Aegean ‘driftbacks’: Abduction, abandonment, and endangerment
In 2020, during the first months of the Covid pandemic, the Greek authorities’ ‘pushback’ tactics begun including the weaponisation of rescue equipment to perform violent and illegal expulsions: Greek officials would forcibly expel migrants intercepted at sea, or apprehended on Greek islands, from Greek territory by abandoning them at sea in inflatable, non-navigable rescue rafts. This practice has since 2020 become a systematic policy, which Forensic Architecture has termed ‘driftbacks’. Driftbacks are carried out alongside other, longstanding and well-documented forms of maritime ‘pushbacks’ and border violence in the Aegean Sea.
There are currently at least 32 applications pending before the European Court of Human Rights seeking to challenge the practice of ‘driftbacks’, which we argue is a form of torture that exposes migrants to refoulement and grave risks to their life. G.R.J. v Greece is one of the only cases brought by an unaccompanied minor, who was abducted and expelled from a refugee camp in Samos without paper trail or means of recourse. A.A.H. and H.J. v Greece was filed on behalf of two Guinean brothers who were abandoned on a raft at night after arriving on Lesvos. The cases seek reparative truth for the active efforts by the Greek authorities to conceal ‘driftbacks’—with a broader view to challenge the EU’s funding of and assistance to these operations, including through the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, Frontex.
cASES
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G.R.J. v Greece: Abductions and torture in the Aegean
G.R.J. v Greece was submitted to the European Court of Human Rights in March 2021 on behalf of an unaccompanied minor who was abducted, illegally detained and expelled to Turkey by Greek officials through life-endangering abandonment at sea.
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A.A.J. and H.J. v Greece: Abductions and Torture in the Aegean
A.A.J. and H.J. v Greece, submitted to the European Court of Human Rights in May 2021, challenges Greece’s abductions and expulsions of asylum seekers in the Aegean Sea.
UPDATES
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Systemic unaccountability at the EU’s external border: missed opportunities of the European Ombudsperson’s decision on Frontex’s SAR role and obligations in the Aegean region
The statement is in response to the European Ombudsperson’s decision, published on 28 February 2024, following its own-initiative strategic inquiry concerning the role of Frontex in the context of search and rescue operations. The statement draws on the Joint Contribution the organisations made during this inquiry.
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European Ombudsperson opens inquiry into the Commission’s administration of EU funding used in Greece’s illegal expulsion of migrants
The inquiry is based on the joint submission of a complaint against the European Commission by de:border // migration justice collective, Legal Centre Lesvos, HIAS Greece, Equal Rights Beyond Borders, and Mobile Info Team, with the support of several investigative and research partners—including Dr. Lena Karamanidou, Border Violence Monitoring Network, Forensic Architecture and Lighthouse Reports.