The images published exclusively by New York Times lend support to the accusations that have long hovered over the Greek coastguard on the handling of migrants: the video, recorded on the island of Lesbos by an Austrian activist and politician named Fayad Mulla, shows the authorities in Athens forcibly charging a bus 12 people taken to a Greek Coast Guard vessel and then onto a rubber dinghy set adrift in the Aegean.
The facts date back to about a month ago: on 11 April the migrants, who arrived in Greece on a small boat, were captured by some masked men. The journalists of the New York Times tracked them down to reconstruct their misadventure and ascertain the violation of international norms by the EU country. They come from Ethiopia, Somalia and Eritrea, countries involved in civil wars which probably would have allowed them to obtain political asylum. They said they were forced onto a dinghy and sent adrift. The patrol boat headed towards the Turkish coast, abandoning the migrants on a rubber dinghy without an engine. Shortly afterwards, help from the Turkish authorities arrived and took them to a residence center in Izmir.
To cast further shadows on the behavior of the Greek coastguard the press release of Médecins Sans Frontières: “On April 11, our team in Lesvos was notified of 103 people who arrived on the island and needed urgent medical treatment. That day we assisted 91 people without being able to find the other 12. On the same day, a video published today by the New York Times shows the rejection of a similar number of people”. “MSF has repeatedly raised alarms about the serious consequences of direct and indirect violence directed against people on the move in Greece – continues the statement – In Lesvos, MSF patients have repeatedly told of having been victims of traumatic rejection by the authorities of border”.
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