JFC that’s dark.
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But in four of these cases we were able to corroborate accounts by speaking with eye witnesses.Our research, which features in a new BBC documentary, Dead Calm: Killing in the Med?, suggested a clear pattern.
"He and two others - another from Cameroon and a man from Ivory Coast - were transferred to a Greek coastguard boat, he said, where events took a terrifying turn.“They started with the [other] Cameroonian.
Dead Calm: Killing in the Med?In June 2023, an overloaded trawler flips in front of a Greek coast guard patrol boat.
Our interviewee made it to land where he was eventually spotted by the Turkish coastguard.In the incident with the highest loss of life - in September 2022 - a boat carrying 85 migrants ran into trouble near the Greek island of Rhodes when its motor cut out.Mohamed, from Syria, told us they rang the Greek coastguard for help - who loaded them onto a boat, returned them to Turkish waters and put them in life rafts.
Human rights groups allege thousands of people seeking asylum in Europe have been illegally forced back from Greece to Turkey and denied the right to seek asylum, which is enshrined in international and EU law.Austrian activist Fayad Mulla told us he discovered for himself how secretive such operations seem to be in February last year, on the Greek island of Lesbos.
He replied that they “drive them back”, and said such orders were “from the minister”, adding they would be punished if they failed to stop a boat.Greece has always denied so-called “pushbacks” are taking place.Greece is an entryway into Europe for many migrants.
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“We immediately began to sink, they saw that… They heard us all screaming, and yet they still left us,” he told the BBC.
"The first child who died was my cousin’s son… After that it was one by one. Another child, another child, then my cousin himself disappeared. By the morning seven or eight children had died.
It replied that its staff worked “tirelessly with the utmost professionalism, a strong sense of responsibility and respect for human life and fundamental rights”, adding that they were “in full compliance with the country’s international obligations”
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Frontex and coast guards in general need oversight. Things can happen out of sight, at sea, there’s a great risk for this kind of behaviour.
