The Daily - Turned Away and Left at Sea

Episode Date: June 7, 2023

A few weeks ago, footage showing asylum seekers, including young children, being rounded up, taken to sea and abandoned on a raft by the Greek Coast Guard was sent to The New York Times.Matina Stevis-Gridneff, The Times’s bureau chief in Brussels, discusses how she proved the truth of the tip that a major European government was carrying out an illegal scheme risking the lives of civilians.Guest: Matina Stevis-Gridneff, the Brussels bureau chief for The New York Times.Background reading: Greece has said that it doesn’t ditch migrants at sea. But it was caught in the act.The Times’s investigation into the video points to a slew of Greek, European Union and international law violations.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

From New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. A few weeks ago, my colleague, Brussels Bureau Chief Matina Stevis-Gridniff, received a tip that, if true, would prove that a major European government was carrying out an illegal scheme that deliberately risks the lives of civilians as young as six months old. Today, the story of how Matina proved that that tip was true. It's Wednesday, June 7th. Matina, this story starts for you with a tip, right?

So tell us about that tip. That's right, Michael. I'm just sitting in the bureau in Brussels at my desk, and I get this email from a man I've never heard of before. capturing the Greek authorities, rounding up migrants, and effectively dropping them in a life raft in the middle of the Aegean Sea. Practically, this means these people can't access the country's asylum system. They basically never existed as far as formalities are concerned. And if what this tipster is claiming he's captured in video is correct, that would be a gross violation of both local law and European Union law,

but also international legislation. Right. So this tipster has delivered a pretty extraordinary, and it sounds like explosive, claim. It sounds explosive, but I'm also sort of instinctively quite hesitant to immediately believe him. And the reason is we've heard about this alleged practice by the Greek authorities in the past. Multiple news organizations have tried to prove that it's going on. But the evidence hasn't really been there up until that moment. So I'm sort of also partly bracing. That it might not be real. Exactly.

So tell us what you see once you watch this video. So the video in total is more than three hours long, but I quickly get to the pertinent parts. And immediately I notice it's sort of clearly been taken around midday, exactly like the man who shot it said it was. And I also recognize the landscape. I've been to Lesbos myself. I've worked there. And it looks familiar. And what you see is this unmarked white van, no windows, no plates, nothing, driving down a narrow dirt road toward the coast. And it stops, and three men who are not wearing uniforms, they're just wearing sort of dark clothes and ski masks. You can't see their faces. They unlock the back of the van and then I see a total of 12 people coming out of the van

one by one and some of them strikingly are obviously small children there is even a months old infant and a lot of women there's only two men in that group. So all of these things really stand out to me. Now, the three masked men escort the group down the road to this picturesque little bay that has a wooden pier. And a larger inflatable engine speedboat is waiting for them there. inflatable engine speedboat is waiting for them there. And one by one, the people who are, at this point, I'm realizing, obviously Africans, and you can see that some of the women have their heads covered with scarves. They're put one by one onto the speedboat and the speedboat turns around and speeds out at sea. Within two minutes, it approaches a Greek coast guard vessel. And that's where I start feeling quite shocked

because this clearly starts to indicate these masked men cooperating with the Greek Coast Guard. Right. This is the Greek government suddenly entering this video. Exactly. It's the first time any markings of the state are visible in the video. And so the speedboat pulls up next to the Coast Guard vessel that's stopped at sea, and the camera zooms in. It's a little blurry, but you can still see quite well, one by one, the people being escorted on the Coast Guard vessel. And you see the Coast Guard vessel navigating further away from the Lesbos coastline. So at this point, what you have seen are masked men removing these 12 people from a

van with no license plates or markings, putting them on a speedboat, one by one, and then that boat rendezvousing with a Greek government ship, which then takes these 12 people, and this is all happening in the middle of the sea. And in broad daylight. And at some point, the Coast Guard boat with the 12 migrants on it stops. the Coast Guard boat with the 12 migrants on it stops. And quite quickly, you see a sort of black, inflatable life raft being dropped off. The video is blurry. The distance is quite big.

But you can still make out the life raft floating behind the Coast Guard boat. And soon after, the boat leaves the life raft adrift, turns around, and starts crossing through the bay back toward Lesbos. So what do you understand to have just happened here? So even though I can't see the 12 migrants on this inflatable life raft, I believe that they are on that life raft and they've been left adrift in the middle of the Aegean Sea. And sure enough, that belief was quickly reinforced because about an hour and a half further into the video, I see two Turkish Coast Guard vessels approaching the life raft in what left adrift sort of halfway between the island of Lesbos in Greece and the Turkish coast. And so it becomes clear that the life raft was left to drift into Turkish territorial waters by the Greek coast guard. Right. Not at all by accident, but in this deliberate effort to keep, as you said, as this tipster suggested to you, these migrants from ever entering the Greek immigration system. Exactly. And of course, Turkey isn't a member of the European Union.

So now these migrants aren't just out of Greek territory. They're also out of EU territory. So what are you thinking after you have finished watching this pretty unsettling video? Well, Michael, I'm thinking that the tipster was right, that what he said he got on video is on video, but we're going to have to do a lot of work to verify it. is on video, but we're going to have to do a lot of work to verify it. And time is of the essence, as this video is only two days old and we want to move fast. We believe these people, the 12 migrants, must still be somewhere in Turkey. And so we get a reporter that we work with in Turkey to confirm that they are being held in a removal facility, a sort of prison where migrants are taken before being deported in the coastal city of Izmir. And I fly to Izmir to meet them and interview them.

And what do you find when you get to this prison? As soon as I see them, I have no doubt on my mind that they are the same people as the people I saw on the video. Why? The composition of the group, their physical attributes, the presence of the small children and the baby all are consistent with the video, but honestly, some of them were still wearing the same clothes

more than a week later. I particularly remember being struck by a young woman who was wearing a turquoise hijab and a black and white checked shirt. And she really stood out in the video. And there she was standing right in front of me in this detention facility in Turkey. First of all, we really appreciate their time. You could just explain to them that we have this video that shows what happened to them. And what's the story that these people tell you? Are they all together friends or family together? So in order to interview them we had to patch in translators and yeah i counted there's a total of nine people in that room yep uh the first person the lady

with the turquoise color hijab who's grabbing her face now um her name is she's the mother of seven of those kids one of the first things we were able to establish is that they weren't, in fact, all family members. But they do all come from the same part of the world. They come from the Horn of Africa. There is an Ethiopian, an Eritrean, and two mothers with their children, and they come from Somalia. They can't return to Somalia due to the security situation back home is what they were saying. And really their stories are the stories of that region and just how badly security safety have collapsed over the last few years. For example, the youngest mother, Naima, she comes from a southern part of Somalia that is held entirely by a terrorist group called Al-Shabaab.

She's fleeing Somalia with her six-month-old baby boy, Awale. that we hear is somehow related to the hardship these people are facing in their home countries and the very complex, brutal ways that they've had to make their migration toward Europe. And what did these migrants tell you about how they all ended up in that white, unmarked van? So let's start by talking about what happened last week. First of all... Well, they say that they had arrived on the Greek island of Lesbos after paying smugglers to get there in two separate groups. They hadn't met before being locked into the back of that van.

They say that they entered Greece. They arrived on the island during nightfall. It was nighttime. And after arriving on Lesbos, it was the middle of the night, it was dark. So they sheltered in the woods that night. And as a result, while they were taking shelter in those woods, that's when the men

with the masks came across them. They sought refuge in the brush close to the coastline. And they were confronted by masked men. And the women and children, in fact, were told by these men that they were rescue workers, that they worked for the famous medical charity Doctors Without Borders. The masked men introduced themselves as doctors, claiming to be doctors, medical staff to assist them. It quickly became clear that was a total lie.

When the men saw them, all the women, where their hijabs were ripped off of their heads, they were stripped down, their pants were forcibly taken off of them, including the children. And their money and any valuables they had were also taken away by the men. The masked men took their money, their mobile phones, any documents they had on them, rounded them up. And a little later, the two young men who had been apprehended in a separate operation by the masked men were also thrown into that white van with the women and the children.

And that's where the testimony from the migrants leads us up to what we started seeing on the video. I'm just going to take a pause now because I think we need to let these people go. The kids are tired and they're very tired. Listen, if you can tell them, first of all, thank you very much. And also that I'm really sorry about what happened to them. So at this point, Martina, what's your level of confidence that this is exactly what this tipster, of the blue emails you about says it is? At this point, Michael, I'm 100% sure.

And I'm also 100% sure that that's not how the European Union asylum system is supposed to work. and union asylum system is supposed to work. I feel very confident that we have the most solid evidence ever presented that the Greek authorities are involved in a crime. We'll be right back. Matita, why would Greece do this to migrants that enter its country? Why would it so brazenly violate the law, but above all treat people like this, risking their lives to avoid having them enter Greece's immigration system as asylum seekers? Well, Michael, there's a long, nearly decade-old story as to how we get to the point of the Greek authorities treating migrants like this. Perhaps you'll

remember that around 2015, 2016, because of the huge displacement caused by the civil war in Syria, more than 1 million Syrians mainly, but also Iraqis, tried to make their way to Europe to seek refuge, fleeing those conflicts. I was there myself in 2015 on the Greek island of Lesbos. As thousands and thousands of refugees arrived on a daily basis, Greece was just the first stop for these people trying to get to Europe and get to safety. And by all accounts, Greeks at that time were incredibly generous. The Greek Coast Guard, the very same Coast Guard we saw on that vessel ditching people in the Aegean Sea, that Coast Guard was rescuing hundreds of people every day and helping them along their way. So it was a completely different picture. I mean, the residents of the Greek islands of the Aegean that received those refugees were even put up

for a Nobel Peace Prize for their generosity. The media documented their extraordinary generosity and reaction to helping people in need. So what changed? Well, Michael, at that time, famously, then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel said, we will manage. And she opened her country's borders to receive more than one million Syrian and Iraqi refugees in the space of months. Many Germans are rolling out a cheering red carpet welcome for refugees. For everyone here, thank you, thank you so much. Thank you,

Lady Merkel. Thank you so much, Deutschland. But that generosity dried up quickly and abruptly. But that generosity dried up quickly and abruptly. It is not just the Bavarian weather that is growing icy. The welcome now at Germany's southern border is much colder. Germany has reintroduced Czechs at its border with Austria in an attempt to better control the huge number of migrants and refugees arriving. Germany closed its borders, and so did most of the other European Union countries. Austria is a small country. You know, this country will be full, full, full very soon.

But refugees kept coming, and many of them ended up in Greece, stuck on those islands for months and months. They're like, we are in a big prison as an island. We cannot go to other cities. We cannot have a job. We cannot, I don't know, people are getting more problems in their head. So they languished in Greece, in many cases, in terrible conditions on the island of Lesbos and other neighboring islands, conditions that you wouldn't see in some of the poorest countries in the world. It is terrible, really terrible,

because we didn't do anything, we didn't respect. We leave our country, I live here in a tent without any accommodation. We are human. It was really very confronting for the small communities on the Greek islands, such as the island of Lesbos, that were hosting often dozens of thousands of people in their midst. So what's the reaction from these Greek people, especially on these islands,

to the fact that Greece is no longer a stop on the way to the rest of Europe for these migrants, but now kind of a permanent destination, an end of the journey rather than a beginning? The squalor of the conditions just made the local communities feel that asylum seekers should not be in Greece at all. And that informed government policy. Explain that. huge numbers of particularly Syrian refugees that we had seen around 2015 and 2016, even though

the numbers of asylum seekers arriving in Greece later were much, much smaller, just a fraction, in fact, that was still too many because the local community, Greek voters, didn't want these people there. And so they developed a much tougher, tougher line toward asylum seekers. And part of that tougher line was a harsher approach to them right at the borders. So that they never even enter the Greek asylum system. even enter the Greek asylum system. Effectively, what we saw in our video and through our investigation was the most extreme version of that policy, that these people were sent back so that it was like they were never even there. But, you know, what obligation in the eyes of the Greek government and the Greek people

does the larger European Union have here? Because what you have just laid out is the story of a system that in the beginning, back in 2015, absorbed all these migrants in a somewhat proportional way and now is asking Greece to shoulder a disproportionate amount of it. So what should the EU be doing? Well, the responsibility that the European Union has toward Greece and the responsibility that Greece has toward the European Union

has been hotly debated in Europe for many, many years. Certainly, the Greek authorities believe that the European Union should create a much faster and firmer way to determine whether migrants are entitled to asylum or not, and should remove them from Greek territory and distribute them in the rest of the European Union nearly instantly. The European Union thinks that Greece should do a much better job at welcoming, processing, and hosting asylum seekers, and in fact has put billions behind that demand. It has paid for Greece to build better facilities where people can stay while their asylum requests are being processed. It has helped the Greek government financially and with personnel in guarding its borders. In fact,

the Coast Guard vessel that we saw in our video, in our investigation, effectively violating Greek and European law, was paid for, 75% by European Union funds, as part of that effort to support Greece. So there's a standoff here. And in the face of this ongoing flow of migrants, it sounds like Greece's answer is to take this rather extreme step of forcibly putting these migrants out to sea. That's right, Michael. There is a standoff,

but there's also a tacit agreement between the European Union and Greece. In a way, Greece is sort of doing Europe's dirty business. And as long as they don't get caught, the European Union has been until now happy to sort of let it carry on. In fact, the European Union and the European Commission in Brussels, they know Greece has been treating migrants harshly and potentially illegally. There have been many lawsuits in the European Court of Human Rights. There have been news articles. There have been migrant testimonies.

But until now, it has chosen not to punish Greece. And the reason for that is that Greece is necessary. It's important for Europe's migration management. But this incident that we managed to investigate and bring to light may just have been that one step too far. You know, Matina, we're talking here about Greece and we're talking about the EU and the way that they're treating these migrants. What we're really talking about is asylum and the nature of asylum. And it strikes me that the United States has been deliberately restricting asylum now for several years, starting with Title 42 during the COVID emergency

and now with a program to replace it that will make seeking asylum harder and harder. That's clearly what Greece and the EU seem to be wanting to do as well, make it harder to seek asylum. So what do you make of that fact that this is going on across these different continents at the same time? Michael, I think you've hit the nail on the head, really. I mean, I think across the sort of so-called Western world, the developed world, we are seeing that countries are adopting more and more restrictive migration and refugee policies. And that includes the United States,

it includes the European Union, but also Australia, Britain, all of these places are simply getting tougher on migration, more or less at the same time. And to be sure, the U.S. still takes in thousands of refugees. The European Union has taken in millions of Ukrainians fleeing war at its doorstep. But in other ways, we are seeing an erosion of the right to asylum. And that just sort of looks different country to country, depending on each country's particularities and conditions. And I think that taking a couple of steps back, those policies appear coordinated, reflect a few trends we've seen across the developed world in the last 10 years. We have seen the rise of nativist politics,

but we've also seen the fortunes of people in the developed world deteriorate in some cases through inflation and the cost of living. The means of the people who live in the rich world are feeling like their standards of living are dropping. feeling like their standards of living are dropping. And that's made that generosity of previous decades erode. At the same time, though, in the poorer parts of the world, in so many regions, we are seeing more conflict and more hardship. And often, in fact, more conflict and more hardship, and often, in fact, the West has had a hand in that, this creates a recipe for disaster, a recipe for abuse. And I guess where this story leaves me is wondering whether what we documented, what we uncovered in the case of Greece? Is it going to prove to be a step too far?

Is Greece going to be punished for this kind of behavior? Or is it going to be eventually met with a shrug and will basically become broader accepted policy? A kind of new norm in avoiding asylum might be literally shipping people out to sea so that they can never seek asylum. Exactly. But Tina, before we conclude,

I want to understand what is likely to become of those 12 people that you met in that Turkish detention center. They came to Greece because they wanted to get asylum within the European Union, but they never were allowed to apply. So what do we think is going to happen to them now? Do they have any chance of getting asylum anywhere? Well, Michael, at least two of them have now been released from the detention facility in Izmir. The Somali women and children may still be in detention. We're not sure.

But none of them has been able to apply for asylum in the European Union, of course. One young man who was on that boat, Mahdi, who's from Ethiopia, I've been in touch with him since our investigation was published. He's been released from detention, and he's now seriously considering applying for asylum in Turkey. And despite the different outcomes for each of these people, the one thing that

seemed to be something they agreed on was that they had been devastated by their experience of trying to get to Greece. Mahdi told me he regretted even trying to go to Greece to get asylum. Which, if we're being honest, may be exactly what Greece wants him to feel. Absolutely. what Greece wants him to feel.

Absolutely. Well, Martina, thank you very much. Thank you, Michael. We'll be right back. of people at risk. Ukraine and Russia each accused the other of blowing up the dam along the Dnipro River in southern Ukraine, which held back a body of water the size of the Great Salt Lake in Utah. We have all seen the tragic images coming out today of the monumental humanitarian, economic, and ecological catastrophe in the Kherson region of Ukraine.

During a news conference in New York, the Secretary General of the United Nations said that no matter what caused the disaster, the Kremlin was ultimately responsible. One thing is clear. This is another devastating consequence of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. contains original music by Marion Lozano, Dan Powell, and Rowan Emisto, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly. Special thanks to Fayyad Mullah and Mohamed Gababe. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Bilmoro.

See you tomorrow.