Refugees wait for their rescue in the Mediterranean Sea (archive image from 2019)
Photo:Petros Giannakouris / AP
"Hello? Can someone help us, please? Sorry, we are not doing well, we are really not doing well, I am pregnant, we are not doing well. The child is very sick. The child is sick. We have nothing to eat, nothing to drink. There is nothing. I am pregnant. She is seven years old. They said they were coming, but we do not see them. Two people have died. We are not well, we are not Well."
This call for help from a mother reached the Alarm Phone aid organization on Easter Sunday, which has set up an emergency telephone for refugees in distress at sea. The woman was on a boat drifting off the coast of Malta with 46 migrants, everyone on board was dehydrated, some unconscious, no rescue in sight.
Samira El Ouassil Right Arrow
Born in Munich in 1984, is an actress and author. In 2016 her book "The 100 Most Important Things" (with Timon Kaleyta and Martin Schlesinger) was published by Hatje Cantz Verlag. In 2009 she was the candidate for chancellor of the PARTY, which at that time was not admitted to the federal election. She was recently awarded the Bert Donnepp Prize for media journalism for her media critical column "Wochenschau" (uebermedien.de).
The activists of the organization put such calls for help from refugee boats directly on the net in order to cause a public reaction and, as a result, a rescue through public pressure - not to say: to force. Thanks to the emergency calls published, the victims are at some point too loud to be quietly ignored by the coast guards. But unfortunately it doesn't always help. Simeon Leisch, one of the helpers who has been taking care of the phone for three years, told "enorm-magazin": "We work in shifts, you are never alone. That is important. I had to listen to a boat sinking once and who called for help. "
Lifesaving attention
The important thing about this emergency number, however, is not only the life-saving attention that the SOS shared online can create, but also the possibility, in addition to smartphone recordings and witness reports, to document and publicize any human contempt of the European Union in real time. Since the corona crisis, the illegal methods of deporting or pushing back refugees without a process due to them, so-called pushbacks, have reached a new level of inhumanity, especially in the Aegean.
Between the beginning of March and mid-May, the alarm phone recorded 18 cases in which refugee boats were turned back by the Greek coast guard, often under the eyes of their Turkish colleagues. After evaluating a number of videos, eyewitness reports, emergency calls and geodata, Deutsche Welle assumes that the officers threaten the people on the boats, remove or destroy engines, leave the boats unable to maneuver on the open sea or deliberately push them back into the Turkish waters.
With the help of three non-governmental organizations as well as evaluated video material and the Turkish coast guard, the "New York Times" has now been able to determine a total of 31 cases in which refugees were abandoned on rubber dinghies by Greek officials in the sea on the border of Greek territorial waters.
It doesn't matter whether the refugees drown
I want to emphasize this again: the people were abandoned in the Mediterranean. Apparently in the hope that they will be rescued by the Turkish coast guard - or in indifference about whether the refugees drown. According to research by the New York Times, at least 1072 people were left to their fate in the Mediterranean using these methods.
The ARD political magazine "Report Mainz" was able to verify such a case in June and document a sea emergency with its own team, in which both the Turkish and Greek coast guards watched for hours while a rubber dinghy threatened to sink incapable of maneuvering between the two coasts.
Even more absurd: The Greek coast guard made waves with their ships in the direction of the riddled refugee boat in order to wash it back into the Turkish waters. The videos of this process were published by Alarm Phone. Thanks to public pressure from aid organizations, they finally deigned to save the people.
Amjad Naim described in "Report Mainz", SPIEGEL and Lighthouse Reports how he was intercepted by a Greek coast guard boat in May just off the coast of Samos. Naim said he and others were forced to transfer to an inflatable, floating life raft. The Greek ship pulled the orange, round and fully occupied life raft back out to sea with the help of a line, in the direction of the Turkish waters.
There is a verified video of this process. It also shows the following: After the Greek coast guard has pulled the life raft far enough behind them, into nowhere in the water, the officers cut the only line connecting them. You just leave the non-motorized life raft behind. In the sea. The refugees panic, wave, scream, despair.
This is not just an illegal pushback, it borders on torture.
The Greek government denies the allegations and insists on complying with the human rights convention. His country is a constitutional state, said the Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis the US news channel CNN. The fact that the government does not seem to have a problem with pushbacks, however, can be seen in videos that show an alleged, illegal deportation at Evros and the evaluation of which SPIEGEL published in December 2019: You can see masked forces secretly migrating from the Greek side of the border river to force the Turkish.
SPIEGEL reporter Steffen Lüdke calls the Greek pushbacks “a poorly kept secret.” According to research by SPIEGEL and after evaluating documents from the Turkish interior ministry and the police, almost 60,000 migrants are said to have been illegally returned from the Greek side within a year from October 2018.
No solidarity refugee policy
The EU Commissioner for Home Affairs, Ylva Johansson, is calling for these events to be clarified. But the problem is that the Greek government would have to take care of this education itself - which denies that there is even a problem. Well
The European Union bears responsibility for these pushbacks and for the at least 1072 people who were abandoned in the sea, through its inability to organize a refugee policy based on solidarity and its failure to intervene. This proves: the EU's Nobel Peace Prize is an even more silly pathos kitsch than the ridiculous EU hoodie.
When I look out of my window, I see a young mother in the courtyard who is playing in the playground with her two children. The smaller of the two has fallen, is crying, she takes it in her arms, comforts it and gives the sore knee a kiss. What would this mother do to give her child a better life? Perhaps crossing an entire sea in a nutshell.
The pregnant woman, who was floating off the coast of Malta with her child and many dehydrated migrants, was rescued. But 15,602 other people have drowned in the Mediterranean since 2015.
Icon: The mirror
