By Corinna Billmaier and Anne-Sophie de Groot
In light of world refugee day, which was on the 20th of June and AISU’s refugee week, we want to highlight an issue that is easily overlooked: the human rights violations committed by Greek and Turkish coastguards, and the involvement of Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, at the external borders of the European Union, namely the Mediterranean Sea and the Balkans.
For us Europeans, thanks to the Schengen Area, crossing national borders within the EU is as easy as it can get, if you don’t happen to live during a pandemic. Nobody is preventing us from entering another EU country and even the external borders aren’t an obstacle if you have a valid passport and a visa for the country of destination, which is in most cases very easy to get. For non-European citizens, however, the EU is increasingly difficult to enter and since 2015 the “fortress Europe” has reinforced its borders due to an increasing arrival of refugees from Africa and the Middle East. The so-called “migration crisis” has led to rising right-wing sentiments in many European countries against the influx of people seeking refuge from war, persecution or conflict.
Source: ©Amnesty International 2020 Report Caught in a political game
A European border agency
With the abolition of internal borders through the Schengen agreement, there is a need for a common and effective management of external borders. Already in 1999 the first steps were taken in common border management operations and in 2004 an agency was officially created. The necessity of effective border management was further motivated by the migratory crisis of third-country nationals seeking refuge in Europe. In record time the EU institutions reached an agreement on the establishment of the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, also known as Frontex. The new regulation ensured a bigger mandate for the Agency than in 2004. It now has its own operational staff and equipment. The Agency ensures Union wide standards for border management and assesses vulnerabilities of Member States’ management. Further it is involved in countering cross-border crime and plays a bigger role in the return of rejected asylum seekers. In 2019 the 2016 regulation was replaced, expanding the agency's powers and providing more budget, staff and equipment.
But what does Frontex actually do? Regulation 2019/1896, the Frontex regulation, provides that it plans strategies to implement border management Union wide, it oversees the effective functioning of the management by the Member States, it assesses vulnerabilities, provides operational and technical assistance to both Member States as third countries and conducts and coordinates the return of rejected asylum seekers. In operational assistance Frontex coordinates and organises joint operations to ensure the cooperation between neighbouring countries for example, and they can deploy their standing corps in challenging situations for rapid border interventions in case of a heavy migratory influx or to carry out search and rescue operations at sea.
Frontex is an assisting agency, providing the EU Member States with support in the operational management of the external border EU border of the states. Although the Member States and their authorities are primarily responsible for the management of their borders, Frontex shares that responsibility. The agency cannot take action upon its own initiative, they will take action upon request for assistance from the Member States. However, it can recommend a state to request this assistance and in cases of negligence or when a state does not request assistance in problematic situations the Council of Ministers in the EU can decide that the agency must step in.
Human rights violations committed or tolerated by Frontex in the Mediterranean
An increase in border security, however, has not prevented refugees from making the dangerous journey across the mediterranean, either trying to reach Greece from Turkey or Italy from Libya. Additionally, asylum seekers now increasingly use the Atlantic sea route from northern West Africa to the Canary Islands, which are part of the EU - only to get stuck there in camps, shipwrecking in the rough atlantic waters, or dying from thirst on the journey. Others are risking their lives by swimming to the spanish enclave Ceuta in Morocco.
However, as UNHCR data shows, since 2015, the arrivals to Greece by sea have fallen significantly. The amount of sea landings in Italy, on the other hand, increased, showing how people who are determined will always find a way into the perceived safety of Europe.The reason for this is not that there are less refugees taking the route via Turkey, but the EU-Turkey agreement stops them from entering the EU.
Furthermore, since 2016, Frontex has received increased funding as well as expanded mandates to “protect” Europe’s external borders from “illegal” migration. Protecting the EU’s borders seems to be taken so seriously by the agency, that they don’t even shy away from human rights violations in doing so. A team of journalists has recently uncovered that Frontex was involved in illegal push-backs in the Aegean sea.
Push-backs in the Aegean Sea and the Greek mainland
According to the Guardian, push-backs are a practice increasingly used by Greek coastguards since march 2020: “Interviews with five victims of push-backs, 10 NGOs working across the Aegean Sea including Human Rights Watch, Josoor and the Aegean Boat Report, and a tranche of videos reviewed by the Guardian reveal an organised and systemic practice of denying entry to asylum seekers.” The article reports an incident, sadly only one among many, where Greek coast guards approached a dinghy with 30 refugees on board who were on their way from Turkey to Greece. The coastguards forced the group “at gunpoint” to come aboard the coast guard ship, and subsequently “punctured the dinghy with knives and it sank.” The group, among them minors and children, was detained overnight, and in the morning they were left on a liferaft in Turkish waters. The article goes on to explain:
“Often pushbacks involve teams of unidentified men in black uniforms who intercept boats of refugees that have arrived in Greek waters and forcibly return them to Turkish waters, either leaving them to drift after engines have been destroyed or in separate liferafts. In some cases, victims have arrived on Greek land before being returned by authorities to the open seas, after actively threatening them with beatings, gunshots and by creating large waves with fast boats. In one case, refugees were left on a tiny island between Greece and Turkey for two days without food before being rescued.”
The Guardian furthermore points out that these are no isolated incidents but that it is happening on a regular basis - the NGO AlarmPhone has reported 55 cases only between March and August 2020, and the NGO Greek Helsinki Monitor claims that “nearly 1,400 people were pushed back between March and July [2020], though the true number is believed to be far higher.”
A team of journalists from Der Spiegel, Bellingcat, Lighthouse Reports, ARD and TV Asahi has found evidence that these push-backs are not only tolerated by Frontex, but that Frontex was “actively involved”, making an EU agency complicit in human rights violations at the EU’s external borders. The report by Der Spiegel, Bellingcat etc. describes how in June 2020 a Frontex ship under Romanian flag was filmed directly blocking a refugee boat. As the video confirms, the officials on deck of the Frontex ship were communicating with the refugees in the dinghy, but did not rescue them from the overfilled boat. Instead, they created big waves and left, leaving the boat to the Greek coast guards, knowing that a push-back is likely to be imminent.
The report also refers to the testimony of a Syrian woman, Samira Mohammad (not her real name), who made the dangerous boat journey two months later: “Mohammad claims the Greek officials took their gasoline and destroyed the engine. And that masked Greek border guards then boarded the dinghy. Several refugees claim that they forced the migrants to tie the shaky rubber dinghy to a speedboat at gunpoint. The border guards then towed the boat toward Turkey. Videos corroborate the statements made by the refugees, and the destroyed engine is clearly visible.” According to the report, which is based on photos and internal Frontex documents, another Romanian Frontex ship was present during this incident but didn’t intervene against this illegal tactic.
Even if Frontex isn’t actively involved in most of the push-backs, their advanced technological surveillance of the Mediterranean, including drones and high resolution cameras, suggests that they are indeed aware of dinghies in distress at sea, which, according to maritime law obligates them to take them aboard of their own ships and bring them into a European harbour. “If they don’t do that and even make waves instead, only to drive away and let the Greeks do the dirty work, then they are still involved in the illegal pushback,” says Dana Schmalz, an expert on international law.
Frontex, as well as the Greek coast guards, however deny any involvement in such practices. The Greek officials insist to comply with the law and reject accusations of illegal deportations, while Frontex claims that following an “internal investigation, it did not yet find enough proof of any rights violations at sea involving Frontex agents.” However, it also acknowledges that the accusations cannot be ruled out completely for some cases.
In the case of the Greek coast guards, however, there is strong evidence for their push-back tactics, such as deliberately creating waves to push the dinghies back into Turkish waters. Bellingcat reports: “Ships from both Greece and Turkey will frequently attempt to push the dinghies across the sea border using waves. These vessels manoeuvre in a circular pattern at a relatively high speed close to the dinghy. This manoeuvre is not only dangerous because of the risk of collision, the waves it generates also represent a threat to the overcrowded and often fragile dinghies.” This report is backed by video footage.
[Content Warning: This video shows violence against refugees and might be distressing.]
Also at the mainland border between Greece and Turkey, at the Evros river, push-backs have been documented.
Pull-backs in the Central Mediterranean Sea
In the Central Mediterranean Sea, between Italy and Libya, Frontex isn’t present with ships, but instead uses planes to spot boats carrying asylum seekers. The NGO Sea Watch states that “Aerial reconnaissance enables Frontex to gather extensive knowledge about developments in the Central Mediterranean Sea and relay information about boats in distress to the ‘competent authorities’, though without having to engage in rescues themselves.” This means that Frontex informs Libyan coast guards about the boats, and the passengers are then picked up by the Libyan authorities and brought back to Libyan land, instead of informing rescue ships operated by European NGOs such as Sea Watch, which could bring the refugees to Europe where they are eligible for a fair asylum procedure. As Sea Watch points out, “returning people to Libya means bringing them back to a place where they are exposed to severe human rights violations and constitutes a breach of international law.” As already mentioned, ships that encounter boats in distress are obligated to take the passengers on board and bring them to a safe harbour. Libya, however, is far from safe, as UNHCR and IOM have repeatedly emphasised and they have condemned the return of people being rescued at sea to the country. By informing Lybian coast guards of the position of refugee boats, Frontex is therefore directly responsible for the illegal pull-back of asylum seekers to Libya.
Pushbacks Balkans
Similar allegations about the complicity of Frontex in human rights violations of asylum seekers have been made in regard to the EU borders in the Balkans. As an EU agency, Frontex is liable to prevent human rights abuses within their mandated area. However, reports by the human rights NGO Hungarian Helsinki Committee accuse Frontex of having been aware of grave human rights violations along the Serbian-Hungarian border, in the form of illegal push-backs as well as being “involved in helping Hungary carry out some documented deportations and expulsion decisions.” There have been several reports of incidents where Hungarian border guards used dogs and pepper spray to chase asylum seekers back to Serbia, but similar allegations have been made towards Greek, Croatian and Bulgarian border guards, as Human Rights Watch reports.
In early 2021, Frontex suspended its operations in Hungary. To the News York Times they declared: “Frontex has suspended all its operational activities on the ground in Hungary [...] Our common efforts to protect the E.U. external borders can only be successful if we ensure that our cooperation and activities are fully in line with E.U. laws.” This shows at least an official commitment to EU asylum laws, but considering the continued complicity in push-backs in the Mediterranean Sea, it can also be seen as an attempt to appear in a better light themselves.
Amnesty International is calling on Frontex to suspend its operations in Greece as well, since the push-backs on the mediterranean and on the mainland are by now well-documented. By continuing to assist Greek border guards, Frontex is legitimizing human rights violations.
Source: Mstyslav Chernov/Unframe, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons Migrants crossing the Mediterranean Sea on a boat, heading from the Turkish coast to the northeastern Greek island of Lesbos, 29 January 2016
Fundamental Rights commitments
Although Frontex claims to 'protect' the EU borders in compliance with international law, scepticism towards the agency has grown. In the Frontex regulation ‘fundamental rights’ is written 231 times. It stresses that any action undertaken by the agency must be in compliance with fundamental rights standards. It should monitor its own actions for compliance but it also monitors the national competent authorities. It has an appointed fundamental rights officer and fundamental rights monitors and a complaint mechanism in which any person that has suffered a breach in their fundamental rights by an official involved in the border operations may submit their complaint, this will be taken up by the FR Officer.
In 1948 in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) the right to seek and enjoy asylum from persecution was established for the first time. In 1951 this was further elaborated in the Geneva Refugee Convention. The right to (seek) asylum is therefore an internationally recognised fundamental right. Furthermore, part of this is the core principle ‘non-refoulement’, prohibiting states to ‘send back’ individuals when there are substantial grounds to believe that upon return this person will be at risk of serious human rights violations, including torture and inhumane treatment. Although the EU is not a signatory to neither the UDHR nor the Refugee Convention (because the EU is not a state), the EU has bound itself to both. To ensure fundamental rights in the EU without being signatory to international human rights treaties, it has written up the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. Article 18 of this Charter lays down that the right to asylum shall be guaranteed with due respect for the rules of the Geneva Refugee Convention. This means that it legally binds itself to the Refugee Convention without being signatory, but also interestingly the right to asylum. The UDHR only recognises the right to seek and be granted asylum, but the EU Charter proclaims the right in asylum itself, going beyond international human rights law. This means that if you fall under the status of refugee within the meaning of the Convention or subsidiary protection under EU law, you must be granted asylum. This Charter and therefore right to asylum applies to all institutions and bodies of the EU or national authority official acting within the scope of Union law.
The EU has established a Common European Asylum System. This is a set of legislative instruments covering the procedures, reception conditions and qualifications applicable. The Directive on common procedures for granting and withdrawing international protection lays down that international protection is provided from the moment the individual has entered the EU territory, including the territorial waters, transit zones and the border. Problematically, those individuals that seek international protection are obstructed from entering this territory. It is not possible to seek asylum at the embassy of a EU Member State (X and X v Belgium) and without a visa the only manner to reach the Union territory is illegal passage either over land or risking your life on a boat crossing the Mediterranean.
Official inquiries
The European Parliament has newly set up a Frontex Scrutiny Working Group to assess the functioning of the agency, including its compliance with fundamental rights. The Parliament is determined to conduct a thorough investigation into the worrying allegations of pushbacks, and it wants to ensure proper accountability. It wants to restore the trust in Frontex border management and the trust in the respecting of fundamental rights obligations. Hearing will be held with officials within the agency but also investigative journalists. A hearing with the Executive-Director Leggeri has already taken place. In defending the Agency he claimed that there is no evidence of Frontex participating in this action. Leggeri thereby laid responsibility even during Frontex operations at the national competent authorities, when commenting on pushback operations in Greece. It can be noted here that part of its tasks, as laid down in the Frontex regulation, is to monitor the national authorities’ management, it should thereby also ensure fundamental rights compliance. After Leggeri’s comments some European parliamentarians have called for his resignation, claiming he failed to answer the questions on the agency’s involvement.
Recently OLAF, the Anti-Fraud Office of the EU, has confirmed that it launched an investigation into Frontex. OLAF will investigate allegations of harassment, misconduct and unlawful operations stopping migrants entering EU territory. Frontex has pledged to fully cooperate in this investigation.
An earlier inquiry has been made by the EU Ombudsman into fundamental rights compliance of Frontex. She did not go into the alleged pushbacks, the inquiry concerned the complaint mechanism, finally resulting in the conclusion that the fundamental rights officer should make its complaint assessment procedure more transparent. During the Ombudsman's assessment into the complaint mechanism the mechanism was already altered favourably.
An official inquiry into pushback operations by national authorities has been made by the Greek Ombudsman. In the last update on this inquiry the Ombudsman did express the raising concerns resulting from a pattern of complaints calling for a comprehensive investigation by the Greek police. He also noted that in these complaints it was expressed that due to the communication between the unidentified officials involved in the pushbacks it can be assumed that the officials were not all Greek.
Source: Mika Baumeister on Unsplash
Is there anything that can be done?
Hopefully, the growing criticism towards Frontex will have consequences for the agency and will lead to a change in their conduct. However, while they might stop tolerating and take part in push-backs, it is unlikely that the Greek and other border authorities will do the same. Civilian sea rescue on the mediterranean therefore remains one of the most important aspects to prevent push-backs, as they can spot boats in distress themselves and bring them to a European harbour. NGOs like Sea Watch and Sea Eye are patrolling the Mediterranean with ships and planes to rescue asylum seekers in need, but their work has been increasingly made difficult, as sea rescue is claimed to function as a pull factor for migrants. However, as this article shows, multiple researchers have found that “there is no proof that sea rescue has a direct effect on the influx of migrants and refugees to Europe. Most studies suggest that rescue activities do not increase the number of departures from the North African coast.” The suspension of EU rescue missions and the criminalisation of sea rescue, on the other hand, has increased the risk of asylum seekers drowning while crossing the mediterranean in often not seaworthy dinghies.
Something you can do is donate to Sea Eye and Sea Watch, so they can continue their important work, where Frontex or other European agencies fail to deliver humanitarian aid. If you can’t spare any money you can still support them by sharing their work on social media and making them known to your network. Sea Watch is also part of the campaign coalition “Abolish Frontex”, that is calling for “the abolition of the agency and the end of migrant detention by EU forces”, as the Guardian reports. Carola Rackete, a German ship captain who volunteers for Sea Watch, and who you might know from the news in 2019 for being accused of “human trafficking” after rescuing migrants at sea and bringing them into the harbour of Lampedusa and was subsequently detained by Italian police, is one of the campaign organisers. The Guardian quotes her saying:
“If we truly believe all humans are equal then we have to dismantle the systems which keep inequality in place. Frontex, as part of the border-industrial complex, has no place in our vision of a European society striving for justice and committed to repairing damages inflicted on the global south in a mindset of white supremacy.”