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Putting lives at Risk:
Separating Families after Pushbacks Operations
Putting lives at Risk:
Separating Families after Pushbacks Operations
Push back operations and other deterrence practices continue to put lives at risk on a daily basis, in the land and river border of Greece as well as in the Aegean Sea. “In Greece, push backs at land and sea borders have become de facto general policy,” notes the UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants in a report issued last year. These operations are illegal, in violation of national and international law and the rights of refugees. Such practices have been upgraded to even more sophisticated and organised operations such as to conduct illegal push backs even after asylum seekers have reached the shores of a Greek island, in what appears to be as “kidnap operations”. At the same time, regrettably, no effective criminal and administrative investigation into the circumstances of the various reported incidents takes place.
“In Greece, push backs at land and sea borders have become de facto general policy”
From the report of the
Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants,
Felipe González Morales
During these illegal informal forced returns, i.e. push backs, families of asylum seekers are often forcibly separated. Those family members who did remain in Greece are led to structures throughout the territory, while those who have been forcibly returned in Turkey find themselves in extremely precarious conditions, without access to the asylum process, and in many cases in detention and at risk of deportation. Family members remaining in Greece may for days be lacking any information about their families’ whereabouts while, after they hear from them, there are no available legal procedures for their reunification. On the contrary, they risk having their family members deported to their countries of origin, where in most cases, they face life and liberty risks and thus they may lose any chance to reunite with them. In most cases, victims of the violence and separation have no means or support to overcome the trauma of the violence they have experienced at the border.
Contents
From the summer of 2022, Refugee Support Aegean (RSA), with the support of PRO ASYL, has undertaken the legal support and representation of more than 10 (ten) such cases of separation of families after push backs, as they briefly appear at the end of this text.
In this text, we publish the story of one of these cases, for which Refugee Support Aegean (RSA) has undertaken legal representation: Abas and Basir* were separated from their wives and children after the latter were subjected to a push back on Lesvos: 22 people had arrived on the island in early 2023, and the 17 of them were illegally forced to return to Turkey. Here follows their story.
The case of Abas and Basir
In early 2023, a boat carrying 22 individuals, including 9 children, all asylum seekers from Afghanistan, arrived in Lesvos. Among the group were people in need of medical assistance and attention such as a pregnant woman, sick children and elderly with health problems.
Abas and Basir, who both fled Afghanistan to avoid personal persecution by the Taliban and have now been recognised as beneficiaries of international protection, travelled on the same boat with their wives and children.
During their trip, they faced precarious weather conditions, since the wind was blowing hard and big waves were hitting the boat. When they finally reached the shore, all the passengers of the boat started to walk up a slope. Most children were very tired and exhausted and could not walk so their parents and other adults had to grab one child each to carry them up the hill.
Soon the group stopped at a spot where they could rest for a while and wait for help. Abas and Basir along with three others from the group, walked a bit further in order to get a mobile signal and ask for help. They sent their appeal and stigma to competent organisations asking for help and medical assistance, along with photos of the rest of the group. An NGO team arrived about 30-40 minutes later and they all together returned to the place where they had left the others. None of them was found, but they did find their personal belongings thrown down (bags, chargers, etc.).
The police was notified again for the specific location of the 5 individuals, including Abas and Basir, who were afterwards officially arrested by the authorities and transferred to the Controlled Facility for Temporary Accommodation of West Lesvos (Megala Therma or Kastelia), a facility used for detaining newcomers. All of them remained detained for four days in the Facility without being notified of any arrest or detention decision, with no information on their legal status and without being subjected to any formal registration procedures prescribed by law – neither their asylum claims were promptly registered. This occurred only some days later when they were finally transferred to the Closed Controlled Access Centre (CCAC) in Mavrovouni, Lesvos. From the first moment of their registration, Abas and Basir reported the incident to the Centre authorities and to FRONTEX, providing also all relevant information and evidence. Detailed accounts on the separation from their families and their push back were also submitted before the Asylum Service.
It has to be noted that Abas and Basir were informed about the whereabouts of their kins only on the next day of their disappearance: it was only then that Basir’s wife managed to contact him by phone. She told him that together with all the other sixteen passengers on the boat in which they arrived in Lesvos, they were arrested by masked men and then forced to return to Turkey. Specifically, Abas and Basir’s wives, when in Turkey, told them the following:
“When my husband and I were separated, it was really difficult, because my husband was in another country, and I was in another, different country. Being in a foreign country and not knowing anyone, and thinking about the children too - everything was very difficult for me. I struggled for too long, I was 7 months away from my husband. I went through a lot of hardships and miseries. The worst feeling I had was thinking, going through my head, that I would never be able to see my husband again - and what I would do in this foreign country, alone, with the children? I was constantly anxious, stressed. But thank God, I came again, I was united with my husband again.”
Rahma*, wife of Basir, pushed back from Lesvos to Turkey with her children and was separated from her husband
While the seventeen people, including nine children and six women, were together waiting for help, men dressed in black, masked, carrying weapons and radio-equipment, suddenly appeared from three different sides and circled them. All 17 people stood still since, from their appearance and behaviour, they believed that they were policemen. Some children started crying and shouting. All people in the group, including children (!), were forced to undress and were strip searched, their bags were emptied and their cell phones were taken from them, before being forced to move towards a van without windows. It has to be noted that a pregnant woman, women carrying their children and elderly people with heart conditions were also subjected to this violent treatment. Abas’ wife, being 3 months pregnant at the time, was hit on the stomach during the strip search.
All 17 individuals of the group, including Abas and Basir’s wives, daughters and sons, were put in the van and, following a journey of about 2 – 2,5 hours, they were taken to a small dock-like-harbour where they were handed over to other masked men, also armed, dressed in dark clothes and carrying radios. They were then forced into a boat that sailed for some time in the sea. They were afterwards moved to a larger boat, and, consequently, after sailing for a while, they were thrown into a basket-like floating inflatable raft, and left at sea. The bigger boat that was previously carrying them began to make waves and later on sailed away and abandoned them. After sailing away, it was seen to fly a Greek flag.
Refugees remained stranded at sea for about two hours. The raft had started to take on water when a nearby fishing boat spotted them and informed the Turkish Coast Guard. The Turkish Coast Guard came to salvage them from the sea, subsequently arrested them and transferred them to a migrants’ detention centre.
Abas and Basir were among the 5 persons that were the only ones to escape what can be described as a complete push back operation – in fact a “kidnap operation”. Things would be different if Abas and Basir and the other 3 persons of the group had not gone to a nearby location to get a mobile signal in order to ask for help and send their location.
Reporting/investigation of the incident and current state of the people
It has to be noted that Abas and Basir’s violent separation from their families, as well as their wives’ testimonies, have been officially and competently reported by them to the Reception and Identification Service and to FRONTEX. Employees of various services of the Centre, FRONTEX staff and a Greek police officer were present during this process. They also showed them all related photos from their mobile phones and were asked questions about the incident. After the above procedure, they were not asked to sign anything nor any relevant document was given to them.
In early April 2023, the competent personnel of FRONTEX Fundamental Rights Office launched an investigation for a Serious Incident Report (SIR). They contacted Abas and Basir and their wives, who gave them their testimonies and all evidence they had regarding the violent forced removal from the place where they had settled after their arrival on Lesvos and until their push back to Turkey.
The findings and/or conclusions of the relevant investigation are communicated exclusively to the competent Greek authorities. Thus, Abas and Basir do not have any knowledge of them, nor have they accessed them after the completion of the investigation by FRONTEX Fundamental Rights Office.
Abas and Basir, assisted by RSA lawyers, also submitted a complaint before the Greek Ombudsman. The Independent Authority acting under their competence as the National Mechanism for the Investigation of Arbitrary Cases called for the Hellenic Police and the Greek Coastguard to investigate the incident for acts, actions or omissions of their personnel.
According to the Greek Ombudsman, the facts complained of “constitute, inter alia and at least, infringements of the human dignity within the meaning of Article 137A of the Criminal Code, but also unlawful intentional offences against the physical integrity, health and personal integrity of the individual freedom, alone from the incidents described above, but also because of possible violation of the principle of non-refoulement, in which the involvement of members of the uniformed personnel of the Hellenic Police and/or the Coast Guard Corps is possible”.
Up until this day, there is no information of an official investigation to have been launched regarding the incident.
- Basir’s wife and four children, currently 15, 14, 10 and 5 years old, are now in Greece. They managed to arrive by boat on Lesvos a few months ago, after a couple of other failed attempts.
- Abas remains separated from his wife and 3 children, the first two aged 2 and 4 years old, and the latter a newborn in Turkey (his wife was pregnant when the push back took place).
Push backs and deterrence policies as systematic practices
RSA lawyers have recorded serious allegations of refoulement and subsequent separation of families (in more than 10 cases) in operations in the border meeting similar patterns.
In these cases represented by Refugee Support Aegean lawyers, victims who have been separated from their families describe acts related to extremely serious violations of the principle of non-refoulement and the right to asylum, as well as of the prohibition of inhuman or degrading treatment and of the right to personal liberty (ECHR). These constitute acts which, according to Greek Law, are criminal offences. According to the testimonies of the family members who were separated from their relatives, these practices of refoulement often include physical or verbal violence and threats to their lives and physical integrity, ofter with the use of weapons, humiliating treatment, removal of personal belongings and identification documents, kidnap and informal detention in places under degrading conditions.
Families supported by RSA have literally been split in two, in cases where one parent with some of the children remained in Greece and the other parent with the rest of the children was forced back in Turkey (5 cases), single mothers were separated from their children, where either the women remained alone in Greece and one of their children was forced back to Turkey (2 cases) or, even, one of the children remained in Greece while the mother was forced back to Turkey in an uncertain status (2 cases) or even in detention (1 case).
Undoubtedly, the violent separation of families trying to cross the Greek-Turkish border (and not only those, of course) is a really intense traumatic event. And when it comes to single mothers who have lost their partner or one of their children along the way, the situation is even more cruel. Women who, in many cases, have not learned to live with autonomy, are suddenly called upon to cope with very demanding situations while being completely destabilised, without any actual support and, at the same time, having to prove their suitability for their parental role. These women, after their separation from their family, are lonely, frightened, living in conditions of insecurity and uncertainty, carrying a huge amount of guilt about whether they could have done more to avoid being separated from their family. In Greece, native single-parent families are essentially supported by the broader family and/or social network, since the state is unable to meet their needs. Consequently, for a single refugee mother, daily life is even more difficult, as she has no formal or informal networks of mutual support for significant periods of time. In many cases, women experience severe symptoms of post-traumatic stress, which is interpreted primarily as an individual dysfunction, lack of mental resilience or even a psychiatric problem, when in fact it is the policy in place that is responsible for their situation.
One of the most emblematic cases of a shipwreck after attempted pushback and of violent family separation with a tragic ending, has been the case of a shipwreck in the Aegean Sea, off the island of Farmakonisi, which took place on January 20, 2014. The shipwreck occurred during an operation emanated by the Greek coastguard, an attempted push back according to the survivors, and resulted in the death of 11 people – 8 children and 3 women, including the wives and children of the survivors, all refugees from Afghanistan. In Greece, the judicial investigation of the case soon archived the case. The survivors sought justice at the European Court of Human Rights – ECHR (case Safi v. Greece).
On 7th July 2022 the judgement issued by the ECHR found that Greece violated Article 2 (right to life) of the European Convention on Human Rights as well as Article 3 (prohibition of inhuman or degrading treatment) in the case of this shipwreck. The Court pointed out that, precisely due to the lack of a thorough and effective investigation by the national authorities, it was not in a position to determine whether there had been an attempted push back of the applicants towards the Turkish coast. Thus, the Court unanimously condemned Greece for violation of article 2 on procedural grounds while finding violation of the right to life in substance, as Greek authorities had not done all they could reasonably have been expected to do, to afford all the applicants and their family members the level of protection required by Article 2.
Over the last years, there have been consistent accounts of push backs at sea, at land on the islands and at the Evros border, strongly highlighted inter alia by various United Nations agencies and mechanisms (UNHCR, IOM, WGAD, CAT, UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants) and Council of Europe bodies (CPT, PACE, Commissioner for Human Rights).
Lastly, the Greek National Commission for Human Rights (GNCHR), which is the National Human Rights Institution in Greece (NHRI) and the independent advisory body to the Greek State for the protection and promotion of human rights, has launched the Recording Mechanism of Incidents of Informal Forced Returns on September 2021. The Recording Mechanism aims to monitor, record and report incidents of informal forced returns, to promote and consolidate respect of the principle of non-refoulement, to safeguard guarantees and compliance with legal procedures and to boost accountability for reported human rights violations alleged to have occurred during informal forced returns. Last week, the Mechanism published its first annual report for 2022. The report includes testimonies for 50 incidents of informal forced returns which, according to the claims of the alleged victims, occurred from April 2020 until October 2022. According to the testimonies, the total number of the alleged victims in these incidents amounts to at least 2,157 individuals, including 214 women and 205 children, as well as 103 people with special needs, such as people with medical problems, with disabilities, the elderly, etc.
The practice of push backs violate national, European and international law standards, as well as the rule of law itself. Inhuman and degrading treatment of newcomers by the State cannot be justified by any European policy, let alone an illegal one, and cannot be used as a deterrence measure at European borders. Push backs and systematic deterrence practices separate families and put lives at risk on a daily basis in Evros and the Aegean and must be halted immediately.
* Names of persons cited in this text have been changed to protect safety and privacy.
RSA provides free legal assistance to asylum seekers and refugees, with funding from the PRO ASYL Foundation