forcibly return asylum seekers to Türkiye, and who were alleged to have been operating mostly, in the region of Evros. In Greece, many legal practitioners, included GCR, have resorted to litigating cases directly before the ECtHR or UN Committees, due to the ineffective procedure in domestic courts. As per a BVMN report, the policy of pushbacks seems ‘to have contaminated the judiciary’.87 The majority of investigations connected to pushbacks have been closed by public prosecutors invoking lack of evidence. Many of these cases have been referred to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) as domestic remedies were ineffective.88 Since March 2022, the Greek Council for Refugees (GCR) has represented 588 Syrian, 67 Turkish, 37 Iraqi, 24 Palestinian and 15 Afghan refugees, including many children, before the European Court of Human Rights, in 43 applications for interim measures (Rule 39), requesting to be granted humanitarian assistance and access to the asylum procedure.89 The Court granted the requested interim measures for all cases and ordered the Greek government not to remove the refugees from the country’s territory and, in the majority of the cases, to provide them with food, water and proper medical care. The ECtHR also requested to be informed by the Greek government, amongst others, on whether the refugees have submitted an asylum application and whether they have access to the asylum procedure and to legal assistance. Some of the refugees of these 43 groups/cases have been formally arrested by the Greek authorities but most of them complain they have been pushed back to Türkiye. It should be noted that the refugees, even some from the groups that were formally arrested, complain that in the past they had been subjected to violent and informal return (pushback) to Türkiye from Greece. Furthermore, both with respect to those stranded on the islets and those on the Greek mainland, the refugees who complain that they have been pushed back to Türkiye, also complain that, in the majority of cases, they were informally arrested by the Greek authorities and informally detained in an unspecified detention facility in the Evros region. In all these cases, they complain that they were treated with violence, they were transferred to the Evros river bank from where they were forcibly boarded onto boats and pushed back to Türkiye. Out of the total of 43 applications for Interim measures before the Court in the last two years, 22 have been granted since January 2023, with the majority of the victims alleging that they have still subsequently been pushed back to Türkiye. This highlights the frequency and periodicity of pushback cases and no change to the “de facto general policy”90 of pushbacks at land borders. Illustratively, those 22 cases included the cases of v an applicant who was already a recognised refugee in Greece and allegedly has been pushed back more than 20 times, one of them while holding a decision of interim measures by the Court v a Turkish applicant who has been allegedly pushed back twice, once from Evros and once from Lesbos v 10 applicants who have been granted two decisions of interim measures but, allegedly, both times were pushed back to Türkiye v an asylum applicant who has been kidnapped from a central bus station in the city centre, detained in Greece, pushed back to Türkiye and then imprisoned in Türkiye because of political persecution v Wand at least 6 cases, in which Turkish applicants have been pushed back and the majority of them imprisoned in Türkiye, because of political persecution. In parallel, since January 2022, GCR has sent at least 390 written interventions to the Greek authorities for the cases of more than 3,227 refugees including many children, from Syria, Türkiye, Afghanistan, Iraq 87 88 89 90 Spiegel, ‘Greek Police Coerce Refugees to Commit Illegal Pushbacks’, 30 June 2022, available at: https://bit.ly/3IvTGfB and Lighthouse reports, We were slaves, 28 June 2022, available at: https://bit.ly/3MTla1G. BVMN, BlackBook of Pushbacks, December 2022, available at: https://bit.ly/3ou1EPJ, 14. Ibid. GCR, Information Note on interventions and on interim measures granted by the ECtHR in cases regarding pushbacks, Updated on 19 April 2023, available at: https://bit.ly/3MxIErw. Ibid. See also, Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, Report on means to address the human rights impact of pushbacks of migrants on land and sea, 12 May 2021, available at: https://bit.ly/3WvA94I, para. 55. 40