Social media video: Migrants in Greece blindfolded and handcuffed

The Norwegian NGO Aegean Boat Report, which monitors and reports on the human rights situation of migrants in Greece, published the 45-second video on Twitter on Monday, June 26. It shows a group, including at least one child, sitting or lying in the back of a van with the windows covered. Empty seats and a person in the driver’s seat can be seen in the reflection from the material obscuring the van’s rear windows.

InfoMigrants was not able to independently verify the video.

According to ABR, there are 14 people in the van, who had arrived on the Greek island of Kos where they were caught by masked commandos and beaten before being put into the vehicle. The people are “begging for help,” ABR wrote on Twitter. “This is the handywork of the Greek authorities, we have seen it so many times before,” the NGO said. 

In recent years ABR, founded by Norwegian Tommy Olsen, has documented thousands of cases of pushbacks in which it claims Greek authorities have stopped migrants from entering the territory, or forced them back across the border – often violently – without allowing them to apply for asylum. 

Olsen and Panayote Dimitras, a well-known human rights activist, are currently facing criminal charges in Greece for allegedly “forming or joining for profit and by profession a criminal organization with the purpose of facilitating the entry and stay of third-country nationals into Greek territory.” 

Following the publication of the video, many responses appeared on Twitter questioning its authenticity or suggesting that it was fake. Olsen responded that one person had managed to hide a phone and with the help of a child they had managed to use the phone to take videos and send voice messages.

“A woman called us twice on Monday,” Olsen said. “Communication was complicated because she spoke Arabic and not English. She explained that the group of migrants had been beaten by forces of unidentified police. Their belongings were confiscated, they had their hands tied and were blindfolded.”

According to Olsen, the group included Syrians and Palestinians. InfoMigrants journalists in France listened to a series of voice messages on Monday in which a woman was heard pleading: “Please, please, my hands are tied up, we were able to film without them seeing me, come and help us. Look what has happened to us and how they are treating us.” InfoMigrants wasn’t able to independently verify these messages either.

Pushbacks documented

The satellite location of the phone from which the calls came was in the northeast of Kos, a short distance from Turkey. Olsen said that in recent years, special police units have been deployed to guard the borders, especially on the islands. “They drive unmarked vehicles, use advanced technologies such as drones, and can give orders to the local police. These units are well trained,” he said.

Olsen believes the migrants are likely to have been put on a boat to be sent back to Turkey. “In general, when they blindfold and handcuff them, it’s not to take them to a refugee camp,” he said.

In May, ABR registered 65 pushback cases involving 1,732 migrants. It said some had already arrived in the Greek Aegean islands and had been forced back to sea and left drifting in life rafts. Most of the pushbacks happened from the island of Lesbos.

That same month, a video published and verified by the New York Times showed Greek authorities abandoning 12 migrants, including an infant, on a raft in the Aegean.

One of the migrants, 27-year-old Somali Naima Hassan Aden, told Times reporters that she and her family had been crammed into a truck on Lesbos and then into a dinghy. They were eventually rescued by Turkish authorities.

Doctors Without Borders, which treats migrants on Lesbos, confirmed that its patients on the island have repeatedly said they were victims of violent treatment by border authorities.

InfoMigrants also receives messages via social media from migrants who say they have been pushed back by Greek authorities, or by masked men. Last month one person said a boat flying a Greek flag forced his group back towards Turkish waters. “They shouted at us and pointed their guns at us,” he said.

Greece denies that it is involved in migrant pushbacks.

With InfoMigrants French