A new report from the Greek Council for Refugees alleges that Greece is systematically conducting illegal pushbacks of migrants at the borders under a “regime of impunity.”
The report concludes that pushbacks “continue as an integrated, systematic, carefully-planned migration and border policy of the Greek state.”
The report details several cases represented by the Greek Council for Refugees– 12 pushback incidents in the northern Evros border region that occurred in 2023, and 3 prior cases that are being argued before the European Court of Human Rights.
Pushbacks refer to the practice of illegally forcing migrants back over the border from which they arrived. This practice is a violation of 1951 Refugee Convention which dictates specifically that “refugees should not be penalized for their illegal entry or stay” as well as the EU Schengen Borders Code which states people must be granted entry to seek protection even if they do not fulfill the entry conditions. Pushbacks also often risk violating protection from refoulement– stipulated both in the Refugee Convention and the EU charter– which is the return or expulsion of a refugee to a territory where they face threats to their life or freedom.
“In addition to violating the right to asylum and the right to protection from refoulement, pushback operations always involve periods of arbitrary detention,” states the report. “Asylum seekers are detained illegally – without registration, information or access to effective legal remedies and without basic supplies – in closed or open detention areas inside police stations, in unknown locations or even in vehicles without access to air, food and water.”
They also state that pushbacks regularly include physical and psychological abuse, from beatings, to intrusive genital searches.
The report notes that in the last two years the European Court of Human Rights has issued over 80 injunctions aimed at protecting newly arrived asylum seekers in the Evros region, yet “the perpetrators continue to feel undisturbed in Greece, showing complete disregard for the decisions of the Court.”
The report states that, “pushback operations take place in police stations, even in public central areas, which is indicative of the environment of impunity in which authorities act arbitrarily, criminally and unchecked.”
Not a single criminal trial regarding pushbacks has been tried in a Greek courtroom.
Official statistics on Greek judicial investigations into pushbacks, along with data from cases handled by the Greek Council for Refugees, show that no charges were filed against border personnel or others, the report states.
Greece claims it does not engage in illegal pushbacks.
However, this report is not the first of its kind. In 2020 the Greek Council for Refugees joined in the publication of a report that labeled pushbacks the “new normality” in the Evros region. Half a dozen other monitoring organizations and NGOs have published similar reports. The practice has been documented many times by local media on the islands and in the north and in international media such as the New York Times, Der Speigel, and BBC. It has been acknowledged and denounced by the Council of Europe, the International Organization for Migration, the UN Human Rights Committee, and the UNHCR.
