us, asking us: ‘Where are you going?’ They were laughing: ‘Come, we’ll go to Greece’. They were deriding us. A. and Z., from Afghanistan (two single mothers with children)159/ both pushed back in October 2012 from Lesvos Then they were talking on the mobile. ‘We caught ten foreigners we take them back to Turkey’. ‘Antoni, Antoni’ (they would repeat on the phone)… ‘I’m listening, I’m listening’.157 Z.: I think it happened around 20 days before we finally arrived to Greece (…) When we got closer and it seemed as if we were some minutes far away from the Greek island suddenly a vessel of the Greek coastguard appeared and they arrested us. They asked us, where we are from, and we answered them that we are Afghans. They asked us where we were going, and we said to Greece. They tied our boat to theirs. In one direction of the horizon we saw a lot of thunders and it was raining and in the other side the sea was rough with a lot of waves. Our boat was taking on water. We used our own shoes, to take the water out of the boat. There were a lot of children with us. Even though we kept shouting and screaming for help, they didn’t react at all. The Greeks tied our boat to theirs with a rope and started pulling us upwards and downwards and making very fast circles. We were shouting for help telling them that our boat has a problem. They didn’t care. They were doing that for four hours. They then brought us in the middle of the high waves, untied the rope and left us there. K.A.: The captain of the coastguard was the same one who had pushed us back also on the 8th of August. He was blonde, tall and very nervous. He was the one talking on the phone. He would put the mobile down for a while, then talk with the others and then talk again on the phone. They made us sit and look down. They pressed our heads with force, so that no one could see what they were doing with the boat. (…) We stayed for about 1 ¼ on the coastguard’s boat, with the heads down. Their boat was metal, about 14 meters long, and it was grey. It has ‘Λ.Σ 140’ written on it. B.F.: They tied the boat in the back of their vessel and pulled it. (…) The coastguards turned off the lights of their boat and took us into the Turkish waters. While we were getting back into our boat, all of a sudden another boat appeared, with men wearing full face masks. They started talking among them. (…) Their boat was white, about six meters long and had two engines of black colour. It was edgy in the front part. They had M16 or ‘NATO Cartridge’158. K.A.: We informed that we were pushed back and left adrift. So later on, we received a phone call from the Rescue Centre. They asked us where we were. Officer: Where are you? K.A.: We are in the sea awaiting our death. We have GPS. You have my number. You can find us through the internet. Officer: What is GPS? Ok, ok. I will call you back. K.A.: He called twice, but not the third time as he told me. After 45 minutes the Turks arrived. The Greeks remained at a distance, playing with their lights on us. Then they disappeared for two hours. (…) They were safe in their ship and we were left in the rough sea. It was raining and we heard thunders. (…) It was raining a lot. (…) At some point they came back and took also the engine of the boat. First they destroyed the engine and then they came to take it away. We couldn’t do anything. We were in the middle of the sea, and it was raining a lot. (…) In the beginning the police had told us that they would take us to the island of Lesvos. We were very happy. If they had really taken us on their boat, it would have only been 5-10 minutes distance. Instead, they pulled us 3-4 hours back and forth in the sea, only to take us in the end to the Turkish waters and leave us in the middle of the waves. We stayed in the sea until morning, as there was no engine left anymore and we couldn’t move. We tried to roam and move ahead and also keep our balance in the rough sea, in order not to sink. In the end, we called the Turkish Gendarmerie. A.: We were 34-35 persons and 10 children. The youngest was six months old. We stayed for almost 18-19 hours in the sea. (…) 157 | One of the ten people involved in this push-back incident and one of the 7 PRO ASYL interviewed, is from Hamidiye (Syrian region where people of Cretan/Turk origin reside) and speaks good Greek. 158 | See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M16_rifle 159 | Interviewed in Athens (Greece), January 1, 2013 54 | aNNEX-iNTERVIEWS Z.: We thought that the six months’ old baby had died. He was motionless in his mother’s arms for hours. Finally the Turkish police saved us. They arrested us and then they brought us to a camp in Izmir. aNNEX-iNTERVIEWS | 55