An investigative story conducted in collaboration with several media outlets shows how Greek police have forced migrants to deport other migrants across the border into Turkey.
Greek police have forced migrants and asylum seekers to take part in illegal conversations on the country’s border with Turkey, say The Guardian, Der Spiegel, Le Monde and ARD Report Munich. In their article, the media collaborated with a Dutch investigative NGO Lighthouse Reports with.
The months-long joint project revealed that police forcibly recruited some migrants and asylum seekers to make conversions. Some were recruited by human traffickers. The latter worked under the auspices of a criminal boss who assisted local police in illegal conversions.
In total six people told the media how they had taken part in forced conversions on the Évrosjoki.
According to The Guardian, police used the threat of a lawsuit to recruit migrants and asylum seekers in at least one case.
English speaker Bassel [nimi muutettu turvallisuussyistä] describes to the media how the police who arrested him ordered him to undress, after which he was imprisoned in a cell with 150 other prisoners.
Bassel was then told he would either work for the police or get charged with human trafficking and go to jail. Bassel had already been beaten before being threatened by the police.
Basselille According to The Guardian, he was granted a one-month residence permit in Greece, in addition to which he was given the opportunity to steal the goods he wanted from deported people. According to the interviewees, those who have been forcibly converted have often been treated violently, forced to undress and their belongings have been stolen. The perpetrators and thieves have been Greek police.
The forced recruits spent their days behind bars, leaving only in the dark and still in disguise. According to Der Spiegel, the forced conversions followed the same pattern: for example, the Basel police took him to a river where he had to fill inflatables. He then took the rope to the Turkish side and attached it to a tree, after which the forcibly recruited people transported the asylum seekers across the border, up to 150 in the evening.
Bassel also tells how he had to watch from the sidelines as people drowned in the river.
Hire Bassel was not allowed to leave the police station alone. He was only allowed to eat irregularly, and if he disobeyed police orders quickly enough, he was beaten.
“They made me a slave,” Bassel told Der Spiegel.
According to local villagers, police action is a “public secret”. Fishermen and farmers who are allowed to travel in the closed area report how they have repeatedly seen asylum seekers do dirty work for the police.
The three police sources who spoke anonymously to the media have also confirmed coercive turns and the role of the police in them.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said on Tuesday that the events need to be thoroughly investigated.
“These creepy images and reports now coming before us from the EU’s external borders are intolerable,” he wrote on Twitter.
Applying for asylum is guaranteed by the Geneva Convention on Refugees, which is also binding on Greece. The agreement guarantees everyone the right to seek asylum.
Greece has been charged in the past with illegal deportations. There are, among other things, deportations and violence against refugees Amnesty International “practically” Greece’s guiding border policy.
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