The first COVID-19 lockdown, combined with a rise in anti-immigration rhetoric has resulted in systemic pushbacks by the Hellenic Coast Guard, sea rescue expert Giannis Skenderoglou told EURACTIV in an interview.
According to international law, all signatories to the UN Geneva Convention have to give the right to foreign nationals arriving in its territory to apply for international protection.
Any expulsion, or collective expulsion, is illegal under the international framework, and referred to as a ‘pushback’.
According to Skenderoglou, Greece’s hostile environment around search and rescue activities has consolidated over the past three years.
He worked in Lesvos for three years, coordinating rescue operations at sea, and closely collaborating with the Hellenic Coast Guard and Frontex, the EU’s border agency.
“After the first year, we had already managed to have better relations [with the Coast Guard and Frontex], gaining their trust and showing them that the job we were doing was valuable,” he told EURACTIV.
“I stayed until the situation in the north Aegean islands had gotten out of the control of the authorities, perhaps deliberately, with people in the streets against refugees and humanitarian organisations,” he said.
The evolution of a coast guard
“They were not always behaving like this,” Skenderoglou said, referring to abuse of migrants and reported illegal pushbacks by the Hellenic Coast Guard, which, he contended, became systematic during the first COVID-19 lockdown.
“It was the best moment. Without NGOs rescue boats at sea, or first responding teams, not much traffic at sea due to the blockage of the fishermen, but also with people stuck at home, it was not possible to have witnesses by the coast,” Skenderoglou told EURACTIV.
Nowadays, pushbacks are happening both at sea and on land, he explained.
“They kidnap migrants, stealing their phones and any kind of evidence, and they take them back out at sea, abandoning them in emergency life rafts,” he said, saying that the procedures happen daily.
Asked whether these kind of practices are a reality in Greece, the Hellenic Coast Guard told EURACTIV that its officers operate in accordance with international conventions and with “absolute respect for human life and human rights”.
“Regarding biased allegations of alleged illegal acts, we must stress that the operational practices of the Greek authorities do not include such methods,” the coast guard stated.
However, a recent New York Times investigation showed video evidence of a pushback in April, where people, children included, were put in a life raft adrift at sea, and then rescued by the Turkish authorities.
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis described the case as “unacceptable” during an interview with CNN and said that an investigation will follow.
However, he denied the fact that pushbacks are systematically happening in Greece.
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Skenderoglou, however, tells a different story.
“We had many deaths confirmed from such violent actions, but nothing is stopping them. Before, and for four years the Hellenic Coast Guard was rescuing, under a different government. It was not always in the best favour of saving lives at sea – there were bad behaviours – but not crimes against humanity,” he said.
“There have been many activists, journalists, human rights defenders and locals arrested and accused of smuggling, just because they were arriving at the landing site of a refugee boat, handing over water or trying to keep evidence of the event,” he told EURACTIV.
“The Greek authorities do not want that, as they want to push these people back, in the most discreet way possible,” he alleged.
This is a state of affairs Europe “seems to be satisfied about”, Skenderoglou told EURACTIV.
The Pylos case
Questions remain over events on the night between 13 and 14 June, when a boat with about 750 people on board sank near the Greek coast of Pylos. Only 104 people survived.
No video evidence has yet emerged from the event. Some of the survivors said the Hellenic coast guard tried to tow the boat which then capsized, but the Greek authorities have refuted this claim, declaring that the boat wanted to proceed to Italy and did not want help.
Regarding the investigation, the Greek Coast Guard told EURACTIV: “It is known that a preliminary investigation has been carried out by the Central Port Authority of Kalamata, which has been submitted to the competent Public Prosecutor’s Office. Both this and the main inquiry are under strict confidentiality, in accordance with the instructions given by the Prosecutor’s Office of the Supreme Court. In addition, a preliminary examination is being conducted by the Piraeus Maritime Court Prosecutor’s Office”.
Regarding the standard approach to rescue operations, Skenderoglou said: “Rescue cannot depend on our conscience or the politics we serve, it is an obligation. Any ship in the area had the obligation to approach for help, under the coordination of the Hellenic Coast Guard,”
Frontex intercepted the boat on 13 June at 11.47 (CEST time) in international waters, in the Greek SAR (search and rescue) zone and communicated its position and other details to Italian and Greek authorities.
“The ship was heavily overcrowded and was navigating at slow speed (6 knots) direction north-east,” the EU border agency declared in a press release a few days after the tragedy.
According to international law, it is the responsibility of national authorities to call a SAR case and any vessel in the area is required to perform or assist it. The Hellenic Coast Guard and some merchant vessels were on the scene when the boat sank.
“The disparities between survivors’ accounts of the Pylos shipwreck and the authorities’ version of the events are extremely concerning,” said Judith Sunderland, associate Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch, in a press release, after a mission the organisation conducted in Greece together with Amnesty International.
“The Greek authorities, with support and scrutiny from the international community, should ensure that there is a transparent investigation to provide truth and justice for survivors and families of the victims, and hold those responsible to account,” she added.
According to Frontex, the EU agency monitored the vessel until its plane ran out of fuel and came back to the base. Afterwards, Frontex “offered to provide” assistance with a drone that was in the area on the same day.
The Greek authorities “asked the agency to send the drone to another SAR incident South of Crete”, Frontex stated. The drone, after attending the incident near Crete, went back to the previous case at 06:05 (CEST), however, there were “no signs” of the fishing vessel.
“No Frontex plane or boat was present at the time of the tragedy,” the EU agency said.
After the incident, the EU Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly launched an investigation into Frontex’s role in SAR operations at sea, in a bid to shine a light on the EU border agency’s response to a series of major shipwrecks in 2023, such as Pylos.
EU Ombudsman to investigate Frontex’s role in search and rescue at sea
The European Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly has launched an investigation into Frontex’s role in search and rescue operations at sea, in a bid to shine a light on the EU border agency’s response to a series of major shipwrecks in 2023.
Responsibilities
During a European Parliament hearing in early July on the Pylos shipwreck, Renew Europe MEP Sophie in ‘t Veld questioned how the Commission could still “trust” the Greek authorities and their Naval court investigating.
“We have to trust them,” said EU Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson and Frontex executive director Hans Leijtens, underlining that EU countries are sovereign in conducting their SAR activities.
“What I fear is that the EU seems to be somehow satisfied by all that. They have multiple times communicated it in many different ways such as ‘Greece is acting as the shield of Europe’, while they see that all the funding is going to stricter armed border forces and new prisons as hot spots for migrants,” Skenderoglou said.
[Edited by Benjamin Fox/Nathalie Weatherald]
Source: euractiv.com
