“Our understanding is that what is reported is not proved,” he told a regular press briefing when asked about the claims on Monday. “Every complaint is looked into, and in the end, the relevant findings are made public.”
A boat that later capsized on the open sea off Greece in June, 2023. File photo: Hellenic Coast Guard via Reuters
Greece is a major gateway for migrants from the Middle East, Africa and Asia seeking a better life in the affluent European Union.
Thousands slip into the country every year, mostly in small boats from neighbouring Turkey. Relations with Turkey are often tense, and the two countries’ coastguards have repeatedly traded accusations of mistreating migrants.
Migrant charities and human rights groups have repeatedly accused Greece’s coastguard and police of illegally preventing arriving migrants from seeking asylum by surreptitiously returning them to Turkish waters.
Greece has angrily denied that, arguing its border forces have saved hundreds of thousands of migrants from sinking boats.
The country’s reputation took a further knock in June 2023, when a battered fishing vessel with an estimated 750 people on board sank off southwestern Greece.
Only 104 people survived, despite the Greek coastguard having shadowed the vessel for hours, and survivors claimed the trawler sank after a botched attempt by the coastguard to tow it. Greek authorities again denied these allegations.
The new BBC report included a claim by a Cameroonian man that he and two other migrants were picked up by masked men, including policemen, just after landing on the island of Samos.
The man claimed all three were put in a coastguard boat and thrown into the sea, and that the other two men drowned as a result.
The report also quoted a Syrian man who said he was part of a group picked up at sea by the Greek coastguard off Rhodes. He said the survivors were put in life rafts and left adrift in Turkish waters, where several died after one life raft sank before the Turkish coastguard came to pick them up.
Marinakis said “it is wrong to target” the Greek coastguard. “In any case, we monitor every report and investigation, but I repeat: What is mentioned (in the BBC report) is in no case backed up by evidence,” he said.
The International Organization for Migration has declared the Mediterranean passage the world’s most perilous migration route. According to UN data, more than 23,500 migrants have died or gone missing in its waters since 2014.
On Monday, 64 people were missing at sea after a shipwreck off the Italian southern coast, while 11 were rescued and taken ashore to a Calabrian town, United Nations’ agencies said in a statement.
In a separate shipwreck, rescuers found 10 bodies of suspected migrants trapped below the deck of a wooden boat off Italy’s tiny Lampedusa island, the German aid group Resqship wrote on Monday on the social media platform X.
In the first shipwreck, which took place about 200km (125 miles) off Calabria, a boat that had set off from Turkey eight days earlier caught fire and overturned, the UN agencies said, citing survivors.
Additional reporting by Reuters and Agence France-Presse
Source link : https://amp.scmp.com/news/world/europe/article/3266991/greece-denies-new-report-brutality-migrants-including-claim-dozens-were-left-die-sea
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Publish date : 2024-06-17 16:14:28
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