PRESS RELEASE
Push backs at Evros borders: a disregard for human life and legality
Athens, May 2, 2019
The borders of Greece at Evros tend to become an area outside the law, a
place of suffering for refugees who desperately try to reach Europe. This is a
situation that stigmatize our country and those actors who are responsible for
the border management.
While watching the increasing death toll at the borders, refugee
allegations for barbaric practices of push backs continue and are a source of
disgust. Through these allegations, we realize that violence and systematic
violations cannot be considered as personal choices of the perpetrators but
indeed they are generalized practices developed within a deterrence plan in an
effort to reinforce the message of discouragement for future refugee flows in
the area.
These allegations extensively recorded in the joint report of the Greek
Council for Refugees, ARSIS and Human Rights 360, recently published1, do not
allow for a reasonable doubt. The systematic way and the similarities of
mistreatment refer to an organized plan, the implementation of which allows -
if not encouraging - the development of unlawful behaviours. The patrols of
armed men, - with or without police and military uniforms, masks or hoods -,
speaking not only Greek but also another European language (often mentioned as
the German one), who act with demonstrative cruelty, even in front of young
children and families, the violence and abuse, the removal of personal
belongings and money (clothes on a case-by-case basis and often shoes), the
removal or destruction of mobile phones (apparently in order to prevent
possible registering of illicit activities), the transfer to abandoned
warehouses used as informal detention places, without food or water and finally
the use of inflatable boats for the push backs to Turkey, reflect specific
orders or other instructions pursuant an objective that ultimately has already
been decided. This objective is designed in a way to conceal and to legalize
all illicit activities linked to the push backs practices.
The Campaign for the Access to Asylum once again condemns the
push backs practices which have been expanded and become more cruel and more
systematic after the EU-Turkey Joint Statement of 18 March 2016. The Campaign
highlights that not only they constitute a serious violation of the country's
international obligations but they are also elements of criminal acts (torture,
robbery, exposure to life risk, etc.) which fall under the jurisdiction of the
criminal justice.
Therefore, we would like to address the following questions to the
authorities and ask for relevant answers: