Thread by @Seebruecke_intl

A report published today by the NGO @teammareliberum documents violent #pushbacks in the Aegean Sea on an alarming scale.
Foto: Louisa Gouliamaki/​AFP/​Getty Images

Based on the analysis of many witness statements, the accounts of those affected, &human rights monitoring on the ground, @teammareliberum was able to reconstruct 321 cases in 2020 in which a total of 9,798 people were pushed back to Turkey with physical &psychological violence.

Some of them had already reached the Greek islands and were on European soil before they were denied their right to apply for asylum and forced back.

#Pushbacks, which is the turning back of people seeking protection without examining their asylum claim, are illegal under international law. Yet in recent years, European authorities have embedded the inhumane practice as a permanent feature of EU border policy.

#Leggeri and the BMI recently questioned whether an overcrowded dinghy should be considered a case of distress at sea at all - regardless of the many people who drowned at the EU's borders when similar rubber dinghies sank.

We must never let the EU get away with abandoning basic and self-evident duties of assistance such as sea rescue and asylum! #Pushbacks are human rights offenses and must be consistently punished as such. Entrance instead of isolation!