The European court of human rights has found Greece guilty of conducting “systematic” pushbacks of would-be asylum seekers, ordering it to compensate a woman forcibly expelled back to Turkey despite her attempts to seek protection in the country.
In a judgment described as potentially trailblazing, the Strasbourg-based tribunal awarded the complainant damages of €20,000 (£16,500), citing evidence that the frontline EU state was engaging in the illicit deportations when she was removed.
“There were strong indications to suggest that there had existed, at the time of the events alleged, a systematic practice of ‘pushbacks’ of third-country nationals by the Greek authorities, from the Evros [border] region to Turkey,” Tuesday’s decision concluded.
It was the first time that Greece has been publicly condemned for carrying out a policy it has long denied, and the first time the human rights court has examined a complaint of pushback by authorities in the country.
Campaigners reacted to the historic ruling with jubilation. The Greek Council for Refugees (GCR), which had taken up the case and provided legal representation for the complainant, described the decision as “a landmark judgment”.
The woman, identified by her initials as ARE in court documents, lodged the case before the tribunal in 2021, almost two years after her expulsion in May 2019. An earlier attempt to have the complaint heard in Greece was rejected by an appeals court prosecutor in the region of Thrace on the grounds that Greek police “never” engaged in such activity.
International jurists, however, accepted the allegation that the refugee, fleeing political persecution as a convicted member of the faith-based Gulen movement, had not only been forcibly expelled but illegally detained before deportation. The pushback occurred under cover of darkness with the applicant and several other asylum seekers being forced by commandos in balaclavas to board an inflatable boat back to Turkey.
Citing articles 3 and 13 prohibiting torture and inhuman and degrading treatment, the judgment concluded that Greek authorities had acted in clear violation of the European convention on human rights. The woman had managed to upload a video documenting her location in Greece – concrete evidence that she had reached the country which judges took into account.
Her expulsion resulted in arrest and imprisonment by Turkish authorities on the charge of being a member of the “Fetullahist terrorist organisation”. Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has accused the late preacher Fethullah Gülen, who lived in the US before his death in October last year, of being behind an abortive coup attempt in 2016.
Marina Papamina, who coordinates the GCR’s legal unit and had acted as the woman’s lawyer, said the tribunal’s decision and recognition of the illegal practice amounted to “a vindication for the thousands of victims who have denounced pushbacks by Greek authorities at the Greek-Turkish border.”
“Greek authorities must stop this illegal practice,” she said.
The centre-right government of the prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, under whose watch pushbacks have reportedly proliferated has long argued it follows “a strict but fair” migration policy.
Like previous administrations, officials have furiously denied the allegations with the backing of security agencies, including the Hellenic coastguard and police in what migrant solidarity workers have called a huge conspiracy of silence. At the hearings, Greek government representatives echoed that refrain, challenging the authenticity of the evidence presented and contending that Greece’s border policies complied with international law.
But at a time when regional conflicts and the climate emergency are expected to drive ever greater migrant flows towards Europe, campaigners said the ruling sent a very positive message. Human rights groups praised the judgment for finally exposing a practice so prevalent that in 2021 Amnesty International described the illegal pushbacks as de facto border policy. With scores of similar cases before the Strasbourg court, Lefteris Papagiannakis, the Greek Refugee Council’s director, said that Tuesday’s decision would be gamechanging.
“It’s hugely important,” he said, adding that it sets a precedent and would act as a “pilot case” for all the pending cases before the human rights court involving allegations of pushbacks against Greece.
