Taking Hard Line, Greece Turns Back Migrants by Abandoning Them at Sea

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Taking Hard Line, Greece Turns Back Migrants by Abandoning Them at Sea

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Many Greeks have grown frustrated as tens of thousands of asylum seekers languished on Greek islands. Now, evidence shows, a new conservative government has a new method of keeping them out.

By Patrick Kingsley and Karam Shoumali

RHODES, Greece — The Greek government has secretly expelled more than 1,000 refugees from Europe’s borders in recent months, sailing many of them to the edge of Greek territorial waters and then abandoning them in inflatable and sometimes overburdened life rafts.

Since March, at least 1,072 asylum seekers have been dropped at sea by Greek officials in at least 31 separate expulsions, according to an analysis of evidence by The New York Times from three independent watchdogs, two academic researchers and the Turkish Coast Guard. The Times interviewed survivors from five of those episodes and reviewed photographic or video evidence from all 31.

“It was very inhumane,” said Najma al-Khatib, a 50-year-old Syrian teacher, who says masked Greek officials took her and 22 others, including two babies, under cover of darkness from a detention center on the island of Rhodes on July 26 and abandoned them in a rudderless, motorless life raft before they were rescued by the Turkish Coast Guard.

Read the rest of the article in The New York Times here >>>

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For a response by the Greek Prime Minister K. Mitsotakis on the issue to the journalist Christiane Amanpour from the US, please follow the link: https://t.co/FPSjHLj5sG