Who will guard the guards themselves?
Photo credit: Aegean Boat Report. Source: https://aegeanboatreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/1.jpg
by: George Kandylis | National Centre for Social Research, EKKE
On February 4th, the new bill of the Ministry of Migration and Asylum, titled “Promotion of Legal Migration Policies,” reached the plenary session of the Greek Parliament. Among its provisions are measures introducing increased prison sentences and higher financial penalties for the offenses of “facilitating” the irregular entry or unlawful stay of migrants in the country, when those convicted are members of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) or act jointly with others. In addition, the bill provides for the possibility of removing an NGO from the ministry’s registry (which grants access to public funding and to facilities under its responsibility) solely on the basis that one of its members is charged with any of the above offenses—meaning that no conviction is required for the organization’s deletion.
According to many organizations, this represents a further escalation of an ongoing effort aimed at criminalizing their work and, more broadly, solidarity toward refugees and migrants. The organization Refugee Support Aegean notes that the new provisions “constitute an extreme act of state intimidation and violate the basic principles of the rule of law.” Moreover, in statements made in August of last year, the Minister of Migration and Asylum targeted NGOs for providing legal assistance to individuals who arrived in Greece during the three‑month suspension of asylum procedures imposed by the Greek government last summer.
The stated goal at the time was the immediate forced return of those arriving by boat to Crete from North Africa, without even registering their asylum claims—something that ultimately did not occur. In fact, there were cases in which, with the support of organizations, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) issued interim measures prohibiting expulsions.irregularisation in shaping return outcomes.
Just a few weeks earlier, the 24 volunteer rescuers who had been charged in 2018 due to their sea‑rescue activities—accused of facilitating entry, participating in a criminal organization, money laundering, and even espionage—were definitively acquitted in court. Among them was Syrian refugee Sara Mardini, who had once reached the shores of Lesvos by swimming alongside her sister, and who was held in pre‑trial detention for more than three months in connection with the case. It ultimately took seven years of legal ordeal for them to be vindicated—something that received far less media attention than their initial arrests and charges. Despite the final acquittal, the organization ECRI, in which they participated, was meanwhile driven to dissolution; even its online traces are now barely detectable.
During the night before the new bill was introduced, fifteen people died and several others were seriously injured in a violent incident officially described as a collision between an inflatable boat carrying migrants and a patrol vessel of the Greek Coast Guard, in Greek territorial waters near Chios. The exact circumstances remain unclear at the time of writing. As in the case of the Pylos shipwreck, the Greek Coast Guard stated that it does not possess any visual footage from its vessels. A local diver who was called to assist in recovering the bodies later described what he saw. He spoke of lifeless, heavily battered bodies lying inside the half‑submerged boat—an image he summed up in a single word: ‘war”.
The Greek Coast Guard has a troubled operational record. While the Pylos shipwreck—with more than 600 dead—remains under investigation, with serious charges already brought against officers, an earlier case has been definitively ruled on by the European Court of Human Rights. This concerns the 2014 shipwreck near Farmakonisi, in which eleven people lost their lives. The Court found that the Greek authorities had not done everything they could to protect the lives of those on board and that they subjected the survivors to degrading treatment. It did not rule on whether the incident constituted an illegal pushback, noting, however, that the inadequate investigation by the Greek authorities had made such a determination impossible.
The Mechanism for Recording Incidents of Informal Forced Returns, operating in Greece since 2022 under the responsibility of the National Commission for Human Rights and with the participation of several local organizations, reports in its annual findings dozens of pushback incidents involving thousands of alleged victims, both at the land border with Turkey along the Evros River and in the Aegean Sea. International organizations such as the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) confirm that an informal but organized and systematic infrastructure of illegal pushbacks has been functioning in Greece for years. Greek authorities deny that such operations take place, while adding that Greece has a duty to guard its borders, which are also the borders of the European Union. Recently, another minister of the Greek government publicly questioned why pushbacks should be considered illegal at all.
Regardless of the actions or omissions that led to the incident Chios, it is clear that obstructing the work of NGOs undermines the ability to investigate and expose (border violence—both illegal and legal—carried out by states. The criminalization of solidarity also undermines society’s ability to know what is truly happening in dangerous and deadly border zones. It winks at those who prefer to shut their eyes.
It seems that the diver’s description from Chios is accurate beyond the macabre scene of that night. Through pushbacks, Greece and Europe are waging a continuous low‑intensity war against migration. And as in every war, truth is among the casualties.
Contact:
George Kandylis | Senior Research Fellow and Co-Principal Investigator, National Centre for Social Research, EKKE | gkandyli@ekke.gr