New report “ILLEGAL PUSHBACKSIN EVROS: EVIDENCE OF HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES AT THE GREECE/TURKEY BORDER. A Mobile Info Team report based on first-hand testimonies” by Mobile Info Team on Pushbacks in the Evros region online.
‘At night I told them I want to ask for asylum, they said ‘no!’, and beat me with a stick. They even hit me in the eye, I said ‘I would like to claim asylum’ and so he struck me. But this was not so bad, what really surprised me, was when they were just shocking us for fun. They called us up one by one to the car, and they would give us an electrical shock in the back of the legs or hit us in the sensitive places. Just for fun. They were laughing the whole time.’
Since August 2018, Mobile Info Team has been collecting first-hand testimonies of individuals who crossed the border into Greece and were forcibly pushed back to Turkey. Our expertise in asylum law and direct service to impacted communities makes us strategically poised to document and challenge these illegal and systematic expulsions. For this reason, Mobile Info Team is working with partners in Northern Greece to collect, document, and ultimately challenge these actions. Listening to the needs of asylum seekers and translating those concerns into targeted actions is at the core of our advocacy efforts.
Mobile Info Team is now launching the findings of these testimonies and research in our first report on illegal pushbacks. It solidifies previous research and outlines the specific stages of pushbacks which are systematically repeated, as are a multitude of abuses of key human rights and international law principles, including non-refoulement, the right to seek asylum, the ban of collective expulsions and the right to not be unlawfully detained and tortured.