλειψε, και βρέθηκαν να πλέουν αβοήθητοι πάνω σε τέσσερις σχεδίες στη μέση του Αιγαίου. Παρέμειναν εκεί, ανάμεσά τους πέντε παιδιά και δύο έγκυες. Ένας τους είχε καταφέρει να κρύψει το κινητό του τηλέφωνο και κατάφεραν να καλέσουν το τουρκικό Λιμενικό, το οποίο τους εντόπισε.

Η « Εφ.Συν. » επικοινώνησε με τον πρόσφυγα που ανάρτησε το βίντεο. Όπως αναφέρει, σκάφος της ελληνικής ακτοφυλακής έκανε μανούβρες γύρω από τη βάρκα στην οποία αρχικά επέβαιναν οι πρόσφυγες. « Όλοι οι φίλοι μου έκλαιγαν, ούρλιαζαν, ζητούσαν βοήθεια από το λιμενικό. Άντρες που φορούσαν στρατιωτικές στολές, και είχαν όπλα, πήραν τη μηχανή της βάρκας και μας είπαν : "Είμαστε εδώ για να σας βοηθήσουμε, θέλουμε να σας μεταφέρουμε στο καμπ της Μόριας" », λέει χαρακτηριστικά.

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Τους επιβίβασαν στο σκάφος του λιμενικού και αφού έλεγξαν τη θερμοκρασία τους με θερμόμετρα, τους χτύπησαν και τους αφαίρεσαν τα προσωπικά τους αντικείμενα. « Μας πήραν τα πάντα : χρήματα, τσάντες, τηλέφωνα », λέει. Αφαίρεσαν από το σκάφος του λιμενικού την ελληνική σημαία, τους οδήγησαν μεσοπέλαγα και τους επιβίβασαν σε τέσσερα liferaft. Τους ανάγκασαν να ανέβουν είκοσι άτομα σε κάθε σχεδία, ενώ η -βάσει προδιαγραφών- χωρητικότητά της είναι για 12 άτομα. Η εταιρεία LALIZAS δεν έχει στον κατάλογο της παρόμοιου τύπου liferaft με χωρητικότητα άνω των 12 ατόμων. Επισημαίνει επίσης πως οι τέσσερις τσάντες από τις οποίες έβγαλαν τα πλωτά ήταν χρώματος πορτοκαλί, όπως διαφημίζεται και το προϊόν στο site της LALIZAS.

« Δεν έδωσαν σωσίβια στους ανθρώπους που δεν είχαν, και όταν εγώ ζήτησα από έναν λιμενικό να μου δώσει το τηλέφωνό μου για να επικοινωνήσω τουλάχιστον με την τουρκική ακτοφυλακή μου απάντησε "έλα και πάρ’ το", δείχνοντάς μου τα γεννητικά του όργανα », αναφέρει ο πρόσφυγας, ο οποίος θέλει να κρατήσει την ανωνυμία του.

Τους περικύκλωσαν για 15 περίπου λεπτά και μετά τους εγκατέλειψαν. Ένας από τους επιβαίνοντες κατάφερε να κρύψει το κινητό του τηλέφωνο και έτσι κατάφεραν να καλέσουν την τουρκική ακτοφυλακή η οποία τους μετέφερε σώους στην Φότσα της Σμύρνης.

« Δημοσιοποιώ αυτό το βίντεο για να δείξω στην Ευρωπαϊκή Ένωση, την Ύπατη Αρμοστεία και το Ευρωκοινοβούλιο, τα αποτελέσματα των αποφάσεων τους για το προσφυγικό », καταλήγει στην ανάρτησή του. Την ίδια στιγμή, ο Διεθνής Οργανισμός Μετανάστευσης (ΔΟΜ), η Ύπατη Αρμοστεία, και αρκετοί φορείς ζητούν απαντήσεις και τη διεξαγωγή έρευνας για τις καταγγελλόμενες επαναπροωθήσεις και μαζικές απελάσεις προσφύγων και μεταναστών στην Τουρκία.

►https://www.efsyn.gr/ellada/dikaiomata/247726_epanaproothisi-me-elliniki-sfragida

#Norvège

Greece Suspected of Abandoning Refugees at Sea

An investigation by DER SPIEGEL and partners has revealed that the Greek Coast Guard intercepts refugee boats, puts the migrants in life rafts, tows them toward Turkey and then abandons them to their fate. What do German troops in the area know about the practice?

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Europe is just a few kilometers away, recalls Amjad Naim, when the men in masks show up. It’s the morning of May 13 and the Palestinian is sitting in an inflatable boat, having paid migrant smugglers in Turkey for the trip. Naim can already see the Greek coast, and with every second, he is getting closer and closer.

Naim wasn’t alone in the boat. They were a group of at least 26 people and they had almost reached the island of Samos. Naim remembers hearing a helicopter, and then all hell broke loose. For the next several hours, those on board would be afraid for their lives.

The men in the masks approached in a large vessel, says Naim, adding that he remembers seeing the Greek flag and several dinghies. And then, he says, the masked men went on the attack.

They fired shots into the water, he says, snagged the migrants’ inflatable raft with a grappling hook and destroyed the motor, thus stopping the boat. The men then took the migrants on board their vessel, Naim says, adding that he started crying and hid his mobile phone in his underwear.

There are videos that prove that Naim really was on his way to Samos. The images show a young man with closely cropped hair and a smooth-shaven face. The motor of the small inflatable boat hums in the background as Naim smiles into the camera. He is originally from the Gaza Strip in the Palestinian Territories, where he studied law and got married. His wife is waiting for him in the Netherlands. Naim blows a kiss into the camera.

The next images of Naim are shaky — a 55-second clip made by Naim that clearly documents a crime. The footage shows him and the other refugees on two inflatable life rafts. The Greek Coast Guard had put them off of the ship and onto the rafts. The square-shaped platforms are little more than wobbly rubber rafts.

In the video, a Greek Coast Guard ship, 18 meters (59 feet) long, is dragging the rafts back toward Turkey. An additional ship stands by. Water can be seen pouring into Naim’s raft.

Then, as can be seen in the video, the Greek Coast Guard unties the tow rope, leaving the refugees to their fate in the middle of the sea. Sitting in a rubber raft that has no ability to maneuver on its own.

It is possible that Naim’s experience could be an isolated incident. It is conceivable that the Greek sailors simply lost their patience or that that particular ship was crewed by an especially nasty group. But that is not the case. Naim is apparently just one victim among many. There is a system behind the tactics he was exposed to. In a joint investigation with Lighthouse Reports and Report Mainz, DER SPIEGEL has forensically analyzed dozens of videos and compared them with geodata in addition to speaking with numerous eyewitnesses.

▻https://cdnstatic.secure.spiegel.de/SP/2020/26/OPQWeKYm-32438806.mp4

The material shows beyond doubt: In the eastern Aegean, European values are being sacrificed in the name of protecting its external borders.

Masked men, almost certainly Greek border control officials, regularly attack refugee boats in the area. In one case on June 4, the inflatable boat belonging to the masked men can be clearly identified as a Greek patrol boat. It belongs to Greek Coast Guard ship ΛΣ-080.

After the refugee boats are intercepted, the Greeks, apparently, frequently put the migrants in inflatable life rafts, tow them toward Turkey and then leave them to their fates. In most cases, they are dragged ashore after several hours by the Turkish Coast Guard.

The actions taken by the Greeks are a clear breach. It has long been known that Greek Coast Guard personnel delay rescue attempts and perform aggressive maneuvers. Now, though, they are actively putting the lives of migrants at risk and they are using life-saving equipment to put people in danger.

Images of migrants on orange life rafts have been appearing for weeks on Facebook and Instagram. NGOs like Aegean Boat Report, Josoor and Alarm Phone have also spoken with refugees and reported their experiences - and since March 23, activists have documented a number of incidents. The Turkish Coast Guard has also published images of the orange life rafts. But Naim’s video is the first to document beyond doubt a Greek Coast Guard vessel towing life rafts toward Turkey and then abandoning the refugees on the open sea.

These so-called pushbacks represent both a violation of international law and of the European Union’s Charter of Fundamental Rights. Asylum seekers have a right to have their cases heard on an individual basis and countries are not permitted to bring them back against their will to a place where their safety is not guaranteed.

Itamar Mann, a lawyer at the University of Haifa and member of the Global Legal Action Network, believes pushbacks could also have criminal consequences. From a legal perspective, such operations, he says, are a kind of torture, with refugees experiencing inhumane treatment and humiliation.

When contacted, the Greek Coast Guard denied the accusations and claimed that its personnel does not wear masks. They also said they obey all applicable laws. Delays in rescuing the refugees, they said, were due to the Turkish Coast Guard because they only accompany refugee boats if they are traveling in the direction of Greece. The Greek officials, they said, only locate the refugee boats and then inform the Turkish Coast Guard as quickly as possible.

They claimed that they cooperated with the Turkish Coast Guard in the May 13 incident. In their statement, the Greek Coast Guard did not specifically address the video showing the pushback.
Caught in the Middle

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has been in office since last July, and since then, he has taken several steps to ensure that fewer refugees arrive in Greece. He had temporarily suspended the right to asylum and shortened the deadline for appeal in asylum cases. Furthermore, during his tenure, border guards on the Maritsa River between Turkey and Greece have apparently used live ammunition against refugees, likely killing at least one. His government has considered blocking refugee boats with barriers at sea.

His government refers to the practices as “active surveillance.” In fact, though, they are abandoning refugees on the high seas.

There is a reason for this new degree of brutality: Since the end of February, Turkish border guards are no longer stopping refugees on their way to Europe. Indeed, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has even arranged for refugees to be bused to the Greek border, where they were pushed back by Greek border guards. Erdogan’s intention is to ratchet up the pressure on the European Union, with Brussels and Ankara currently trying to hammer out a new refugee deal.

The cynical game seen on the banks of the Maritsa River is now being repeated in the Aegean. The Turkish and Greek Coast Guards are pushing refugee boats into the territorial waters of the other, with the migrants themselves getting caught in the middle. In such a situation, those wanting to cross the Aegean need quite a bit of luck.

Omar, a young man from Afghanistan, had lost almost all hope for such luck on the morning of June 4, floating in a boat between the Greek island of Lesbos and the Turkish coast. Omar, whose name has been changed for this story, wasn’t alone: A total of 31 men, women and children were on board.

Turkish and Greek vessels had repeatedly pushed the migrants back. In one video, a dinghy can be seen that doubtlessly belongs to the Greek Coast Guard. Masked men, says Omar, had pushed their motor into the water, which is why to refugees were hanging off the back of the refugee boat and kicking, doing all they can to propel the boat to European soil. The scene was captured on video.

Omar is desperate. He makes a final video, posting it to a refugee group on Facebook. In the video, he speaks into the camera for a good six minutes. “Please help us,” he pleads. “We have a right to live.”

Perhaps it was this video that saved Omar’s life. Activists shared it on Facebook and just a short time later, a Turkish liaison officer on the supply ship Berlin told German soldiers of the vessel in distress. The ship is part of a NATO mission and was located off Lesbos. Using a tender, the Germans took the refugees ashore.

A subsequent press release from the Bundeswehr, as the German military is called, noted that the refugees’ lives had been in danger, which is why the commander intervened. A small boat unable to maneuver on its own: It must have seemed rather strange to the soldiers. The press release made no mention of an attack on the refugee boat.
German Officials Pulled Into the Chaos

The episode shows, though, just how deeply German officials have been pulled into the chaos on the Aegean. It also raises the question as to whether the Germans know of the assaults and of the lifeboats - and whether they tolerate the pushbacks or are perhaps even involved.

Around 600 border guards are helping the Greeks monitor activity on the Aegean, all part of the Frontex operation Poseidon. And the mission hasn’t always been free of conflict. In March, a Danish Frontex crew refused to carry out an illegal pushback.

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Behind closed doors, Frontex may already have admitted that it is aware of the brutal tactics involving the lifeboats. European Parliamentarian Dietmar Köster, a member of European Parliament from the German Social Democrats (SPD), says that Frontex head Fabrice Leggeri confirmed the incidents in a meeting with him. Though Köster is certain of his understanding of that meeting, Frontex says there was a misunderstanding, adding that Frontex headquarters has received no reports about pushbacks.

Luise Amtsberg, a Green Party spokesperson on migration policy, doesn’t believe it. The waters around Samos are not endless, she told Report Mainz and DER SPIEGEL. “Pushbacks cannot take place completely without the knowledge of the other units in the area.”

And there are indications that German officials might know of the pushbacks. In the port of Samos, the German Coast Guard ship Uckermark is anchored. On May 13, on the day that Amjad Naim was on his way to Samos, the Germans identified a refugee boat on their radar, according to information provided by the German Federal Police when contacted.

In all probability, it was Naim’s boat. There is no evidence that there were any other refugee boats heading for Samos on that day. The Greek Coast Guard also confirmed that a ship and a helicopter belonging to the Germans had spotted a boat that day. They say it was in Turkish waters when first seen.

The Germans alerted the Greek Coast Guard by radio, and the Greeks then took charge of the situation, according to a written statement. The statement notes that the Germans were “not involved” in any other measures related to the incident and insists that the Germans have no knowledge of the lifeboat episode.

The German Coast Guard has provided no comment as to why no refugees arrived on Samos that day or what happened to the refugee boat that was spotted. And they apparently aren’t particularly interested, either.

Even if Frontex was not actively involved in the operation, they bear some of the responsibility, says the lawyer Itamar Mann. Frontex, he believes, must draw a line and even withdraw from the mission if need be.

After the Germans apparently saw his boat and after the Greeks abandoned him to his fate on the high seas on May 13, Amjad Naim floated around for several hours. The sky was almost cloudless, and the sun was beating down, as can be seen in the videos. The refugees had nothing to eat or drink.

The lifeboat soon began to spin in circles, Naim says, with some of the passengers becoming nauseous and others fainting. Turkish and Greek ships, he says, simply ignored them. “It was awful,” Naim says.

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It was only after several hours that a Turkish Coast Guard vessel arrived to collect them. Men in white protective equipment helped the refugees off the lifeboat and took their temperatures. Naim then had to remain in quarantine for more than two weeks - in a nasty camp full of filth and mosquitoes, he says.

Naim is now allowed to move freely in Turkey, but still feels trapped. He says: “I can’t go forward and I can’t go back.”

▻https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/videos-and-eyewitness-accounts-greece-apparently-abandoning-refugees-at-sea-

Greece: Investigate Pushbacks, Collective Expulsions
►https://seenthis.net/messages/868362

‘Catastrophe for human rights’ as Greece steps up refugee ‘pushbacks’

Human rights groups condemn practice as evidence reviewed by the Guardian reveals systemic denial of entry to asylum seekers.

At about 1am on 24 August, Ahmed (not his real name) climbed into a rubber dinghy with 29 others and left Turkey’s north-western Çanakkale province. After 30 minutes, he said, they reached Greek waters near Lesbos and a panther boat from the Hellenic coastguard approached.

Eight officers in blue shorts and shirts, some wearing black masks and armed with rifles, forced the group – more than half women and including several minors and six small children – to come aboard at gunpoint. They punctured the dinghy with knives and it sank. “They said they would take us to a camp,” said Ahmed. “The children were happy and started laughing, but I knew they were lying.”

Through the course of the night, Ahmed, a 17-year-old refugee from Eritrea, alleges that Greek officers detained the group, confiscating possessions and denying them access to toilets and drinking water. By morning, they were dispatched into a liferaft in Turkish waters. It was too small, and videos taken by Ahmed, who hid his phone, show some people were forced to swim. The Turkish coastguard confirmed it intercepted the raft at 1:20pm.

The event described by Ahmed, who fled conflict in Eritrea after his father died, was one of seven times that he says he has been pushed back by the Hellenic coastguard. The use of these “pushbacks” has surged since March according to an investigation by the Guardian, and experts say it has become an overt policy of Greece’s rightwing New Democracy government, which came to power last year.

Interviews with five victims of pushbacks, 10 NGOs working across the Aegean Sea including Human Rights Watch, Josoor and the Aegean Boat Report, and a tranche of videos reviewed by the Guardian reveal an organised and systemic practice of denying entry to asylum seekers.

Next week a coalition of charities including Human Rights Watch and the Border Violence Monitoring Network will publish an open letter condemning the practice of pushbacks and calling for the Greek government and the European Commission to take action against those involved. A draft of the letter seen by the Guardian calls for “disciplinary and criminal sanctions” to be brought against those “found to have engaged in such illegal acts”.

International law experts say these activities are in breach of international law including the convention relating to the status of refugees and the European convention on human rights. “What you are seeing is the illegal collective expulsion of refugees from Greek territory,” said Satvinder Juss, a professor of human rights and international refugee law at King’s College London. “It’s a catastrophe for human rights.”

Often pushbacks involve teams of unidentified men in black uniforms who intercept boats of refugees that have arrived in Greek waters and forcibly return them to Turkish waters, either leaving them to drift after engines have been destroyed or in separate liferafts. In some cases, victims have arrived on Greek land before being returned by authorities to the open seas, after actively threatening them with beatings, gunshots and by creating large waves with fast boats. In one case, refugees were left on a tiny island between Greece and Turkey for two days without food before being rescued.

AlarmPhone, an NGO that operates a telephone line and social media network for refugees in distress, said it observed a substantial increase in reports of pushbacks since the pandemic, recording 55 cases between March and August. The Greek Helsinki Monitor said it submitted a report to the supreme court, naval court and military appeals court of Greece claiming nearly 1,400 people were pushed back between March and July, though the true number is believed to be far higher.

Minos Mouzourakis, legal officer at Refugee Support Aegean, is currently working on landmark legal cases at the European court of human rights that date back to 2014, when eight Afghan children and three women died after their vessel sank near the island of Farmakonisi during a reported pushback. “This is a regrettable resurgence of those older tactics,” said Mouzourakis.

In December 2019, Greece said it was predicting up to 100,000 asylum seekers to arrive on its islands from Turkey in 2020. But as of 31 August, there have been 8,860 sea arrivals, according to UNHCR. Stella Nanou, the agency’s Greek representative, acknowledged the “credible accounts” of pushbacks and called on Greece to “guarantee and safeguard the rights of those seeking international protection”.

Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the Greek prime minister, has taken several official steps to ensure fewer refugees arrive, temporarily suspending the right to asylum, shortening the deadline for appeal in asylum cases, extending fences along the land border with Turkey and is considering installing floating barriers at sea. But the government has described accusations of illegal pushbacks as “fake news” from unreliable sources.

“Pushbacks are inherently violent, not only physically but mentally,” said Amelia Cooper, advocacy and communications officer for Lesbos Legal Centre, which is documenting pushbacks and providing legal support to survivors. “Survivors are aware that these expulsions, and the abuses that they entail, are constitutive of both the European border and the EU’s political context with Turkey.”

When contacted, the ministry of maritime affairs and insular policy said its operations were in accordance with international law and that the agency has been subject to “systematic targeting by a portion of the mainstream media, NGOs and other social networking platforms, which tend to promote the relevant actions in a single dimensional and fragmentary way”.

But documents seen by the Guardian reveal a German navy supply vessel called the Berlin, which heads Nato’s Standing Maritime Group 2 in the Aegean region, observed a boat with refugees being forced into Turkish sea territory by Greek authorities on 19 June and 15 August. The findings came in response to parliamentary questions by Left party MP Andrej Hunko.

After being detained in Turkey, Ahmed was released and has since slept in a park in the city of İzmir. “I don’t care if I die,” he said. “I don’t have a choice to go back. But I am losing hope.”

▻https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/sep/27/catastrophe-for-human-rights-as-greece-steps-up-refugee-pushbacks

Migrants accuse Greece of pushing them back out to sea

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Shortly after reaching the Greek island of Lesbos, a group of Afghan migrants say, their hopes for a new life in Europe were cut short when Greek authorities rounded them up, mistreated them, shoved them into life rafts and abandoned them at sea.

Associated Press journalists on a Turkish government-organized coast guard ride-along were aboard the patrol boat that picked up the 37 migrants, including 18 children, from two orange life rafts in the Aegean Sea on Sept. 12. Two other media organizations on similar government-organized trips in the same week witnessed similar scenes.

“They took our phones and said a bus will come and take you to the camp,” Omid Hussain Nabizada said in Turkish. “But they took us and put us on a ship. They left us on the water in a very bad way on these boats.”

Turkey, which hosts about 4 million refugees, accuses Greece of large-scale pushbacks — summary deportations without access to asylum procedures, in violation of international law. It also accuses the European Union of turning a blind eye to what it says is a blatant abuse of human rights.

The Turkish coast guard says it rescued over 300 migrants “pushed back by Greek elements to Turkish waters” this month alone. Citing what they say are credible reports, international rights groups have called repeatedly for investigations.

Greece, which lies on the EU’s southeastern border and has borne the brunt of migration flows from Turkey, denies the allegations and in turn accuses Ankara of weaponizing migrants.

In March, Turkey made good on threats to send migrants to Europe, declaring its borders with the EU open. In what appeared to be a government-organized campaign, thousands headed to the Greek border, leading to scenes of chaos and violence. Turkey’s border with EU member Bulgaria was largely unaffected. Greece shut its frontier and controversially suspended asylum applications for a month.

Greece’s coast guard says Turkey’s coast guard frequently escorts migrant smuggling boats toward Greece, and has provided videos to back its claims. It says under a 2016 EU-Turkey deal to stem migration flows, Turkey has an obligation to stop people clandestinely entering Greece.

Greek coast guard spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Nikolaos Kokkalas said its patrols regularly detect boats and dinghies carrying migrants trying to enter Greece illegally, and “among them many times there are also inflatable rafts such as those described” by the AP.

The life rafts are standard safety equipment on recreational boats, designed to keep passengers safe if they must abandon ship. They generally have no means of propulsion or steering.

“It must be underlined that in most of the cases, the presence of the Turkish coast guard has been observed-ascertained near the dinghies incoming from the Turkish coast, but without it intervening, while in some cases the dinghies are clearly being accompanied by (Turkish coast guard) vessels,” Kokkalas said in a written response to an AP query.

Uneasy neighbors Greece and Turkey have been at loggerheads for decades over several territorial issues, and asylum-seekers have found themselves caught up in the geopolitical conflict.

Tension between the two countries rose dramatically this summer over eastern Mediterranean maritime boundaries, leading to fears of war.

Both sides deployed warships as Turkish survey ships prospected for gas in waters where Greece and Cyprus claim exclusive economic rights. EU leaders are to discuss imposing sanctions on Turkey for its actions, in an Oct. 1-2 summit. Turkey has repeated its threat to send migrants into the EU if sanctions are imposed.

The persistent allegations of pushbacks of migrants are the latest manifestations of these tensions.

Human Rights Watch has accused Greece of summarily returning migrants across land and sea borders with Turkey, citing interviews with asylum-seekers.

Other rights groups and refugee organizations, including the U.N. refugee agency, have repeatedly called on Greece to investigate what they say are credible reports and testimony of such expulsions occurring.

“UNHCR is particularly concerned about the increasing reports, since March 2020, of alleged informal returns by sea of persons who, according to their own attestations or those of third persons, have disembarked on Greek shores and have thereafter been towed back to sea,” the agency said in August.

UNHCR Assistant High Commissioner for Protection Gillian Triggs, reiterating the call for an investigation, said that “with our own eyes on Lesbos, it was quite clear no boats were coming through” recently.

Earlier this month, Greece’s Shipping Minister Giannis Plakiotakis said Greek authorities prevented more than 10,000 people from entering Greece by sea this year. He would not elaborate on how.

Former Migration Minister Ioannis Mouzalas pressed for details from the current minister, Notis Mitarachi, in parliament Sept. 21, saying this appeared to violate Greek and international law. He asked directly whether the government carries out pushbacks.

The four Afghans on the life rafts seen by AP said they reached Lesbos from Turkey’s western Canakkale province on the night of Sept. 11-12, and were caught by Greek law enforcement during daylight.

One of them, Nabizada, said police hit him while forcing him into the raft.

“They didn’t say, ‘there are children, there are families, there are women.’ … People don’t do this to animals. The Greek police did it to us,” said the 22-year-old. He said he left Kabul in 2017 and crossed to Turkey via Iran, aiming for Europe.

Zohra Alizada, 14, said police took their phones and money, put them in the rafts and left. She was traveling with her parents and two siblings after living in Kars, in eastern Turkey, for over four years. She said the migrants called the Turkish coast guard for help.

Her father, Mohammad Reza Alizada, said Greek authorities inflated the rafts “and they threw us like animals inside.”

The AP was not able to independently verify their accounts.

The Turkish coast guard, clad in protective equipment against COVID-19, took them aboard after checking them for fever. Another Turkish coast guard vessel was already in the area when the patrol boat carrying the AP crew arrived.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu raised the allegations against Greece in an August news conference with his German counterpart.

He said Turkey has shown through government and media reports that Greece is pushing back refugees at sea, adding that “there have been numerous articles published.”

“How do sinking boats in the middle of the Aegean Sea or sending them to Turkey by pushbacks fit international rights and universal values?” Cavusoglu said.

Greece denies sinking smuggling boats. Kokkalas noted the Greek coast guard had rescued 3,150 migrants in about 100 incidents this year.

An independent Norway-based watchdog says it has documented at least 50 cases since March of migrants being put into life rafts and left adrift.

“They are not going into these life rafts willingly. They are forced,” said Tommy Olsen of the Aegean Boat Report, which monitors arrivals and rights abuses in the Aegean.

He said his group had no information about the rafts the AP saw, but that it was consistent with similar reports.

“Usually you save people from life rafts,” Olsen said. “You don’t put them on life rafts and leave them.”

▻https://apnews.com/article/virus-outbreak-turkey-aegean-sea-greece-europe-61c54ec57c121026f4891d567f31b

Les vrais crimes, ce sont les refoulements et les violations des droits humains par le gouvernement grec

Lundi, la police grecque a publié un communiqué de presse concernant l’enquête criminelle menée à l’encontre de 33 personnes appartenant à quatre ONG différentes et deux “ressortissants de pays tiers”. A la suite de cette enquête, une procédure pénale a été engagée pour délit de constitution et participation à une organisation criminelle, espionnage, violation des secrets d’Etat et facilitation de l’entrée sur le
territoire (1). Bien que le communiqué de presse ne nomme pas les ONG ou les individus, plusieurs médias ont déclaré qu’Alarm Phone faisait partie des groupes visés (2). Pour l’instant, nous nous abstenons de commenter publiquement l’enquête en cours. Nous voulons plutôt mettre en évidence les véritables crimes qui ont lieu en ce moment-même !

Les refoulements, les violences graves comme les coups, les vols et les coups de feu, la non-assistance, le fait de forcer les réfugié.e.s à monter dans des radeaux de sauvetage et de les laisser dériver en pleine mer. Ces crimes sont perpétrés par des corps qui appartiennent de manière manifeste à l’État grec. Nous ne sommes pas les seul.e.s témoins de cette évolution alarmante. Plusieurs acteurs ont publiquement fait état de ces actions illégales menées par les garde-côtes grecs en mer et les gardes-frontières sur terre : le HCR, le Conseil grec pour les réfugiés, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch et d’autres organisations de défense des droits humains, des ONG et des médias. (3)

Il en va de même pour la situation à Moria, qui est également mentionnée comme étant l’un des secrets d’État dans le communiqué de presse de la police grecque. Ce n’est pas un secret mais un fait public que, avec les fonds et le soutien européens, Moria est devenu le symbole de la politique migratoire de l’UE dont le but est la dissuasion, foulant aux pieds la dignité et les droits humains.

Les violations des droits humains ont atteint un niveau inédit en mer Égée depuis le début du mois de mars. Cette escalade en termes de violations s’est accompagnée d’actes de répression contre les ONG et
toutes sortes de structures de solidarité pour les réfugié.e.s et les migrant.e.s. Il est évident que l’État grec veut éliminer les témoins des crimes contre l’humanité qu’il commet quotidiennement. Il est évident qu’il est gêné par notre activité : rien que cette année, Alarm Phone a été témoin et a documenté de nombreux cas de refoulements et de graves violations des droits humains. (4)

Il faut noter que depuis la création d’Alarm Phone il y a six ans, notre relation avec les garde-côtes helléniques n’a jamais été aussi compliquée qu’elle ne l’est aujourd’hui. Depuis octobre 2014, nous avons
transmis environ 1 975 cas de personnes en détresse aux garde-côtes grecs et à d’autres autorités grecques. À plusieurs reprises, nous avions constaté que les garde-côtes faisaient de leur mieux pour porter secours le plus rapidement possible. Nous avions établi une communication rapide et efficace qui avait conduit à des opérations de sauvetage, ce qui était crucial à une époque où nous recevions jusqu’à
23 appels par jour de bateaux en détresse dans la mer Égée, et ce qui est toujours aussi crucial aujourd’hui.

Au tout début de notre projet, nous nous étions ouvertement adressé.e.s à tous les garde-côtes, leur expliquant le rôle et l’objectif d’Alarm Phone. Dans cette lettre d’octobre 2014, nous avions déclaré “Nous espérons que grâce à notre travail, nous pourrons vous soutenir dans votre tâche quotidienne qui consiste à sauver la vie des migrant.e.s. Dans le même temps, nous dénoncerons vigoureusement tout échec à mener à bien cette mission. Nous espérons que vos institutions accepteront à la fois notre contribution et la responsabilité que nous exigeons, qui est demandée à toutes les institutions publiques”. C’est ce que nous avons fait et continuerons à faire avec détermination.

L’augmentation des violations des humains et des refoulements n’est pas un phénomène isolé, concernant uniquement la route entre la Grèce et la Turquie. A Alarm Phone, nous constatons également une tendance à la multiplication des refoulements illégaux de Malte et de l’Italie vers la Libye et la Tunisie en Méditerranée centrale, ainsi que de l’Espagne vers le Maroc en Méditerranée occidentale.

Nous appelons celles et ceux qui sont solidaires avec les personnes en migration à sensibiliser et à protester contre les crimes contre l’humanité qui sont perpétrés quotidiennement en mer Égée. Chaque
réfugié.e qui est repoussé.e, chaque personne qui est laissée dans un bateau en mauvais état, chaque enfant qui n’est pas secouru dans une situation de détresse est une raison suffisante pour se lever et élever la voix. Nous ne nous laisserons pas réduire au silence !

(1)▻http://www.astynomia.gr/index.php?option=ozo_content&lang=%27..%27&perform=view&id=97610&Itemid=25

(2) par exemple
▻https://vimapress.gr/telos-sti-drasi-evropaikon-mko-pou-diefkolynan-tin-diakinisi-metanaston-ap

(3) Rapport sur les refoulements :
UNHCR :
▻https://www.unhcr.org/news/briefing/2020/6/5ee33a6f4/unhcr-calls-greece-investigate-pushbacks-sea-land-borders-turkey.html

Greek Council of Refugees :
►https://www.gcr.gr/en/news/press-releases-announcements/item/1028-the-new-normality-continuous-push-backs-of-third-country-nationals-on-the-e

Amnesty International :
▻https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/eur01/2077/2020/en

Human Rights Watch :
https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/08/21/greece-still-denying-migrant-pushbacks

New York Times :
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/14/world/europe/greece-migrants-abandoning-sea.html

The Guardian :
▻https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/sep/27/catastrophe-for-human-rights-as-greece-steps-up-refugee-pushbacks

CNN :
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/17/europe/greece-migrants-turkey-intl/index.html

(4) Alarm Phone sur les refoulements en mer Egée en 2020 :
https://alarmphone.org/en/2020/03/04/escalating-violence-in-the-aegean-sea/?post_type_release_type=post

https://alarmphone.org/en/2020/05/14/push-backs-the-new-old-routine-in-the-aegean-sea/?post_type_release_type=post

https://alarmphone.org/fr/2020/10/01/les-vrais-crimes-ce-sont-les-refoulements-et-les-violations-des-droits-h

Migrants : Athènes lance une guerre en eaux troubles contre les ONG

Après une enquête policière grecque menée avec de faux exilés infiltrés, des humanitaires opérant à Lesbos sont menacés de graves poursuites pénales. A l’aide d’accusations les assimilant à des passeurs, les autorités tentent de contrer la dénonciation des refoulements secrets de réfugiés vers les côtes turques.

« Ne vous méprenez pas, ils veulent juste nous faire peur, pour nous forcer à nous taire », martèle Aegean Boat Report dans un long post publié en tête de sa page Facebook. Spécialisée dans les sauvetages en mer, l’ONG norvégienne n’a pas tardé à réagir aux accusations formulées la semaine dernière par la police grecque et confirmées ce week-end. Au moins 33 humanitaires (parmi lesquels figurerait une Française), tous membres de quatre ONG internationales opérant sur l’île de Lesbos, seraient menacés de poursuites pénales après une enquête menée pendant trois mois, non seulement par la police, mais aussi par les services de renseignement et le contre-terrorisme grec.Les noms des organisations et des humanitaires concernés n’ont pas été divulgués pour l’instant. Mais de nombreux indices, notamment une perquisition réalisée début septembre sur un bateau amarré à Lesbos, indiquent que les quatre ONG concernées ont toutes en commun de se consacrer au sauvetage en mer des migrants ou réfugiés qui tentent la traversée depuis les côtes turques.
Mère d’Hercule

Ce n’est pas la première fois que le gouvernement grec s’attaque à ceux qui tentent de secourir les naufragés, en les assimilant à des passeurs. Mais cette fois-ci les accusations sont particulièrement graves : les humanitaires ciblés sont non seulement accusés de « violation du code de l’immigration », mais également de « constitution d’organisation criminelle », d’« espionnage » et de « violation de secrets d’Etat ».

Bien plus, ils auraient été piégés, selon les révélations du ministre grec des Migrations, Notis Mitarakis, dimanche, sur la chaîne de télévision Skai. Les charges contre eux auraient ainsi été recueillies lors d’une opération secrète baptisée « Alcmène » (du nom de la mère du héros antique Hercule), qui aurait notamment permis aux services grecs d’envoyer deux faux migrants à Izmir en Turquie puis sur une plage d’où ils auraient contacté par la suite les lanceurs d’alerte des ONG vouées au sauvetage des embarcations en détresse.

En l’absence d’autres éléments concrets, l’ampleur de l’opération qui a monopolisé tant de services, passant même par une infiltration en Turquie alors que les relations entre les deux pays sont actuellement très tendues, révèle surtout combien les autorités grecques sont déterminées à faire la guerre aux humanitaires déployés sur les îles.

A la télévision, le ministre grec l’a d’ailleurs confirmé, accusant le gouvernement précédent d’avoir laissé « les lieux d’accueil des réfugiés sous le contrôle des ONG », alors que la droite conservatrice revenue au pouvoir en juillet 2019, s’est, elle, aussitôt employée à « surveiller le rôle des ONG dans les flux d’immigration clandestine ».

Depuis son élection, le gouvernement du Premier ministre, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, n’a eu de cesse de stigmatiser les ONG régulièrement accusées de profiter de la situation explosive créée sur les îles grecques où les flux de réfugiés venus des côtes turques n’ont jamais réellement cessé, malgré le deal conclu entre l’Europe et la Turquie en mars 2016. Seule différence notable : les candidats à l’asile sont désormais contraints d’attendre sur place l’examen de leurs dossiers, créant un goulot d’étranglement dans des camps insalubres et surpeuplés. Sans les ONG qui remédient aux carences de l’Etat grec et à l’indifférence de l’Europe, la situation serait bien pire. Mais elles sont une cible facile sur laquelle se défoulent mécontents et aigris, alimentés par un discours populiste. Il fait mouche auprès des populations locales des îles de plus en plus exaspérées par ces abcès de misère qui sont venus se greffer durablement dans leur voisinage.
Acteurs dubitatifs

A Lesbos, depuis un an, les humanitaires ont ainsi vu régulièrement leurs voitures vandalisées, des inscriptions hostiles peintes en rouge sur les murs des maisons où ils résident. Les révélations sur « l’opération Alcmène » n’ont fait qu’attiser ce climat d’hostilité notamment sur les réseaux sociaux. Mais à Lesbos, les humanitaires ont également entendu un autre message : la police n’a-t-elle pas affirmé avoir, dans le cadre de son enquête, piraté des conversations sur les applis régulièrement utilisées par les ONG ?

Il n’en fallait pas plus pour déclencher une certaine méfiance, le sentiment d’être surveillé en permanence. Sous couvert d’anonymat, nombreux sont pourtant les acteurs locaux qui restent dubitatifs face aux accusations de l’enquête policière. « On ne peut jamais exclure qu’un humanitaire ait fait une bêtise, en marge de la légalité mais toutes ces révélations ne tombent pas par hasard », estime ainsi l’un d’eux, pointant la coïncidence entre la divulgation de ces accusations et celles qui se multiplient contre le gouvernement lui-même. Et dont les humanitaires impliqués dans le sauvetage en mer seraient devenus les témoins gênants.

Depuis plusieurs mois, Athènes se contente en effet de qualifier de « fake news » l’inquiétante multiplication des refoulements (« push back ») observés notamment par les ONG qui scrutent les eaux séparant la Grèce et la Turquie et dénoncent régulièrement ces refoulements forcés, et secrets, vers les côtes turques. Des pratiques totalement illégales puisqu’elles concernent des candidats à l’asile repérés alors qu’ils se trouvent déjà dans les eaux grecques, voire après avoir accosté sur les îles.
Bateau perquisitionné

« Depuis mars, 7 300 réfugiés ont été victimes de push back orchestrés par les autorités grecques en mer Egée », tweetait jeudi le compte du navire Mare Liberum. Dédié aux sauvetages en mer et affrété par l’ONG allemande Sea-Watch, le Mare Liberum est justement ce bateau perquisitionné le 5 septembre par la police grecque. Laquelle affirme y avoir notamment trouvé des cartes avec des indications topographiques précises et des data concernant le profil et l’origine des candidats à l’exil. A priori, rien de très choquant s’agissant d’une ONG qui se donne pour mission de secourir des naufragés. Mais ces « preuves » seraient venues conforter les accusations selon lesquelles les humanitaires concernés auraient « au moins depuis début juin » contribué à faire passer « près de 3 000 personnes » en Grèce avec la complicité de « réseaux d’immigration clandestine ».

Pourtant, la plupart des ONG impliquées estiment n’avoir rien à se reprocher et refusent de se laisser intimider. « Nous ne resterons pas silencieux », souligne ainsi Alarm Phone dans un communiqué publié jeudi sur son site. L’ONG, qui serait elle aussi visée par l’enquête policière, rappelle également que depuis six ans, son central d’appels a toujours cherché à collaborer avec les gardes-côtes en leur indiquant la position des embarcations à la dérive. Mais ces derniers mois, cette collaboration est devenue « plus compliquée », constate également Alarm Phone qui s’inquiète de la « recrudescence des violations des droits de l’homme en mer Egée ». Face à ces dérives, l’Europe a pour l’instant réagi plutôt mollement. « La présidente de la Commission européenne, Ursula von der Leyen, affirme qu’elle n’a pas les moyens d’enquêter. Pourtant, l’équipage d’un navire allemand qui fait partie des forces de l’Otan a admis avoir assisté à trois push back en mer Egée », observe-t-on au Legal Center de Lesbos, une association qui apporte un appui juridique aux réfugiés, et a également publié en juillet un rapport sur ces refoulements forcés.

Dans l’immédiat, le silence de Bruxelles semble encourager Athènes à renforcer sur tous les fronts son offensive contre les humanitaires. La semaine dernière, les autorités locales annonçaient ainsi la fermeture du centre d’accueil de Pikpa, l’un des rares lieux décents pour les réfugiés à Lesbos, géré depuis 2012 par des bénévoles.
Ancien camp militaire

Sur les réseaux sociaux, un mouvement de solidarité s’est aussitôt créé autour du hashtag #SavePikpa. Mais si les autorités persistent, que deviendront la centaine de réfugiés accueillis à Pikpa, souvent des familles considérées comme vulnérables ? Iront-elles rejoindre les sinistrés du camp de Moria, entièrement réduit en cendres dans la nuit du 8 au 9 septembre, et qui tentent désormais de survivre dans un ancien camp militaire, où quelques milliers de tentes ont été installées à la va-vite ? « Trois semaines après l’ouverture de ce nouveau site, il n’y a toujours pas de douche », s’insurge un humanitaire, conscient qu’il faudra de plus en plus d’énergie pour résister à l’hostilité des autorités.

Les tentatives de blocage ne se limitent pas hélas à la Grèce. En mars, le navire Mare Liberum s’était vu privé de son pavillon de navigation par le ministère allemand de la Marine. Une façon un peu radicale de limiter ses opérations de sauvetage. Mais vendredi, l’équipage exultait sur Twitter : la justice allemande venait de lui donner raison contre le ministère, considérant que le retrait du pavillon « était contraire à la réglementation européenne ». Une première victoire, en attendant d’autres batailles.

▻https://www.liberation.fr/planete/2020/10/07/migrants-athenes-lance-une-guerre-en-eaux-troubles-contre-les-ong_1801701

HUMAN RIGHTS GROUPS DEMAND THAT GREECE INVESTIGATE PUSHBACKS AND VIOLENCE AT ITS BORDERS

Members of Greece’s parliament should urgently establish an inquiry into all allegations of unlawful returns of migrants to Turkey by law enforcement officers and others, 29 human rights and humanitarian aid organizations said in an open letter released today. These returns are carried out mainly through pushbacks and collective expulsions and are often accompanied by violence.

Parliament should exercise its oversight authority to investigate the allegations of these illegal acts by state agents and proxies on Greece’s sea and land borders with Turkey. The parliament’s inquiry should examine whether any illegal acts identified are part of a de facto government policy at odds with international, European, and Greek law.

Over the years, nongovernmental groups and media outlets have consistently reported the unlawful return, including through pushbacks, of groups and individuals from Greece to Turkey by Greek law enforcement officers or unidentified masked men, who appear to be working in tandem with border enforcement officials.

Reports from 2020 recorded multiple incidents in which Greek Coast Guard personnel, sometimes accompanied by armed masked men in dark clothing, unlawfully abandoned migrants – including those who had reached Greek territory. They abandoned the migrants at sea, on inflatable vessels without motors; towed migrant boats to Turkish waters; or intercepted, attacked, and disabled boats carrying migrants.

Nongovernmental organizations and the media have also reported persistent allegations that Greek border guards have engaged in collective expulsions and pushbacks of asylum seekers through the Evros land border with Turkey.

On June 10, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said it was “closely monitoring” the situation at the Greek border and reported receiving “persistent reports” of migrants being arbitrarily arrested in Greece and pushed back to Turkey. The IOM said that Greece should investigate.

On August 21, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said it was “deeply concerned by an increasing number of credible reports indicating that men, women, and children may have been informally returned to Turkey immediately after reaching Greek soil or territorial waters in recent months,” and urged Greece to refrain from such practices and to seriously investigate these reports. The agency had released a statement making similar calls on June 12.

On July 6, during a debate at the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) on fundamental rights at the Greek border, the European Commissioner for Home Affairs, Ylva Johansson, said those incidents should be investigated. In its new Pact on Migration and Asylum, presented on September 23, the European Commission recommended to member states to set up an independent monitoring mechanism, amid increased allegations of abuse at the EU’s external borders. But no such system has been instituted.

Confronted during a CNN interview with an August 14 New York Times article documenting pushbacks, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said: “It has not happened. We’ve been the victims of a significant misinformation campaign,” suggesting instead that Turkey was responsible.

Greek lawmakers should conduct a prompt, effective, transparent, and impartial investigation into allegations that Greek Coast Guard, Greek police, and Greek army personnel, sometimes in close coordination with uniformed masked men, have been involved in acts that not only violate the law but put the lives and safety of displaced people at risk.

Any officer found to have engaged in such illegal acts, as well as their commanding officers and officials who have command responsibility over such forces, should be subject to disciplinary and criminal sanctions, as applicable. The investigation should seek to establish the identity and relationship of the masked men and other unidentified officers to law enforcement and take steps to hold them to account. The investigation should cover events surfaced in 2019 and 2020, the groups said.

The following quotes may be attributed to members of the groups involved:

“Despite government denials, over the years many witnesses and victims have told us about pushbacks from land and sea that put migrants’ lives at risk,” said Eva Cossé, Greece researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Parliament should step up now and do all it can to put an end to this life-threatening practice.”

“The continued failure to address the serious allegations of pushbacks and violence against people on the move at Greece’s borders can no longer be tolerated,” said Adriana Tidona, migration researcher at Amnesty International. “We call on the Greek parliament to exercise its powers in the interest of all those who have been harmed by these actions and to ensure that there is no repetition.”

“Over the years, we have filed a score of complaints about or related to pushbacks at Greece’s borders, including deaths, that Greek prosecutors seem to ignore,” said Panayote Dimitras, spokesperson for the Greek Helsinki Monitor. “Greece needs to act quickly to set up an independent border monitoring mechanism to investigate violations, as proposed by the European Commission, and end these abuses once and for all.”

“The right to seek asylum must be upheld at all times,” said Josie Naughton, chief executive officer of Help Refugees. “The Greek parliament should urgently conduct an inquiry to examine the well-documented and illegal practices of pushbacks and mass expulsion, which endanger the lives of men, women, and children seeking asylum in Greece.”

“We have documented the pushback of more than 1,150 asylum seekers from Greek territory in the past three months alone,” said Natalie Gruber, spokesperson for Josoor. “These are not isolated incidents but systematic violations of national, EU, and international law that the parliament cannot shrug off as fake news anymore.”

“Greek authorities are systematically expelling migrants, including those who have reached Greek territory, and abandoning them in open water,” said Amelia Cooper from Legal Centre Lesvos. “The Greek parliament should not only open an investigation of these events, but must also decree and enforce – immediately – the cessation of illegal collective expulsions at all Greek borders.”

“In order to break with the current failures to hold member states like Greece accountable for their pushbacks and rights violations at borders, the European Commission must step up its efforts and quickly put in place an appropriate monitoring mechanism,” said Marta Welander, executive director at Refugee Rights Europe. “Such efforts must also involve civil society, NGOs, and national human rights institutions to ensure that available evidence is taken seriously and leads to timely investigation and redress.”

“The protection of the borders, of vital importance in itself, can be in compliance with international law and human rights standards,” said Antigone Lyberaki, SolidarityNow’s general manager. “The Greek parliament has both the means and a constitutional obligation to oversee and investigate the alleged infringement of international human rights obligations by the Greek state.”

“As a child protection organization, Tdh Hellas is particularly worried about the fact that among those reported to have been violently expelled across EU borders are children, including babies,” said Melina Spathari of Terre des hommes Hellas. “The Greek government should stop such acts and try instead to address the chronic gaps in the reception and protection system for families and unaccompanied children.”

▻https://legalcentrelesvos.org/2020/10/06/human-rights-groups-demand-that-greece-investigate-pushbacks-and-

On reparle des life rats dans cet article du Monde :
Refoulements en mer Egée : les recensements erronés ou mensongers de #Frontex

En croisant les données de JORA avec des rapports d’associations ou encore des comptes rendus des gardes-côtes turcs, il apparaît que, dans 22 cas au moins, qui représentent 957 migrants, ceux-ci ont été retrouvés dérivant en mer dans des canots de survie gonflables, sans moteur. D’après des photos que Le Monde et ses partenaires ont pu authentifier, ces canots, de couleur orange, correspondraient à des modèles achetés par le ministère de la marine grec, via un financement de la Commission européenne. Ce qui tendrait à prouver que les migrants ont accédé aux eaux grecques avant d’être refoulés illégalement.

▻https://seenthis.net/messages/958454

A Family With Several Small Children Left Drifting in a Life Raft Outside Lesvos

https://aegeanboatreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/2xfgnxdrfthj-1536x1152.jpg

Friday night, November 4, a boat carrying approximately 25 people arrived close to #Kalo_Limani, #Lesvos north west.

After arriving people fled to the Woodson in several groups in the surrounding area to hide from Greek authorities, fearing that if they were found they would be illegally returned to Turkey.

Saturday morning at 07.00 Aegean Boat Report was contacted by several groups hiding in the hills around Kalo Limani, they all asked for assistance so that they could be taken to camp and be able to apply for asylum.

They provided documentation on their presence on the island, pictures, videos and location data left no doubt that the groups was on Lesvos.

We tried to provide them with the necessary means, so that they themselves could act, this to try to prevent them from being pushed back. The groups explained that they were part of a bigger group, but the total number of people in the boat they arrived with seemed unclear. From pictures and videos provided we were able to identify approximately 25 people.

Due to the fact that it’s weekend, the newly arrived refugees had problems finding an organization who responded on the phone, even do they were given numbers who usually works, but then mostly only on weekdays.

After 10 hours one of the groups was able to get response, and late on Saturday night, 7 people was located, 3 woman (2 pragment) 3 men and 1 child was eventually found and taken to the quarantine camp in Megala Thermi, Lesvos north.

During the time organizations was not responding, several cars without license plates was observed in the area, and later driving from the area, if there were refugees inside these cars is unknown, but after now knowing that over half the group is missing, it’s highly likely.

Sunday morning, November 6, 3 more people from this group made contact, and was in the afternoon taken to camp in Megala Thermi. A total of 10 people had been found, but as many as 15 more people seemed to be missing from this group.

On Saturday night, November 5, a life raft was found drifting outside Dikili, Turkey carrying 9 people.

From pictures and videos that they had sent while still on Lesvos the previous day, there is no doubt, these 9 people was from the group that arrived the previous day in Kalo Limani, Lesvos north west.

So the question is how did they end up drifting in a Greek manufactured life rafts outside Dikili, Turkey?

By now everyone knows the answer to this, but still Greek authorities continues to deny any involvement, as if these people suddenly had decided to go back, found a life raft and paddled back to Turkey. Not a very plausible explanation but this is what the Greek authorities wants you to believe.

Since March 2020, we have registered 1.807 pushback cases in the Aegean Sea, performed by the Hellenic coast guard, involving 48.083 men, women and children: 636 of these cases was performed by using rescue equipment/life rafts, 16,620 people have so far been left drifting in 986 life rafts in the Aegean Sea

https://i0.wp.com/aegeanboatreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/2vcgkm-1024x768.jpg

We understand that organizations working on the islands is working under extremely difficult conditions, and that they are doing their best, in a very difficult situation to try to prevent people from being pushed back after they arrive on the island.

When that is said, we can’t help stressing the fact that to have phones only operational on weekdays within office hours, puts vulnerable people, who usually arrives after dark, also on weekends, in an extremely dangerous situation.

When people arrive it’s usually only a matter of time before they are located by authorities, so time is of the essence. When these vulnerable people are trying to make contact with organizations on the ground for over 10 hours, without getting any response, anyone understand that there is a huge potential for improvements.

When these organizations do not want to cooperate with organizations not working locally on these issues, we must urge them to at least give vulnerable people arriving, who are in grave danger of being beaten, robbed and illegally deported, a way on reaching them, and not only on weekdays within working hours.

We must also add that people on the move are extremely grateful for the assistance these individuals and organizations have provided, and we know that things are more difficult and complicated than it might seem standing on the outside looking in. We try to fend for those who contact us as a last cry for help, when something seems to be not working properly, or at times not at all, it’s our responsibility to point this out. We can’t tell desperate people who contact us that we can’t help them, because we can, and we will.

▻https://aegeanboatreport.com/2022/11/16/a-family-with-several-small-children-left-drifting-in-a-life-raft-
#Lesbos

Another Magic Trick, This Time 104 People “Disappeard”

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After hours drifting due to lack of fuel and engine failure, they were finally rescued by a vessel from the Greek coast guard. The Greek coast guard vessel, a Lambro Halmatic 60, started to tow the boat toward Kalamata, over 800 nautical miles away. This is well documented by videos and pictures taken by the refugees while being towed.

https://videos.files.wordpress.com/dSxmzXLa/foinikounta-1_mp4_hd.original.jpg

At this point, in any normal situation, one should assume that the people onboard were safe, and that they would be taken to the nearest port of safety in accordance to international laws and the law of the sea, but the situation in Greece these days is nothing but normal. After being towed for more than 20 hours, they closed in on the port in Foinikounta.

At this point this large vessel carrying 104 people (not 110 as we initially reported), a broken engine and without fuel, magically disappeared.

According to a statement from the Hellenic coast guard’s press office, people onboard cut the rope and ‘eloped’, ‘probably heading for Italy’. This was, of course, not their initial response when asked about this “rescue operation”. At that point, they said there was no incident in this area, a strange answer when asked about a rescue operation that had been going on for more than 20 hours, involving more than 100 people.

The following day, when we reported on this case, and it was obvious to everyone that it had in fact had been a rescue operation, their story changed.

When a journalist from Efsyn contacted them asking questions they cooked up an alternative explanation: the people had run away. This was not the brightest explanation but for some reason – maybe desperation or stupidity – the coast guard seemed to believe it was plausible.

I don’t know what is worse, that they were stupid enough to put out such ridiculous explanations, or that they thought people were so stupid that they would believe them.

Let us just say one more time: the boat had no more fuel. Its engine was broken. And the captain – the only one who knew how to drive the boat – had taken off the previous night.

They had willingly been towed for more than 20 hours, almost 70 nautical miles, but when they were nine km from safety of the port in Foinikounta, they magically fixed the engine, produced fuel from sea water, trained a new captain, and ran for Italy…

This is what we wrote on Monday 31 October:

“A boat carrying approximately 104 people, mostly Afghan families, on its way from Turkey to Italy, ended up in disaster in Ionian Sea, inside Greek waters, 80 nautical miles from Kalamata.

The group contacted the Italian coast guard, after giving them their location the group was told to contact Greek coast guard, since they were in Greek waters.

Saturday afternoon, 29 October at 18.00, they connected with Greek rescue services, and around midnight a vessel from the Greek coast guard, a Lambro Halmatic 60 N/Γ SAR-516 arrived at their location.

Shortly after the vessel from the Hellenic coast guard started towing the boat with all passengers onboard, towards Greek mainland, no food or water was provided, even though they asked since they had run out the previous day, and there were many small children onboard.

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The boat was towed for more than 20 hours, people onboard was hungry and thirsty, nothing was provided from the coast guard, no food, no water and no information.

People onboard was very concerned on where the coast guard was towing them, scared that they would be pushed back to Turkey. No information was provided, but from locations received we reassured them that they were being towed towards mainland Greece.

At 20.00 the boat was closing in on the port of Foinikounta, and they told us that the rope had been cut, and that three boats were approaching. Through live location we could follow movement towards land, moving up from the port to the main road and moving west at the roundabout, after 550 metres, the movement stopped.

After this point all connection was lost with the group, from Google Maps we can see a building above the road, what structure this is we do not know. Last location received from the phone was from a small shed down from the road, a place that under no circumstances could house more than 100 people.

People rescued in this area are usually taken to Kalamata, why this group was not taken there and instead taken to port in Foinikounta, we don’t know.

We usually get a bit suspicious when all of a sudden connection is lost, and when we try to get information from the Hellenic Coast Guard, they say they have no information. This could of course only be a coincidence, lack of information sharing within HCG, we will try to follow up on this in the coming days.

Information received from the boat carrying more than 100 people can’t be mistaken. We can clearly see the vessel from HCG towing the boat, new locations received every 30 minutes from the boat shows without any doubt that they were in Greek waters, and they were taken to Foinikounta.

So far HCG haven’t confirmed any rescue operation in this area, and there is no information in Greek press, even do this rescue operation has been ongoing for over 20 hours.”

This was all we knew at this point, and yes we were worried. Several things didn’t add up, so what really happened to this large group of people, men, women and children, who had by all accounts been rescued by the Greek coast guard?

On Tuesday 1 November, the Greek newspaper Efsyn published an article about the disappearance of this boat. In their article they cover many questions related to this case.

https://aegeanboatreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Skjermbilde-2022-11-04-095310.png

One of the stranger things in this case is the movement of the mobile phone sending out live location on WhatsApp to Aegean Boat Report.

This phone sent out location data over one hour after last communication with its owner, and the last thing he said was ‘three boats are here, they cut the rope that connected with our boat’. The time was 20.05(EET) and there have been no more messages sent from this phone since then.

According to the press office of the Hellenic coast guard there was no contact between the coast guard and the people onboard before they allegedly cut the rope and drove off.

So how can we explain that the location signal, sending out relatively accurate location data, moved towards land? We follow the movement over approximately 30 minutes, while the phone moved 9km towards land, someone had to have taken this phone to the port, but who, if not the owner himself?

Let’s just pretend, for argument’s sake, that the geolocation signal sent from the phone was corrupted somehow, bad reception or disturbance of some kind sending out wrong location data. it’s then strange that this corrupted location signal would move through the streets of Foinikounta like it was driving a car, not jumping all over the place but only exactly where the streets were, and ending up in an old shed close to the main road.

We could suggest that someone, not the owner himself, took the phone from the owner, 10km from land, transported the phone to land and hid it in this old shed, but why? Why would anyone do such a thing?

What really happened is actually quite obvious, especially when we have proof that without a doubt shows that the Hellenic coast guard press office deliberately lied to a member of the Greek press, in an futile attempt to cover up crimes committed by the coast guard, on direct orders from the Greek authorities.

The Greek coast guard vessel, a Lambro Halmatic 60, N/Γ SAR-516, which had towed the rescued boat carrying 104 people for more than 20 hours, 70 nautical miles, stopped towing 9km from port in Foinikounta, between the islands of Sapientza and Schiza, at 19.49 on Sunday 31 October.

This location was not an accident. It’s a perfect location, protected by the elements between the islands, hidden from the eyes of the public behind the island of Ag.Marina. From land, people couldn’t see anything, even lights.

This operation was well planned, they had more than 20 hours to set everything in motion, a large coast guard vessel was sent to the area to execute orders from the authorities: remove everyone by all means possible.

From information provided by the refugees, we know that three boats approached them after they had stopped 9km from port in Foinikounta, from pictures taken by the refugees onboard, we can see headlights from the boats approaching in the dark.

At this point masked men entered the boat, people onboard were told they would be transported to port by smaller vessels in groups. The refugees understood what was going to happen, some of the men resisted, and were severely beaten. At this point all hell broke loose. The masked men were screaming and shouting, children were crying out of fear, seeing their parents being beaten by commandos in front of them, threatened at gunpoint. No-one was spared, even elderly women were beaten.

Everyone was forced to give up all their belongings, also money and phones, before they were forced onto the smaller boats, the only thing they had left in life were the clothes on their backs.

Their belongings were taken to port by a boat from the local coast guard, and this is why the phones geolocation data showed the phone moving towards port: the phones were not turned off. The phone we received data from continued to send out information until it was turned off, or destroyed, in a small shed on land.

The group of 104 people, families, men, women and children, was forced onto a larger coast guard vessel, placed outside in the cold in the dark. They were told to shut up and look down, anyone disobeying was immediately beaten with batons.

Close to midnight, the large vessel from the Greek coast guard headed back out to sea, toward Turkey, there was no doubt about what was going to happen. For the next 24 hours these people were held captive on a Greek coast guard vessel, against their will, while they were transported almost 600km towards Turkey.

The vessel stopped several times out at sea during the day, as if waiting for something. They waited so they could carry out their crimes under cover of darkness. Close to midnight, the vessel slowed down and eventually stopped

There had been little activity on the lower deck during the day, but now officers started to inflate life rafts on the side of the boat. They inflated the rafts and removed the orange cover that usually protects people inside them from the elements in the open sea.

Why this was done might have something to do with the fact that the manufacturers name is printed on the outside of the cover, and the manufacturer doesn’t see this as good advertisement.

Lalizas, which manufactures these rafts, is a Greek company from Piraeus, and has a contract to provide the Greek coast guard with rescue equipment.

This could explain why people are left in these rafts without the usual protection from the elements: to protect the reputation of their Greek supplier, not the people whom these rafts was made to protect.

Since March 2020, we have registered 1,742 pushback cases in the Aegean Sea, performed by the Hellenic coast guard, involving 46,443 men, women and children: 615 of these cases was performed by using rescue equipment/life rafts, 16,092 people have so far been left drifting in 952 life rafts in the Aegean Sea, and most of these rafts are found without the protective cover.

In the dark, people were forced to climb down and into these rafts. Those who refused, or were scared, were beaten until they complied, thrown down into the raft, or both.

People were terrified, children screaming, but there was no mercy. Eventually everyone had been forced into the rafts, five in total, and the Greek coast guard vessel left and headed back toward Greek waters. 104 people, families, men, woman and small children, were left helplessly drifting in the dark in five life rafts outside Datça, Turkey.

They had no means to call for help, all their phones had been taken by the Greek coast guard. After several hours, at 04.10, the Turkish coast guard found and rescued 104 people from five life rafts drifting outside Datça, Turkey.

From pictures and videos received while onboard the boat towed towards Greece by the Greek coast guard, compared to pictures and videos from the time they were rescued by Turkish coast guard outside Datça, there is absolutely no doubt: it is the same group.

We later received pictures allegedly showing bruises after people had been beaten by Greek officers onboard the coast guard vessel, or after being thrown down in the rafts.

In most countries in Europe an incident like this would have made a national and international outcry. A huge investigation would have been carried out. Not in Greece.

There is no longer any rule of law in Greece, any investigations into similar incidents, even obvious cases like this, would always have the same outcome: no proof of any wrongdoing whatsoever.

So why has this madness been allowed to continue for years in Greece? Why have Europe and the EU looked the other way, while a European country, an EU member, has systematically, in an industrial scale, violated international law, European law and international human rights?

The Greek government refers to what it is doing as ‘border management’, to protect the European border from ‘invaders’. But invasions are carried out by people with weapons, not by families, men, women and children seeking protection from war and persecution.

The Greek authorities assure everyone that they follow international laws, and are not pushing back refugees in the Aegean Sea, when it’s obvious for anyone to see that they are.

But still, the EU is sitting on its hands, letting this continue, even supporting the Greek government in its crimes.

European values and human rights seem only to apply to European, white Christian people. Must we conclude that the EU feels that the rest are expendable, and have no human value?

Push-backs are happening every single day in the Aegean Sea, and the Greek government will continue this inhuman practice, systematically violating people’s human rights, until Europe once again decides to put human rights on the agenda.

If the EU were serious about the values for which it claims to stand, it would immediately launch infringement proceedings against Greece. The fact that they have done nothing at all, makes it appear that those values mean nothing, and that the laws and rights it claims to promote and protect are only for the white: the rest can be cast to the waves.

And people wonder why refugees takes these extremely dangerous journeys from Turkey to Italy in overcrowded boats, in stead of going to Greece. The result of the Greek war on refugees, blessed and financed by EU, are drowning people, not because they are drowning on their way to Greece, but because they are trying to avoid Greece.

▻https://aegeanboatreport.com/2022/11/04/another-magic-trick-this-time-104-people-magically-disappeard

ton commentaire personnel ?

J’ai bien galéré pour créer la fiche dans Sens critique !

La bande annonce
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gumMB_VkesA

▻http://www.lemonde.fr/pixels/article/2016/09/16/life-is-strange-eloge-de-la-lenteur_4999125_4408996.html

Oui, Life is Strange, le grand succès du jeu vidéo français de 2015, est un jeu lent. Non seulement Raoul Barbet et Michel Koch, les deux créateurs principaux du jeu, le reconnaissent, mais ils le revendiquent. « La lenteur, c’était quelque chose d’important pour nous », expliquent les deux concepteurs, invités du « off » du Monde Festival, ce 16 septembre.

« Il fallait de la lenteur, à la fois par rapport au thème du jeu, la nostalgie, et par rapport à son mécanisme principal, le retour dans le temps. Il fallait que le joueur puisse prendre son temps. La plupart des jeux sont beaucoup trop “speeds”, ils vous disent d’aller au prochain objectif en cinq minutes, on ne profite pas de l’univers. On voulait prendre le contre-pied ! »

Small aid ships play big role in Europe’s migrant crisis
ROME:

Two years ago, a small, privately-run ship set out to lend a hand to military operations in the Mediterranean rescuing migrants on boats near capsizing off Libya.

▻http://tribune.com.pk/story/1156806/small-aid-ships-play-big-role-europes-migrant-crisis

Migrants : au large de la #Libye, une flottille humanitaire essentielle

Il y a deux ans, un petit navire privé s’aventurait au côté des militaires portant secours aux migrants au large de la Libye. Aujourd’hui, une dizaine de navires humanitaires financés par des dons privés patrouillent, assurant plus de 20% des opérations.

▻http://www.courrierinternational.com/depeche/migrants-au-large-de-la-libye-une-flottille-humanitaire-essen

Da yacht di lusso a nave di soccorso. Il dono del privato per salvare migranti nel Mediterraneo

#Astral, la nave donata da un privato salperà all’alba del 3 luglio da Lampedusa e farà poi base a Malta, aggiungendosi alle sette imbarcazioni umanitarie già presenti nell’area. Il dono da parte dell’imprenditore Livio Lo Monaco sarà impiegata per salvare la vita dei migranti che sfidano il mare

https://www.repstatic.it/content/nazionale/img/2016/07/01/180541203-98800e25-27e6-4e6a-9983-763c8e99a0b5.jpg

How NGOs took over migrant rescues in the Mediterranean

The launch of Operation Triton in 2014 shifted the focus of EU efforts in the Southern Mediterranean from Search and Rescue (SAR) to border control. Several NGOs have since attempted to fill the gap left by the absence of large-scale humanitarian operations.

▻https://euobserver.com/opinion/134803

«Besonders schlimm ist es, wenn kleine Kinder ertrinken»

Der ehemalige italienische Marineadmiral #Franco_Potenza leitet die Missionen der Hilfsorganisation Migration Offshore Aid Station. In der Regel seien fünf bis sechs Organisationen mit Rettungsschiffen vor der nordafrikanischen Küste.

http://files.newsnetz.ch/story/1/7/4/17465438/10/topelement.jpg

Migranti, Ft: Frontex accusa ong di collusione con trafficanti

Roma, 15 dic. (askanews) - L’Agenzia europea per le frontiere esterne, Frontex, ha accusato le organizzazioni umanitarie che operano nel Mediterraneo di collusione con i trafficanti di esseri umani. E’ quanto si legge in rapporti confidenziali ottenuti dal Financial Times, pubblicati nel giorno del vertice Ue chiamato a discutere la crisi dei migranti. Le ong hanno respinto con forza l’accusa.

▻http://www.prealpina.it/pages/migranti-ft-frontex-accusa-ong-di-collusione-con-trafficanti-131166.html

#frontex #trafic_d'êtres_humains

EU border force accuses charities of #collusion with migrant smugglers

Frontex charges open up long-simmering dispute with NGOs over how to solve the crisis

►https://www.ft.com/content/3e6b6450-c1f7-11e6-9bca-2b93a6856354
#ong

Je copie-colle le contenu de l’article, si jamais un jour il disparaît... On ne sait jamais...

The EU’s border agency has raised concerns about the interaction of charities and people smugglers operating in the Mediterranean, according to confidential reports seen by the Financial Times.

The points outlined by Frontex bring to the fore a long-simmering dispute between EU officials and non-governmental organisations over how to resolve a migration crisis that has caused the deaths of 4,700 people this year alone.

Frontex put its concerns in a confidential report last month, raising the idea that migrants had been given “clear indications before departure on the precise direction to be followed in order to reach the NGOs’ boats”.

The agency also raised concerns in another report last week, which stated: “First reported case where the criminal networks were smuggling migrants directly on an NGO vessel.”

NGOs operating in the region emphatically denied working with people smugglers.

Elsewhere in the reports, which were shared among EU officials and diplomats, Frontex said people rescued by NGO vessels were often “not willing to co-operate with debriefing experts at all” with some claiming “that they were warned not to co-operate with Italian law enforcement or Frontex”.

The number of rescues triggered by a distress signal fell from roughly two-thirds of all incidents this summer to barely one in 10 in October, according to Frontex figures. This drop-off coincided with a jump in the number of rescues carried out by NGOs in the central Mediterranean. They responded to more than 40 per cent of rescues in October, compared with just 5 per cent at the start of the year.

It is no wonder that these accusations come now. We have a worsening situation in the central Med and a lot of efforts taken by the EU to shutdown migration. They are trying to shut this down by all means necessary

Frontex also suggested the change in activity could be down to NGOs operating closer to Libyan territorial waters, or even to the lights used by rescue boats, which — the agency said — acted “as a beam for the migrants”.

Charities operating in the region reacted angrily to the accusations. They say a drop in distress calls from boats carrying migrants has been due to increased rescue efforts, meaning that people were picked up before their situation worsened.

Aurelie Ponthieu, a humanitarian adviser with Médecins Sans Frontières, which operates two rescue boats, said: “We are actively searching for boats in distress. We spot them earlier. This is a response to the needs that we see at sea.”

So far this year more than 170,000 people have attempted to cross the Mediterranean from Libya to Italy, about 15 per cent more than last year, according to UNHCR, the UN refugee agency. The number of deaths has jumped by a quarter after 3,800 last year.

NGO workers blamed the increased numbers of deaths on smugglers changing tactics and sending people out on increasingly unseaworthy vessels — a trend that they blamed on a crackdown on people smugglers by EU authorities. Ms Ponthieu said the agency’s focus was misconceived. She said the issue was “why so many people die, which is what Frontex should be focusing on. They should be looking at their own actions.”

MSF this year said it would refuse EU funding in protest at the bloc’s handling of the refugee crisis.

Founded in 2004, Frontex has scooped up more staff, money and powers as the EU attempts to get to grips with a growing problem of irregular migration. The EU this year turned the agency, which has a €250m budget, into a fully fledged border guard with the power to deploy 1,500 staff to support a member state if they are overwhelmed by arrivals.

Frontex also criticised charities for failing to help with investigations into people smuggling by refusing to collect leftover evidence from rescued boats. “We have an obligation to help save their lives, not perform the duties of security agencies,” said Save the Children, which has rescued 2,400 people in October and November.

The European Commission is examining whether stricter control of non-governmental rescue missions is needed, although officials stressed that legislation was unlikely.

NGOs have played a crucial role in saving thousands of lives in the central Mediterranean, according to the commission, and have “mostly acted in support [of] and close co-ordination” with governments.

Ruben Neugebauer, of Sea Watch, a German charity that runs rescue operations, said the EU was attempting to criminalise the efforts of NGOs in the Mediterranean. “It is no wonder that these accusations come now. We have a worsening situation in the central Med and a lot of efforts taken by the EU to shut down migration. They are trying to shut this down by all means necessary.”

This article has been revised since original publication to correct inaccuracy and because comments by Aurelie Ponthieu of MSF were initially wrongly attributed

Las ONG responden a Frontex: «Si rescatar a personas en el mar es un delito, que nos detengan»

La reacción se ha producido de forma unánime. «Una aberración», «un despropósito», son algunas de las palabras con las que las ONG que apoyan los rescates en el Mar Mediterráneo califican las acusaciones de colaboración con redes de tráfico recogidas en un informe confidencial de la Agencia Europea de Guardia de Fronteras y Costas (Frontex).

▻http://www.eldiario.es/desalambre/rescatar-salvamento-naufragan-ONG-Frontex_0_591441012.html

Frontex all’attacco degli operatori umanitari:che fine ha fatto l’operazione #Triton?

Sono anni che i vertici di Frontex vanno all’attacco delle Organizzazioni non governative e dei comandi della Guardia Costiera che antepongono la salvaguardia della vita umana in mare alla difesa dei confini esterni dell’Unione Europea e al contrasto di quella che definiscono soltanto come “immigrazione illegale”. Questi attacchi si erano intensificati dopo le cd. Primavere arabe e si sono poi attenuati nel 2015, per qualche mese, solo dopo le stragi più terribili che sono costate migliaia di vittime nel Mediterraneo, in particolare sulla rotte che dalla Libia puntano sull’Italia.

▻http://www.a-dif.org/2016/12/18/frontex-allattacco-degli-operatori-umanitariche-fine-ha-fatto-loperazione-tri

Italian court investigates whether smugglers finance rescue boats

Feb 17 The chief prosecutor of a Sicilian court said on Friday that a task force is looking into whether people smugglers may be financing rescue boats run by humanitarian groups that operate off the coast of Libya.

▻http://www.reuters.com/article/europe-migrants-italy-ngo-idUSL8N1G24W2
#secours_privés #passeurs #MSF

NGO rescues off Libya encourage traffickers, says EU borders chief

Head of Frontex calls for rescue operations in Med to be re-evaluated and says NGOs work ineffectively with security agencies

▻https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/27/ngo-rescues-off-libya-encourage-traffickers-eu-borders-chief

reçu par email via la mailing-list de Migreurop:

« Il est particulièrement inquiétant d’entendre des accusations envers des ONGs qui encourageraient les passeurs via les médias quand Frontex refuse de nous rencontrer. Nous avons demandé la tenue d’une réunion afin de pouvoir répondre à ces critiques, mais n’avons pas reçu de réponse à ce jour. De telles critiques sont scandaleuses en ce qu’elles impliquent. M. Leggeri suggèrerait-t-il que nous nous éloignions des zones où les gens sont les plus susceptibles de se noyer afin de rendre plus difficile le trafic des passeurs ? Devrions-nous simplement les laisser mourir ? »
« Nous ne partageons pas de mandat commun avec FRONTEX, nous ne sommes ni une police des frontières ni une brigade anti-contrebande ; nous sommes des médecins et infirmiers et nous prenons la mer pour sauver des vies. Travailler aussi près que possible des eaux territoriales de la Libye est le seul moyen possible pour réduire les hauts risques de mortalité en Mer Méditerranée – Moins les gens passeront du temps sur une embarcation surchargée, moins il y aura de chances qu’ils meurent.
Plutôt que de réitérer ces attaques préjudiciables et infondées vis-à-vis des ONG, FRONTEX devrait réévaluer ses propres opérations actuelles et considérer son propre rôle dans les situations dramatiques que nous constatons chaque jour en Méditerranée. Les passeurs s’adapteront toujours à ce qui se dressera face à eux et tant que les gens n’auront pas d’alternatives en dehors de la Libye, ils continueront à se noyer. »

Stefano Argenziano
Operations Coordinator

Et voilà des textes qui polluent le net de conneries...

Le ONG contrabbandano immigrati in Europa ?

Qualcosa di molto strano accade nel Mediterraneo Gefira – South FrontPer due mesi, utilizzando marinetraffic.com, abbiamo monitorato i movimenti delle navi di proprietà di un paio di organizzazioni non governative e, utilizzando i dati di data.unhcr.org abbiamo tracciato l’arrivo quotidiano di immigrati africani in Italia. Abbiamo scoperto di essere testimoni di una grande truffa e di un’operazione di traffico illegale di esseri umani. ONG, contrabbandieri e mafia in combutta con l’Unione europea hanno spedito migliaia di clandestini verso l’Europa con il pretesto di salvarli, assistiti dalla guardia costiera italiana che ne coordina le attività. I trafficanti di esseri umani contattano la guardia costiera italiana per ricevere aiuto e raccogliere i loro dubbi carichi. Le navi delle ONG vengono dirette sul “luogo del soccorso”, anche se è ancora in Libia. Le 15 navi che abbiamo osservato sono di proprietà o affittate da ONG viste regolarmente salpare dai porti italiani in direzione sud, fermarsi a poche miglia dalle coste libiche, prendere il carico umano a bordo e naturalmente rientrare per 260 miglia in Italia, anche se il porto di Zarzis, in Tunisia, è solo a 60 miglia di distanza dal punto di salvataggio. Le organizzazioni in questione sono: MOAS (Migrant Offshore Aid Station), Jugend Rettet, Stichting Bootvluchting, Medici Senza Frontiere, Save the Children, Proactiva Open Arms, Sea-Watch.org, Sea-Eye e Life Boat. Le vere intenzioni dietro le ONG non sono chiare. Il loro movente può essere il denaro, che non sorprenderebbe se si rivelasse essere così. Possono anche essere politicamente pilotati; le attività dell’organizzazione di Malta, MOAS, che traffica persone in Italia, è la migliore garanzia che i migranti non appaiano sulla rive maltesi. MOAS è gestita da un ufficiale della marina maltese ben noto per maltrattamenti ai rifugiati (1). E’ anche possibile che tali organizzazioni siano gestite da ingenui “buonisti” che non sanno di servire da magnete per le persone provenienti dall’Africa e quindi, volenti o nolenti, causare altri morti, per non parlare delle azioni per destabilizzare l’Europa. Per quanto nobili siano le intenzioni di tali organizzazioni, sono criminali, come la maggior parte dei migranti che non può ricevere asilo, finendo per strada a Roma o Parigi, minando la stabilità in Europa aumentando le tensioni sociali a sfondo razziale. Bruxelles ha creato una legislazione particolare per proteggere i trafficanti di esseri umani dalle accuse. In una sezione dedicata a una risoluzione UE, intitolata Ricerca e salvataggio, il testo afferma che “proprietari privati di navi e organizzazioni non governative che assistono i salvataggi nel Mediterraneo non dovrebbero rischiare punizioni per tale assistenza“. (2) Nei due mesi di osservazione, abbiamo monitorato almeno 39000 africani illegalmente contrabbandati in Italia con il pieno consenso delle autorità italiane ed europee.

▻http://marcodellaluna.info/sito/2016/12/09/le-ong-contrabbandano-immigrati-in-europa

Perché danno fastidio le Ong che salvano i migranti in mare?
▻http://www.a-dif.org/2017/03/09/perche-danno-fastidio-le-ong-che-salvano-i-migranti-in-mare

Quel video online sui migranti: le rivelazioni che rivelazioni non sono

Il video di un giovane youtuber che rivelerebbe la “verità sui migranti” spopola online e raggiunge la televisione. Ma di svelato” c’è ben poco, di confusione invece tanta

▻http://www.cartadiroma.org/editoriale/youtube-verita-migranti-disinformazione
#mensonge #désinformation #réseaux_sociaux

v. aussi: ▻http://www.butac.it/la-verita-sui-migranti-soccorsi-nel-mediterraneo

La vidéo dont on parle...:
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dP4rYgJKo_w&index=1&list=PLOhX3kYhesg8LY4ZOQG_cYekOpxqzJiOe

"Vous ne faites que causer plus de morts" : #Theo_Francken s’écharpe avec Médecins Sans Frontières, Charles Michel le rappelle à l’ordre

Médecins Sans Frontières et le secrétaire d’Etat à l’Asile et à la Migration Theo Francken (N-VA) ont échangé plusieurs messages acerbes mardi sur le réseau social Twitter.

▻http://www.lalibre.be/actu/politique-belge/vous-ne-faites-que-causer-plus-de-morts-theo-francken-s-echarpe-avec-medecin

Mediterraneo: se i veri complici non sono le ong ma l’Europa

Dopo le accuse alle ong che operano in mare lanciate da Frontex e l’indagine esplorativa della Procura di Catania sui sospetti di collusione con i trafficanti di esseri umani e di responsabilità nell’aumento dei flussi migratori, Medici Senza Frontiere e Moas, entrambe impegnate nello Stretto di Sicilia, mettono i puntini sulle i

▻http://www.vita.it/it/article/2017/03/24/mediterraneo-se-i-veri-complici-non-sono-le-ong-ma-leuropa/142874

Recuperi o salvataggi? Criminalizzazione dei soccorsi e altre stragi in mare

È di alcune ore fa la notizia relativa all’ultimo terribile naufragio al largo della Libia, nel quale avrebbero perso la vita circa 240 persone, secondo il racconto dell’ong Pro-activa Open Arms, che ha recuperato cinque cadaveri trovati vicino a due gommoni vuoti. Il 20 marzo scorso erano stati accertati altri 38 morti al largo delle coste libiche. I migranti viaggiavano a bordo di due gommoni alla deriva che sono stati “soccorsi” dalla Guardia Costiera Libica.

▻http://siciliamigranti.blogspot.ch/2017/03/recuperi-o-salvataggi-criminalizzazione.html

«Il nostro compito è salvare vite, l’attacco alle ong è ridicolo». Intervista a Riccardo Gatti, direttore delle operazioni della nave #Golfo_Azzurro della Ong spagnola #Proactiva_Open_Arms

▻http://www.a-dif.org/2017/03/25/il-nostro-compito-e-salvare-vite-lattacco-alle-ong-e-ridicolo

Mediterraneo: una politica di morte

Anziché inviare missioni internazionali di soccorso, di garantire vie d’accesso legali e sicure e di operare per la pace e il miglioramento delle condizioni di vita nei paesi di partenza, si alimentano le guerre e si indaga sui soccorritori umanitari.

Si vogliono sgomberare le acque a nord della costa libica da testimoni scomodi che potrebbero documentare l’assenza di soccorsi in acque internazionali i respingimenti collettivi congiunti già programmati tra EunavforMed, Frontex e la sedicente Guardia costiera libica.

▻http://www.a-dif.org/2017/03/26/mediterraneo-una-politica-di-morte

Aid groups deny rescue ships in Mediterranean are abetting migrant smugglers

Aid groups operating rescue ships in the Mediterranean have rejected suspicions raised by an Italian prosecutor that by saving tens of thousands of migrants they are effectively aiding Libya-based people smugglers.

http://s1.reutersmedia.net/resources/r/?m=02&d=20170328&t=2&i=1178379910&w=&fh=&fw=&ll=780&pl=468&sq=&r=LYNXMPED2R1H0#.jpg

Charities face inquiry into Med migrant ‘#taxi_service’

The Italian parliament will summon charities to answer allegations that their rescue ships are colluding with Libyan traffickers and offering a “taxi service” to migrants across the Mediterranean.

▻http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/world/charities-facing-inquiry-into-taxi-service-for-med-migrants-3zd5bz833

NGOs under attack for saving too many lives in the Mediterranean

The criminalisation of volunteers, activists and NGOs serves to deter European civic society from getting involved, and to ultimately weaken and divide the last bastion against the EU’s tough line on refugees and migrants that now prevails. It is this tough line that is also producing the systematic closure of legal routes out of Syria, trapping Syrians in border camps and protracted legal and existential limbo, and making the crossings from Libya into Italy more dangerous and deadly.

▻https://nandosigona.info/2017/03/29/ngos-under-attack-for-saving-too-many-lives-in-the-mediterranean

Commentaire de Fulvio Vassallo sur Facebook, le 30 mars 2017 :

Sta per partire l’operazione #Eunavfor_MED Fase tre. Ecco perche’ le Organizzazioni non governative devono essere allontanate dalla zona contigua alle acque territoriali libiche. Un disegno politico militare che produrrà migliaia di morti, in mare e nei centri di detenzione libici. ▻http://m.huffingtonpost.it/news/eunavfor-med Un disegno politico sul quale l’Unione Europea punta la sua scelta di sbarramento. Divisi su tutto riescono solo a decidere la morte dei migranti.

Abandoned at Sea

Europe Keeps Its Rescue Ships Far From the Coast of Libya — Where Thousands of Refugees Have Drowned

►https://theintercept.com/2017/04/01/europe-keeps-its-rescue-ships-far-from-the-coast-of-libya-where-thousa

Vu sur twitter le 03.04.2017. Je ne connais pas la source :

http://i.imgur.com/xlauajT.jpg

New Evidence Undermines EU Report Tying Refugee Rescue Group to Smugglers

Last month, an Italian prosecutor opened an investigation into whether nonprofits working to rescue refugees in the Mediterranean had connections to smuggling operations.

►https://theintercept.com/2017/04/02/new-evidence-undermines-eu-report-tying-refugee-rescue-group-to-smuggl

EU migration crisis: border agency accused of stirring controversy

Aid agencies hit back after Frontex claims they are colluding with people-traffickers in Mediterranean

▻https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/05/eu-migration-crisis-frontex-people-traffickers

Letting people drown is not an EU value

A prosecutor in Catania, Sicily, has opened an inquiry into the funding streams for these groups, indicating a suspicion that they may be profiting illicitly from the movement of people in search of safety and better lives.

This is the latest cruel twist in the EU’s response to boat migration from Libya. It reflects concern over increasing numbers of people embarking from Libya, the strain on the reception system in Italy and beyond, and the rise of xenophobic populism in many EU countries.

But blaming the lifesavers ignores history, reality, and basic morality.

As MSF’s Aurelie Ponthieu explained, the NGO group rescuers are not “the cause but a response” to an ongoing human tragedy.

▻https://euobserver.com/opinion/137526

Migranti, “Le Ong non hanno mai intralciato operazione Ue contro scafisti nel Mediterraneo”

Lo dice il comandante della missione Sophia, Enrico Credendino, annunciando il probabile rinnovo dell’operazione in scadenza a luglio e denunciando le “condizioni terribili” delle donne migranti

▻http://www.eunews.it/2017/04/06/migranti-le-ong-non-hanno-mai-intralciato-operazione-ue-contro-scafisti-nel-mediterraneo/82453

Contro la criminalizzazione dell’aiuto umanitario

Riprendiamo una netta presa di posizione in merito a quanto sta accadendo in questi mesi nel Mediterraneo Centrale dove le Ong che svolgono operazioni di SAR (Search and Rescue) ovvero salvataggio e soccorso vengono additate come soggetti che “favoriscono l’ingresso illegale in Europa”. Hanno salvato e salvano vite che altrimenti andrebbero perdute e porterebbero a crescere il numero dei caduti presenti in quella immensa fossa comune che è divenuto quel tratto di mare. Come ADIF apprezziamo la presa di posizione dei parlamentari e ci auguriamo che questo porti rapidamente a provvedimenti concreti e che manifestino come bene primario la salvaguardia delle vite.

▻http://www.a-dif.org/2017/04/11/contro-la-criminalizzazione-dellaiuto-umanitario

Ong contro Frontex: “Nonostante intimidazioni abbiamo salvato 70mila migranti in 2016”

#Proactiva_open_arms respinge le accuse dell’agenzia europea secondo cui le organizzazioni umanitarie eserciterebbero un “effetto chiamata” per i migranti irregolari

▻http://www.eunews.it/2017/04/12/ong-contro-frontex-nonostante-intimidazioni-abbiamo-salvato-70mila-migranti-nel-2016/82961

Proactiva Open Arms “Nulla da nascondere, noi salviamo vite, quello che dovrebbe fare l’Europa”

Due punti nodali, uno all’inizio e l’altro al termine di una lunga conferenza stampa che si è tenuta con Oscar Camps, direttore di Proactiva Open Arms, e Riccardo Gatti, coordinatore della missione nel Mediterraneo Centrale. Dopo una audizione al Senato (Commissione Difesa) che ha preso le mosse da un’indagine conoscitiva su quanto sta accadendo nel Mediterraneo, e nel poco tempo fra un volo e l’altro, i due operatori umanitari hanno voluto incontrare i giornalisti nella sede della Stampa Estera di Roma, per spiegare e rompere il muro di mistificazioni che sta avvolgendo il loro operato. Il loro e quello di tutte le altre Ong che fanno ciò che spetterebbe ad un impegno politico europeo. Salvare vite.

▻http://www.a-dif.org/2017/04/13/proactiva-open-arms-nulla-da-nascondere-noi-salviamo-vite-quello-che-dovrebbe

Migranti. La Finanza: «Nessun legame tra Ong e trafficanti»

Proseguono le audizioni in commissione Difesa al Senato sulle attività di ricerca e soccorso in mare da parte di organizzazioni umanitarie

▻https://www.avvenire.it/attualita/pagine/nessun-legame-tra-ong-e-trafficanti

Soccorsi in mare tra macchina del fango e riconoscimenti internazionali

Continua con cadenza quotidiana la campagna diffamatoria contro le ONG indipendenti che, sotto il coordinamento della Guardia Costiera italiana, fanno ancora attività di ricerca e soccorso in mare al largo delle coste libiche. Le ONG vengono addirittura paragonati ai pirati, e si alimenta il sospetto che le loro missioni siano finanziate dai trafficanti. Una totale inversione di senso, tra falsità e verità, che dà la misura del livello di disinformazione che si diffonde nella società italiana. Una disinformazione sulla quale si crea consenso elettorale per i partiti di estrema destra e si condizionano le scelte dei partiti di governo, come si è visto con gli ultimi decreti legge proposti da Minniti.

▻http://www.a-dif.org/2017/04/20/soccorsi-in-mare-tra-macchina-del-fango-e-riconoscimenti-internazionali

Refugee death toll passes 1,000 in record 2017 as charities attacked for conducting Mediterranean rescues

‘NGOs are being blamed for our presence, when authorities should be blamed for their absence’

▻http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/refugee-crisis-migrants-asylum-seekers-mediterranean-see-libya-italy-

Come rispondono le Ong alle accuse di M5S sugli aiuti ai migranti

L’Italia ha stabilito nel 2015 il record per la concessione della cittadinanza ai migranti provenienti da altri continenti e da altri Paesi europei. Secondo i satio Eurostat riportati dal Corriere della Sera, nel 2014 i neocittadini italiani sono stati 129.887 e nel 2015 la cittadinanza si è aperta per 178.035 persone. L’Italia è seguita da Gran Bretagna (118mila), Spagna (114.351), Francia (113.608) e Germania (110.128).

▻http://www.agi.it/cronaca/2017/04/22/news/migranti_cittadinanza_italiana_grillo_m5s_accuse_on_repliche-1708323

Ong ‘taxi del Mediterraneo’? Di Maio fa insinuazioni senza dare soluzioni

E’ un evento prevedibile perché ciclico. Con l’inizio della bella stagione oltre al crescere delle foglie e allo sbocciare dei fiori, si rivede l’aumento degli sbarchi sulle coste italiane e, di conseguenza, l’incremento delle operazioni di soccorso in mare; segue l’arrivo di “transitanti” nelle città italiane e la crescita della spesa per la gestione dei flussi migratori: è qualcosa diventato “naturale” nel nostro Paese, perché legato agli irreversibili cicli della natura. L’ultimo anello della catena, consequenziale all’arrivo della stagione estiva, sono gli strali lanciati sui social da rappresentanti della politica italiana che, invece analizzare il problema e proporre soluzioni, preferiscono, spesso in mala fede, puntare il dito. «Chi paga questi taxi del Mediterraneo? E perché lo fa? – ha tuonato in un post sui social il vice presidente della Camera Luigi Di Maio – Presenteremo un’interrogazione in Parlamento, andremo fino in fondo a questa storia».

▻http://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/2017/04/23/ong-taxi-del-mediterraneo-di-maio-fa-insinuazioni-senza-dare-soluzioni/3538861

“Abbiamo le prove dei contatti tra scafisti e alcuni soccorritori”

Il procuratore di Catania: “Ci sono telefonate con chi organizza gli sbarchi e gruppi finanziati da personaggi discutibili. Ma deve intervenire la politica”

▻http://www.lastampa.it/2017/04/23/italia/cronache/abbiamo-le-prove-dei-contatti-tra-scafisti-e-alcuni-soccorritori-3fCnqLKWWRHBVUiygHv65K/pagina.html

Imaginary Criminals: Sea-Watch considers legal steps against attorney Zuccaro

In an interview with the Italian Newspaper “La Stampa”, the italian attorney Carmelo Zuccaro repeatedly made imaginary accusations concerning a supposed cooperation among civil rescue organisations and smugglers. Thereby, he takes part in a campaign that defames those who rescue lives. For a representative of a sovereign judiciary this is not just unworthy but illegitimate. Sea-Watch considers legal steps.

▻https://sea-watch.org/en/imaginary-criminals-sea-watch-considers-legal-steps-against-attorney-zucc

Italy migrant crisis: Charities ’colluding’ with smugglers

An Italian prosecutor says he has evidence some of the charities saving migrants in the Mediterranean Sea are colluding with people-smugglers.

▻http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-39686239

"Le procure perdono tempo, M5S diffama in cerca di voti". Erri De Luca soccorre le ong

Parla lo scrittore, appena sceso dalla Prudence, nave di Medici senza Frontiere: «Dire che hanno rapporti con gli scafisti è una calunnia»

▻http://www.huffingtonpost.it/2017/04/24/le-procure-perdono-tempo-m5s-diffama-in-cerca-di-voti-erri-d_a_220529

Migranti, Ong contro Di Maio: «Falsità». Dura la Cei: «Visione ipocrita». M5s: Commissione Ue faccia chiarezza

Sul blog di Grillo l’annuncio di un’interrogazione all’Unione europea sui presunti contatti tra operatori umanitari e organizzazioni criminali libiche. Medici senza Frontiere e Intersos: «Accuse vergognose». Erri De Luca con Saviano: «Di Maio parla a vanvera». Il vice presidente della Camera: «Chi minaccia ha qualcosa da nascondere». E Renzi: «Problema esiste ma lui lo usa come diversivo»

▻http://www.repubblica.it/politica/2017/04/24/news/migranti_ong_rispondono_a_accuse_di_maio_falsita_reagiremo-163794015

Navi di soccorso Ong: quasi un clima da caccia alle streghe

Continua a montare l’escalation di illazioni e accuse di “collusione” con i trafficanti di uomini rivolte ormai da mesi contro le Ong impegnate nelle operazioni di soccorso alle barche dei migranti nel Canale di Sicilia. Il primo passo è stato un rapporto dell’agenzia Frontex, presentato sul finire del 2016, secondo il quale gli interventi in mare favorirebbero, sia pure involontariamente, gli scafisti. Poi, rafforzate da una inchiesta della Procura di Catania, si sono via via aggiunte numerose “voci” della politica: dei partiti di destra (a cominciare dalla Lega) e poi dei 5 Stelle ma, a quanto ha scritto il 20 aprile La Stampa, anche di esponenti vicini al Governo o del Governo stesso, tanto da arrivare a una indagine conoscitiva affidata alla Commissione parlamentare Difesa che, guidata dal senatore Nicola La Torre, sta convocando tutte le Ong più impegnate nel Mediterraneo. Interrogati da questa stessa Commissione, sia il generale Stefano Screpanti, capo del terzo Reparto Operazioni della Finanza, che l’ammiraglio Enrico Credendino, comandante della missione europea Eunavformed, hanno dichiarato che, a loro sapere, non risultano collegamenti di alcun tipo fra le Ong e le organizzazioni che gestiscono il traffico di migranti. Ma neanche questo è bastato: le Ong restano sotto tiro. Le loro navi – si afferma – sarebbero come minimo un fattore di attrazione per gli scafisti, tanto da porre la necessità di “fare chiarezza” su tutti i programmi di salvataggio in mare.

www.a-dif.org/2017/04/24/navi-di-soccorso-ong-quasi-un-clima-da-caccia-alle-streghe/

Eritrea, accuse alle ONG che soccorrono i barconi e acquista armi dalla Nord Corea

Il regime eritreo esulta e sul suo giornale on-line, Tesfanews, rincara le critiche dirette contro le Organizzazioni non governative, impegnate nell’attività Search and Rescue (SAR). Le ONG sono accusate dall’Agenzia europea della guardia costiera e di frontiera (Frontex) di collusione con i trafficanti di uomini. Il bollettino di propaganda di Asmara, punta il dito su alcuni difensori dei diritti umani, attivisti eritrei, che da tempo hanno lasciato la loro patria.

▻http://www.africa-express.info/2017/04/25/eritrea-accuse-alle-ong-che-soccorrono-barconi-e-acquista-armi-dall

Italy prosecutor claims NGOs working with human smugglers

The chief prosecutor of Catania has repeated his claims that NGOs were working with smugglers to help migrants from Libya into Europe. His statements are in line with Italian populist leaders.

http://www.dw.com/image/38441575_303.jpg

Corteo 25 aprile, slogan davanti a sede Frontex. «La nuova Resistenza è al fianco dei migranti»

Una deviazione non autorizzata, le forze dell’ordine prese alla sprovvista e qualche momento di tensione. Poi, però, di fronte agli uffici dell’agenzia europea - nell’ex monastero di Santa Chiara - un centinaio di manifestanti ci arrivano lo stesso. Tra le bandiere, gli slogan e i numeri dei morti in mare.

▻http://catania.meridionews.it/articolo/54314/corteo-25-aprile-slogan-davanti-a-sede-frontex-la-nuova-resisten

Migranti, il procuratore Zuccaro: «Ong forse finanziate da trafficanti». Orlando: «Parli con gli atti»

Il capo della Procura catanese, che indaga su una presunta collusione tra operatori umanitari e organizzazioni criminali libiche: «Tra le finalità potrebbe esserci anche l’inquietante corto circuito: destabilizzare la nostra economia». Minniti: «Evitare giudizi affrettati». Frontex: mai accusato le ong. Di Maio: «Ipocriti mi attacchino, vado fino in fondo»

▻http://palermo.repubblica.it/cronaca/2017/04/27/news/migranti_procuratore_catania_ong_forse_finanziate_da_trafficanti-

Cospe: “Gli attacchi alle ong fumo negli occhi per nascondere fallimento politiche Ue”

Riceviamo e pubblichiamo la risposta di Giorgio Meschini, presidente Cospe, alle accuse rivolte alle ong operative nel Mediterraneo centrale

▻https://www.cartadiroma.org/news/gli-attacchi-alle-ong-fumo-negli-occhi-nascondere-fallimento-politiche-

MOAS, MSF e Sea Watch: ricerca e soccorso indipendenti nel post-Mare Nostrum

Il 24 luglio 2015, sul sito di Mediterranean Hope uscì un ottimo articolo di Paolo Cuttitta ( in italiano e nella versione in inglese) che evidenziava, quindi già 2 anni fa, il ruolo che stavano prendendo le Ong per salvare le persone nel Mediterraneo Centrale dopo la chiusura di Mare Nostrum. Una analisi attenta delle prime tre Ong che sono intervenute in quel contesto evidenziando affinità e differenze negli approcci e nelle mission che si davano, nelle stesse modalità operative. Cuttitta, da attento ricercatore, in un articolo estremamente sintetico definiva già il 2015 l’anno delle Ong e documentava tutto quello che oggi sembra scandalizzare coloro che vorrebbero impedire che proseguano tali operazioni di intervento. Nel 2016, in un successivo articolo dello stesso autore, si documentavano le ragioni dell’aumentata presenza di navi umanitarie nella rotta del Mediterraneo Centrale. Ora sono molti di più gli attori in campo e la situazione in quel tratto di mare è divenuta ancora più critica così come evolve tragicamente la spirale nei paesi di fuga e di transito. Riaffermare che dietro gli interventi di privati non c’è stata la logica del business ma quella della necessità di ridurre i danni provocati dal combinato disposto di leggi ingiuste e assenza di mezzi di soccorso dell’UE è doveroso. Ad oggi sono quasi 1000 le persone che hanno già perso la vita nella traversata, intimidire chi salva le persone significa far aumentare a dismisura tale numero. Non un rischio ma una certezza.

▻http://www.a-dif.org/2017/04/22/moas-msf-e-sea-watch-ricerca-e-soccorso-indipendenti-nel-post-mare-nostrum

Italian minister says painting NGOs as migrant traffickers is a lie

“I hope the Catania prosecutor’s office will speak through its investigations because I think it’s the best way to clarify things,” Justice Minister Andrea Orlando said in a live-streamed interview on la Repubblica newspaper’s Web site.

▻http://www.reuters.com/article/europe-migrants-ngo-idUSL8N1HZ6VV

Siate sinceri. Volete solo che le navi Ong smettano di salvare vite

«Dovremmo lasciarli morire in mare»: più monta l’operazione di stigmatizzazione e colpevolizzazione nei confronti delle Ong che salvano vite umane nel Mediterraneo, più chiaramente prende forma questo truce sottotesto. Ma si tratta di una deduzione implicita, suggerita sotto voce e non rivendicata, perché nessuno ha avuto ancora il coraggio di arrivare in fondo al ragionamento (oddio, qualcuno ci va molto, ma molto vicino). Perché, se l’impianto accusatorio (ancora non supportato da alcun elemento di prova emerso dalle indagini conoscitive in corso e da quelle giudiziarie chiassosamente annunciate) intende processare l’operato di una decina di organizzazioni impegnate a salvare vite, l’obiettivo sembra essere comunque che quelle navi smettano di operare. E, con esse, si interrompa anche l’attività dei nostri militari.

▻http://www.huffingtonpost.it/luigi-manconi/siate-sinceri-volete-solo-che-le-navi-ong-smettano-di-salvare-v

Giorni di populismo giudiziario. Cosa si vuole nascondere dietro la criminalizzazione della solidarietà.

La polemica sulle esternazioni del procuratore di Catania Zuccaro sulle connivenze tra ONG e trafficanti di esseri umani sta raggiungendo i più alti vertici istituzionali. Non è bastato che venisse dimostrato come la fonte stessa delle prime insinuazioni, l’agenzia Europea Frontex, fosse stata largamente fraintesa e poi le abbia sostanzialmente ritrattate. Come ha osservato l’ex Presidente del Consiglio Enrico Letta, se si tratta di contrastare fattori di attrazione (pull factor), che non si traduce certo nella contestazione di un reato, lo stesso attacco rivolto oggi alle ONG venne sferrato da Frontex, alla fine del 2014, contro l’operazione mare Nostrum ed i vertici della Marina e della Guardia Costiera italiana.

https://i1.wp.com/www.a-dif.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/m5s.jpg?resize=266%2C189#.jpg

Paru dans Il Manifesto (de je ne sais pas quel jour, l’article a été twitté par Franco Maria Fontana‏ @francofontana43 le 30 avril 2017) :

http://i.imgur.com/y20TMdv.jpg

Tempête en Italie autour des ONG secourant les migrants en mer

Les navires privés de secours aux migrants complices des trafiquants ? Le débat agite l’Italie, alimenté par les déclarations controversées d’un magistrat et la surenchère des politiques.

▻http://www.courrierinternational.com/depeche/tempete-en-italie-autour-des-ong-secourant-les-migrants-en-me

La macabra danza intorno ai diseredati
▻http://cartadiroma.waypress.eu//RassegnaStampa/LeggiArticolo.aspx?codice=LV11004.TIF&subcod=20170501&numPag=1&

Inchiesta sulle ONG: «Questi sono dati piuttosto approssimativi, ma che hanno un’approssimazione abbastanza affidabile»

Mercoledì 22 marzo 2017 il “Comitato parlamentare di controllo sull’attuazione dell’Accordo di Schengen, di vigilanza sull’attività di Europol, di controllo e vigilanza in materia di immigrazione” ascolta in audizione il procuratore della Repubblica presso il tribunale di Catania, dottor Carmelo Zuccaro. Proprio lui. Il resoconto stenografico è qui. Rileggere alcuni passaggi può essere utile alla discussione:

▻https://left.it/2017/05/01/inchiesta-sulle-ong-questi-sono-dati-piuttosto-approssimativi-ma-che-hanno-unap

Le procès-verbal des déclarations de Zuccaro:
▻http://documenti.camera.it/leg17/resoconti/commissioni/stenografici/html/30/indag/c30_confini/2017/03/22/indice_stenografico.0041.html

Migranti, sulle Ong Zuccaro insiste: «Notizie date da Frontex, non ho nuove prove». Orlando: «Nessun illecito disciplinare»

Il magistrato al centro delle polemiche per l’inchiesta sui legami tra organizzazioni e trafficanti di esseri umani chiede davanti alla commissione Difesa del Senato di poter usare le intercettazioni. Il ministero non interverrà nei suoi confronti: lo ha confermato il guardasigilli. La Marina: «Le organizzazioni non governative non ci intralciano»

▻http://www.repubblica.it/cronaca/2017/05/03/news/ong_migranti_scafisti_procura_catania_zuccaro-164500643

Migranti e Ong, così Unicef risponde a critici e troll della Rete

Il responsabile dell’account del Fondo delle Nazioni Unite per l’infanzia replica su Twitter alle polemiche sul ruolo dei volontari. Non con le offese, ma con i contenuti. Con molte risposte individuali e una grande preparazione sul tema

▻http://www.repubblica.it/cronaca/2017/04/30/news/migranti_unicef_twitter_ong-164268777