With All Due Respect

"As a medical and humanitarian organization, we could not stay silent in the face of the exceptional scale and severity of the violence reported to our teams [on Samos and the island of Lesbos]."

"Non-Assistance [to migrants], violence and pushbacks have become part and parcel of a system of border management [on the two Greek islands]."

"From land, testimonies point to a pattern of practices including physical assault, handcuffing, informal detention, groups being forcibly taken to the shore before being pushed back at sea, as well as humiliating strip searches." 

"[The perpetrators were described as] groups of unidentified people with covered faces] who often stole migrants’ phones, money and other possessions."

"MSF has witnessed people running out of the forest screaming, crying and reporting being beaten, and MSF medical staff have treated people on the spot for suspected violence-related injuries."

Doctors Without Borders (MSF)

Refugees and migrants in a dinghy are lit by a a Greek coast guard patrol boat's spotlight during a rescue operation near the eastern Aegean Sea island of Samos. A leading international medical charity said on Thursday, Nov. 2, 2023 that has received scores of testimonies over the past two years from migrants that point to a "recurring practice" of alleged secret, illegal and often brutal deportations back to Turkey from two eastern Greek islands. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

 

Europe, and not only Europe, has been undergoing years of forced 'occupation' by an unending stream of migrants claiming to be refugees needing haven in their escape from repressive, controlling, abusive regimes in countries with high crime rates and often civil war. The majority of the migrants are young men looking for economic opportunities; in many instances a lack of employment in their home countries and in other instances regional conflict may add too the influx of these migrants streaming to Europe and North America, all through clearly illegal routes that pose a danger to the migrants themselves.

 

For years tens of thousands of migrants, mostly from Africa and the Middle East have posed a problem in their endless numbers arriving on shores that can barely manage to answer to their most immediate needs of shelter, food, health care and a future. Their non-stop arrivals now number in the millions scattered throughout Europe where most countries at the urging of the European Union have agreed to receive these migrants. And for years, the suspicion that among them are also men with ties to known terrorist groups.

 

The infiltration of Europe generally by mostly men from cultures unlike that of the receiving countries has posed a problem. Crime has become more prevalent, as have violent attacks and particularly attacks against women. Cultural, tribal and sectarian roots reflect a heritage alien to that of Europe. Many of those arriving are culturally unadaptable to the values and the laws of democratic countries. And all too many of the migrants take advantage of generous social welfare programs to the detriment of people native to the welcoming countries living in poverty.

 

Greece and Italy have suffered disproportionately from the avalanche of migrants teeming onto their shores necessitating costly and complicated measures for accommodating the sheer numbers that engender resentment on the part of native Europeans. Doctors Without Borders has produced a report critical of Greece in particular, ostensibly drawing on interviews they have conducted with migrants between 2021 and 2023, claiming harsh and violent treatment. 

MSF's report accuses Creek authorities of a "recurring practice" of secret, illegal and sometimes brutal deportations back to Turkey from the two eastern Greek islands. Turkey had opened its borders in 2020 into the EU, actively encouraging migrants to move on and cross into Greece. Turkey wants to be rid of the migrants that have flooded en route to move onward to Europe. Turkish authorities cite the burden Turkey has taken on, giving shelter to millions of Syrians who fled the Syrian regime's war on its Sunni Syrian population.

Turkish authorities along with the charity, refugee activists and others allege that in the Aegean Sea and Greece's northeastern land border with Turkey, forced returns had been carried out by uniformed officers or unknown masked individuals. Strong denial to these "pushbacks" has come from the government in Athens which argues that its coast guard has acted in a humanitarian fashion by saving hundreds of thousands of migrants from the Middle East and Africa attempting to reach Greece, crossing in small boats from Turkey.

 

A boat used to patrol the seas for migrants is seen in the harbour in Samos. (Romain Chauvet/CBC)

 

There is a national need to protect Greece's borders, which in effect are those of the European Union, from mass illegal immigration. The MSF report included a case where migrants reported to its staff that two people, one a pregnant woman, died off the island of Samos when their boat was towed at high speed toward Turkish waters. The islands of Lesbos and Samos represent key landing points for migrants arriving from Turkey.

Migrants are now turning to alternate, longer voyages as a result of the enforced returns to Turkey, claims the report. Longer voyages that risk greater hardship or death, with an increase of yachts in recent years crammed with migrants leaving Turkey to round southern Greece heading directly for Italy.

Logic might have it that given the great dangers involved in making such illegal migrant voyages and entries, the migration would cease, but it does not. People are knowingly placing themselves in danger.

That being the case, are countries at the receiving end of millions of illegal migrants -- whose arrivals will alter those countries' demographics, with incoming flocks of people who cannot or will not adapt to values common to Europe, to their laws, accommodating themselves to what is normal and socially accepted in a country unlike their own -- not obligated to its own heritage, history, culture and values to maintain them and refuse further entries?

Opened in September 2021, this camp on the Greek island of Samos is the first Closed Controlled Access Center (CCAC) for asylum seekers. Fully funded by the EU at a cost of 43 million euros, the camp is surrounded by multiple barbed wire fences and equipped with a security system that includes CCTV cameras. (Romain Chauvet/CBC)