• Push-backs from the Islands A.B. (27 years old) and M.B. (28 years old) from Syria (Yezidi minority)147/ pushed back after their arrest on Chios island on 27.8.13 M.B.: ‘It was around 11 o’ clock in the evening when we left from Turkey. We were six persons in the boat, four Syrians and two Sudanese. We arrived in Chios island. We know for sure we were in Chios, as we checked it on googlemap on our mobile. A.B.: We arrived after 3-4 hours in the sea. I started running away to the mountains. Three ‘soldiers’ apprehended the three of our group, including my brother. They were dressed in black... I was trying to hide myself in the bushes. They put a gun on my brother’s temple. He was shouting that they would kill me. After 30 minutes they found me in the bushes and they took me with other three persons who were hiding under a tree, back to the beach. (…) One was wearing military trousers. (…) The men in black told me that they would send me to another island. I told them I didn’t want to go somewhere else: ‘I see the lights here. If you want to kill me, kill me.’ One took his gun out and put it on my temple. They then started punching and kicking me. One slapped me on my left ear and ever since I can’t hear from that side. (…) They brought us back on the boat on which we had reached the island and forced us to get inside. One person from our group punctured it in order to prevent them from pushing us back to Turkey. The boat started sinking. I fell into the water. I saw our boat sinking. I don’t know how to swim and I had no lifejacket. I was just moving my hands and my legs back and forth. The one with the military trousers grabbed me from my head and put it under the water three, four times. (…) I could not breathe. I was terrified. He then grabbed me and pulled me towards the other refugees, who were wearing lifejackets. They were holding themselves from the boat. We were in the water. I was holding myself from someone else’s lifejacket and with my other hand from the necklace of this officer in military pants. (…) The boat was only five meters from the shore, but the water was really deep. Then they took me and another one from our group onto the coastguard’s boat. The others from our group were holding themselves from our boat, as they were pulling it to the big boat. 147 | Interviewed in Izmir (Turkey); August 29, 2013 [brothers] 40 | aNNEX-iNTERVIEWS The big boat was 20-30 meters from the shore. The big boat was also red. It was made of steel, of red colour outside and white inside with electronic equipment. (…) The Greek officers repaired the hole on our boat. It had a small cut. They took our money, our mobiles and our bags. We saw two small, uninhabited islands. When the coastguard boat was 20-30 meters away from one of these small islands, the officers forced us back on our rubber boat. They had left us with just one paddle. One of us fell into the water and pulled our boat out to the shore. The coastguard left. It was around 6-7 o’clock in the morning. We arrived in this very small island and we fell asleep there. We were completely wet. Then a Turkish helicopter came. It flew over our heads for three times and afterwards the Turkish police came. They took us to the hospital in the mainland. There, the doctors told me that there’s a permanent problem with my ear’. An.K.N. (28 years old), Ar.K.N. (metastatic cancer patient) and F.K.N. (65 years old) from Syria148/ pushed back after their arrest on Chios island on 12.9.13 An.K.N.: ‘We were 12 persons on the boat. There were three elderly women, an elderly man with us and my brother, who is seriously sick. He has cancer. We arrived on the island of Chios. We knew it from our mobile. We checked it on google map. We were in an area, where there were abandoned ‘factories’. The coastguards knew we had arrived. They looked for us. We hid ourselves for some hours. Then we walked until we reached a big road. And then they arrested us. They were shouting at us. They asked us where we are from. We told them we are from Syria and that we left our country in order not to die and we came to you, asking for protection. F.K.N.: The coastguards told us that they would bring us to another island and from there to Athens. They spoke with somebody on the phone. They took us back to the beach and they brought a big boat. The officers had masks and they had guns. They told us to get on the boat, but we didn’t want to. Ar.K.N.: They put their guns in our heads. We were forcibly taken onto their boat. They were holding their guns in to our heads, so we wouldn’t talk. They told us to turn off our mobiles. One of them wanted to take my mobile. I had hidden it. He searched for it, but he could not find it. They brought us in the middle of the sea. They carried with them a dinghy that didn’t work. They threw us into the dinghy and left. 148 | Phone interview – September 13, 2013; See also push-back from Farmakonisi 8.8.13 and pushback from Samos 19.9.13 aNNEX-iNTERVIEWS | 41