Greece: migrants thrown into the sea by coastguards
Audio 01:07
A Greek Coast Guard vessel in the Aegean Sea in 2017 (Illustrative Image).
© Thanassis Stavrakis/AP
Text by: RFI Follow
1 min
A Cameroonian asylum seeker accuses the Greek coast guard of having thrown him into the sea with two other men who died of drowning.
These drownings took place in the Aegean Sea, during a pushback operation to neighboring Turkey, off the Greek island of Samos, in September 2021. The information was confirmed by several European media including Mediapart.
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With our correspondent in Greece,
Joël Bronner
“
We are in mourning today.
There are two brothers who drowned.
They died, they came all the way here
: they were up there, up there
!
They were three.
Two drowned and one returned to Turkey.
»
In September, on the Greek island of Samos, this asylum seeker from Cameroon got her information from one of her compatriots.
At the time, the information is not immediately verifiable.
Denied reality
She talks about the people who arrived on the island, a stone's throw from the refugee camp where she lives, then their brutal refoulement, without having been able to apply for asylum, contrary to international conventions: "
These people, they were at side of the camp… Why are they so bad
?
The human being is a human being, even to the animal, we don't do that
!
They drowned, they had no life jackets.
How can you throw people away without even giving the vest away
?
»
In Greece, despite the accumulation of testimonies, reports, reports, and despite, as in this case, the presence of corpses, the reality of the refoulements is almost systematically denied.
►Also listen: Great report - In Greece, progressive criminalization of migrants and crime of solidarity
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Greece
Immigration
International Migrations