A relative of mine, with whom I came from Iran and we crossed the borders together,
was sent back to Turkey separately. We lost track of him. A month later, he called his
family. He told them that he was deported to Afghanistan. (…)
EPILOGUE
A.K., from Afghanistan173 / pushed back from Evros in December 2011
In lieu of a conclusion we will present a complete interview which entails almost all of
the findings relevant to push backs presented in this report, as experienced by two
European (French) journalists.
A.K.: It’s my second time that I come to Greece. I finally arrived here five months ago,
but the first time when I tried from the land borders, I was sent back. That happened
almost a year ago. It was really very cold. I think it was December or something. We
were three families: my family, my aunt’s family and a woman’s family. When we arrived
at the Greek side of the border the Greek police found us. We were already out of the
river and had walked for about 10-15 minutes on the Greek side. They didn’t see us when
we were crossing the river. They found us later and sent us back with a boat. They were
8-9 officers. When they put us in the motorboat three of them were with us. The Turkish
police transferred us in a camp in Edirne, where we were detained for five days and then
we were deported back to Afghanistan.
C.B. (journalist), O.J. (photojournalist)174 / pushed back from Samos 28.7.13
C.: We are working for a magazine and we had been following some Afghan refugees
from Afghanistan, for about two months. We were following them, posing as Afghans,
so we didn’t show our identities to almost anyone. We went on a zodiac, an inflatable
boat with 28 refugees, mostly Afghans and Iranians.
O.: There were two women and no children.
C.: We tried to go from Kusadasi in Turkey, to Samos island. We took this boat late at
night, the smugglers were actually only putting the boat in the water. Then we jumped
inside and they left. It was one of the passengers who was sailing and we went all the
way towards Samos. It’s about 15 kilometres away from the (Turkish) coasts. And after
approximately 2-3 hours we arrived.
O.: After two hours.
C.: We were for two hours on the boat, which was quite crowded and the engine was
small, when a Greek coastguards came. They started shouting at us, they told us not to
move in broken English. Then, they threw a rope to tie the inflatable boat to their own
patrol boat. It was a white and a grey boat that was not too big. It’s quite a small one and
it had a back stand where you could walk. And then, you could walk on the ladder, on
the back of the boat.
O.: When they arrested us, we were close to the island of Samos. We could see it, we
were really close to it, I would say, maybe at one kilometre.
C.: They were wearing uniforms and black masks. Black uniforms.
173 | Interviewed in Athens (Greece), December 15, 2012
68 | aNNEX-iNTERVIEWS
174 | Interviewed November 1, 2013
ePILOG | 69
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