Emigration|A long BBC report accuses the Greek authorities of several abuses and the deaths of migrants.
The summary is made by artificial intelligence and checked by a human.
The Greek Coast Guard has caused the death of dozens of migrants in the Mediterranean.
At least nine of the dead have been deliberately thrown into the sea by the Coast Guard.
Several migrants say they were forcibly returned and thrown into the sea by the Greek authorities.
The Greek government has long been criticized for so-called pushback operations.
Britain’s the BBC tells The Greek Coast Guard has caused the deaths of dozens of migrants in the Mediterranean over the past three years. At least nine of the dead have been deliberately thrown into the sea by the Coast Guard.
Several eyewitnesses and investigative journalists have participated in the investigation.
The Greek government has long been criticized for the so-called pushback operations, in which the ships of migrants trying to reach Europe are pushed back towards Turkey. The operations are prohibited under international agreements. Greece has denied the charges.
BBC has investigated in more detail fifteen incidents that have allegedly resulted in the deaths of migrants. The cases investigated by the BBC are dated between 2020 and 2023.
In five of the cases, the migrants say they were thrown directly into the sea by the Greek authorities. In four of the cases, the migrants had already reached the Greek islands according to their own account.
According to Greek law, all migrants seeking asylum have the right to register at centers on the islands. However, the asylum seekers interviewed by the BBC have said that they have been detained before entering the centers.
According to reports, the authorities who apprehended the migrants acted without uniforms and with their faces covered. The BBC has obtained footage supporting the story.
Bodies of migrants in body bags aboard a Greek Coast Guard ship in June 2023. The migrant ship capsized in the open sea off Greece.
Cameroonian the eyewitness says that he landed on the island of Sámos in September 2021 with two other men. However, the Greek authorities caught them and forced them onto a Greek Coast Guard ship.
According to the Cameroonian, they were beaten before being thrown into the sea.
The man interviewed survived, but the bodies of two other men were found on the coast of Turkey.
In another case, a Somali man said he was arrested on the island of Chios. After that, the Greek Coast Guard took him and other migrants out to sea. Their hands were tied together with bundles, after which they too were thrown into the sea.
“They wanted me to die,” the man told the BBC.
Interviewed migrants report that in several other cases, migrants were forced into dinghies that had no engine or appeared to have been deliberately punctured.
The Syrian migrant said that the Greek Coast Guard transferred him and his family to a rubber boat whose valve was not closed properly. The rubber boat immediately began to sink.
“They heard our screams but still left us,” the man told the BBC.
According to the man, seven or eight children on the boat drowned before the Turkish Coast Guard arrived to rescue them.
About forced returns the filmed footage was shown by the BBC to the former head of special operations for the Greek Coast Guard For Dimitris Baltakos. Baltakos denied that anything illegal had happened, and refused to speculate on what is going on in the material.
In the same context, however, Baltakos commented on the matter in Greek to a person outside the camera, while still being miked.
“I don’t know why they did it in broad daylight. It is clearly illegal. It is an international crime.”
According to the Greek authorities, the video material is under investigation.
Greek the coast guard told the BBC that it was acting in full compliance with its international obligations.
In July 2022 Helsingin Sanomat news From the secret report obtained by the German magazine Der Spiegel, the French Le Monde and Lighthouse Reports. According to it, the EU’s border and maritime guard Frontex has helped cover up the illegal activities of the Greek maritime guard.
In 2022, the European Court of Human Rights ruled against Greece for human rights violations in pushback operations.
There is also the Greek Coast Guard criticized for its involvement in the case where more than 600 migrants are feared dead when a migrant ship sank in the Greek rescue zone in June 2022. Then the BBC toldthat the official information about the movements of the accident ship did not correspond to the picture from the sea.
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