Greece accused of moving newly arrived asylum seekers off island and stranding in sea

Asylum seekers land on Lesbos in March this year

Credit: AFP

Greece has been accused of moving refugees from an Aegean island on which they had sought sanctuary and stranding them in rubber dinghies in the middle of the sea.

Europe’s border agency, Frontex, is accused of being complicit in the so-called pushbacks, which would contravene international law, and told The Telegraph on Wednesday that it has now launched an internal investigation.

The accusations were made by the German news magazine Der Spiegel, which conducted an investigation into half a dozen incidents in which the Greek coast guard allegedly tried to drive asylum seekers back towards Turkey, from where they had come.

Greece has long accused Turkey of weaponising the issue of migration by allowing migrants and refugees to cross the Aegean. Islanders even have a name for the confrontations in the Aegean – “Greek water polo”.

In April, 22 refugees, many of them Syrian, landed on the Greek island of Samos and thought they had reached safety.

Instead, according to Der Spiegel’s investigation, they were rounded up by Greek security forces, pushed into an inflatable rubber raft, and towed back out to sea, in an illegal operation that was filmed by the Turkish coast guard.

Refugees and migrants board a Greek coast guard ship during a rescue operation in September 2019 near the Greek island of Samos

Credit: Petros Giannakouris /AP

A Frontex surveillance plane equipped with an infrared sensor passed over the raft but did nothing to help the refugees, the investigation claimed.

It was one of six alleged pushbacks since April in which Frontex ships or aircraft were close by but did not intervene. There may well have been many other undetected cases, the investigation said.

“Greek border guards are growing increasingly ruthless. They are now pushing even refugees who have reached the Greek isles back to sea in operations that are illegal under international law,” Der Spiegel said in its investigation.

In June, a Romanian ship involved in the Frontex operation directly blocked a refugee boat. The ship then passed the refugee vessel at high speed, buffeting it with waves.

In another incident, in August, Greek coast guards allegedly tried to steer a dinghy full of migrants and refugees back towards the Turkish coast “multiple times”.

A child cries as a dinghy with 54 Afghan refugees lands ashore the Greek island of Lesbos in February this year

Credit: ARIS MESSINIS /AFP

The Greek government has flatly denied conducting pushbacks, but Frontex said it had launched an investigation to look into the claims. It has aircraft, drones and ships deployed in Greece to help with the protection of the EU’s frontier.

“We conducted a preliminary inquiry and found no indications that there had been violations of the law,” Chris Borowski, a Frontex spokesman, told The Telegraph.

“But Frontex’s management board, which is our supervisory body, has now created a working group to look into these allegations. That investigation recently got underway and is still ongoing.”

“These pushbacks violate the ban on collective expulsions and international maritime law,” Dana Schmalz, an expert on international law at the Max Planck Institute in Heidelberg, told Der Spiegel.

Frontex is obliged to rescue asylum seekers if they come across them at sea, she said.

"If they don’t do that and even make waves instead, only to drive away and let the Greeks do the dirty work, then they are still involved in the illegal pushback.”