"Drift-Backs" AND Torture on the AEGEAN
Unaccompanied minor challenges systematic pushback practice, alleging torture.
On Tuesday 7 January, the European Court of Human Rights shared its decision on the case GRJ v. Greece, and despite recognising that illegal pushbacks are being used systematically in Greece, the court found the application by GRJ inadmissible.
GRJ, a refugee from Afghanistan, was 15 years old when he was apprehended, alongside another unaccompanied minor, at the Vathy Reception and Identification Centre on Samos, Greece in September 2020. GRJ and the other child were subject to a life-threatening pushback to Türkiye. The case challenged the acts of the Hellenic Coast Guard for seriously endangering the lives of two minors by leaving them adrift in a motorless raft in the middle of the Aegean Sea.
Substantial evidence corroborating GRJ's account was submitted to the ECtHR, including audio-visual files of the two minors as they were rescued by the Turkish Coastguard. Evidence such as this has been proven to be reliably verifiable using geolocation and chronolocation techniques, by numerous experts including the Global Legal Action Network (GLAN), Bellingcat, Lighthouse and Forensic Architecture. The applicant's account was also corroborated by the UNHCR, who submitted a third-party intervention (TPI) in the case. Despite this, the court ruled that GRJ had “failed to provide prima facie evidence of his presence in Greece and of his “pushback” to Türkiye from the island of Samos on the dates alleged.”
This ruling sets a worrying precedent, placing an almost impossible burden on victims of border violence to produce an unachievable level of proof regarding the injustices they have experienced. People seeking asylum often have their personal devices confiscated or stolen by the authorities engaged in pushbacks, in addition to the risk that their personal devices could be lost, damaged, or become unusable during perilous journeys.
While the Court’s recognition of the systemic practice of pushbacks is broadly significant and overdue, precluding individual’s from accessing justice by setting exclusionary evidentiary standards undermines the protections enshrined in the Convention.
“This outcome is shocking, profoundly unjust, and a devastating blow to justice and accountability. As the first case of its kind to be heard by the ECtHR, it should have set a precedent for addressing the systematic practice of ‘driftbacks’ that puts asylum seekers’ lives at risk on a near-daily basis. Instead, the decision rewards Greece’s deliberate cover-ups and sets an impossibly high evidentiary threshold for survivors of pushbacks."
Niamh Keady-Tabbal, Irish Centre of Human Rights and member of the legal team representing GRJ.
AEGEAN PUSH BACKS
Since March 2020 Greece has engaged in systematic policy of “pushbacks” in the Aegean Sea, and a pattern of sending asylum seekers adrift in non-navigable rafts with indifference to their fate.
OUR CASE
On 23 March 2021 GLAN filed an application with the European Court of Human Rights challenging Greek authorities obstruction of a minor's attempt to register their asylum claim. The minor was apprehended in an migrant camp and illegal expelled from Greece by setting them adrift on the Aegean sea. The application argues that such practices not only exposed the applicant to refoulement, but also amount to his treatment in breach of the prohibition of torture in the European Convention on Human Rights. This action was initiated by GLAN and is now under the leadership of De:Border Collective.
RULING
Despite substantial evidence, the court ruled that GRJ had “failed to provide prima facie evidence of his presence in Greece and of his “pushback” to Türkiye from the island of Samos on the dates alleged.” and that the case was inadmissible. The court has said this decision is final.
Background
On 4 June 2024 the hearing of G.R.J. v Greece at the European Court of Human Rights took place. GLAN filed an application with the European Court of Human Rights, on 3 March 2021, on behalf of G.R.J, a 15 year-old Afghan refugee who was apprehended in the Vathy Reception and Identification Centre on Samos and subject to a life-threatening pushback to Turkey, along with another unaccompanied minor, in September 2020. The case challenges the acts of the Hellenic Coast Guard for seriously endangering the lives of two minors by leaving them adrift in an unnavigable raft in the middle of the Aegean Sea.
Watch the recording of the hearing:
The Global Legal Action Network (GLAN) and Prakken D’Oliveira lodged a complaint at the European Court of Human Rights on behalf of GRJ, an unaccompanied asylum-seeker child who was apprehended in the Vathy Reception and Identification Centre on Samos and subject to a life-threatening pushback to Turkey, along with another minor, in September
2020. The case was brought to our attention by NGO, Aegean Boat Report, which first documented the pushback incident.
G.R.J arrived on Samos from Turkey on September 8 with a group of approximately 17 Afghan asylum-seekers. He and another unaccompanied minor from the group made their way to the refugee camp in Vathy to apply for asylum.
The following morning, they presented themselves to the authorities in order to register as asylum-seekers. They were taken to a police area inside the camp under the pretext that they would be placed in quarantine for two weeks as a public health measure to ensure that they did not have Covid-19, after which they would be brought back to the camp.
The two minors were denied the opportunity to register, and instead were abducted from the camp by Greek officials, who escorted them to a port where they were forced aboard a Hellenic Coast Guard vessel, handcuffed, and had their belongings, including phones and money confiscated. Coast Guard officers drove the ship into the middle of the Aegean sea, forced the two teenagers into an inflatable, motorless raft and left them to drift. They paddled with their hands until they were rescued by the Turkish Coast Guard. They were detained in Turkey for about 9 days, before being released, destitute and without legal protection or support.
The complaint challenges Greece’s systematic policy of “drift-backs” in the Aegean Sea, the practice of abandoning asylum-seekers adrift in non-navigable rafts which, we argue, exposes them to refoulement and also amounts to a form of life-threatening torture. The case argues that Greece’s treatment of G.R.J violated several legal obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights, (ECHR), including the right to life (Article 2); the prohibition of torture (Article 3); and the right to an effective remedy (Article 13).
G.R.J’s case is one of several legal challenges to the policy of “drift-backs” submitted to the ECtHR since 2020 and is the first to be heard by the Court.
The hearing for the case of G.R.J took place on June 4 2024.
This action was initiated by GLAN and is now under the leadership of de:border // migration justice collective.
CONTEXT
Pushbacks on the Aegean carried out by the Greek Coast Guard have become increasingly widespread since the beginning of 2020. Since March in particular, Greek officials have resorted to unprecedented methods of border violence to keep out migrants: asylum-seekers arriving on Greek islands or into Greek territorial waters are dragged out to sea by the Greek Coast Guard, forced into non-navigable inflatable rafts, and left to drift. Thousands of asylum-seekers have found themselves in life-threatening situations as a result of these now systematic practices.
The highest echelons of the Greek Government have persistently denied the occurrence of migrant pushbacks before domestic and European bodies, obstructing the investigation of scores of domestic complaints made on behalf of victims. The Greek government continues to emphasise its commitment to international law, while praising the Coast Guard and celebrating the reduced ‘flows’ of asylum-seekers.
NGOs such as Aegean Boat Report, Legal Centre Lesvos, and Mare Liberum continue to document almost-daily abuses against migrants at Greece’s islands and maritime borders. Mare Liberum, an organization monitoring refugee rights in the Aegean Sea, reported on a “dramatic increase of violence and ill-treatment of refugees in the Aegean” to the United Nations Human Rights Office.
According to the organization, they counted 321 pushbacks involving 9,798 people between March and December 2020. Based on a cross-referenced account of 17 case-studies and interviews with over 50 survivors, the Legal Centre Lesvos concluded that “Greek authorities are continuously and systematically conducting collective expulsions at Greece’s land and sea borders, putting migrants’ lives at grave risk and violating their rights, including the right to seek asylum”. Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, and assets belonging to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) are often found in the vicinity of, and hence presumptively aware of, or potentially direct participants in collective expulsions.
A growing number of alleged cases of ‘pushbacks’ by Greek authorities that follow the same pattern have been communicated to the Court since early 2020. Leading media organisations and international press, including Lighthouse Reports, Bellingcat, Der Spiegel, and ARD/Report Mainz, have also investigated and extensively reported on pushbacks from Samos as well as other Aegean islands.