Greek authorities threw us into sea, say immigrants

Survivors from a 40-member group of illegal migrants have accused Greece of throwing them into the sea off the Turkish coast, Turkey’s coastguard said today.

Six of the migrants drowned and three others were still missing.

Turkey’s coastguard said in a statement that the migrants boarded a boat in the Turkish province of Izmir and were taken to Greece, citing migrants accounts.

“When they landed, they saw Greeks in military uniforms who put them on a boat and threw them into the sea off the coast,” the coastguard statement said, citing survivors.

Greece’s Merchant Marine Ministry had no immediate comment.

The Turkish coastguard launched a rescue operation after local residents said people were heard crying for help in the sea.

Turkey last week complained that the Greek coastguard had also dumped illegal migrants in the open sea on small rubber boats in two incidents filmed by the Turkish coastguard earlier this year and in 2004. The video footage and pictures of the incidents were distributed to the Turkish media.

In Athens, Greece’s Foreign Ministry said Ankara had failed to comply with a bilateral agreement which allowed Athens to send back illegal immigrants who had crossed into Greece from Turkey.

“Over the last four years, Greece has made 22,000 repatriation requests … and only 1,400 have been accepted – 6.36%. The figures speak for themselves,” said ministry spokesman Giorgos Koumoutsakos.

The coastguard said it had recovered the bodies of six people and rescued 31 others. A search for three missing people was underway, it said. The migrants included Palestinians, Lebanese, Tunisians, Iraqis and one Algerian.

“Greek security forces threw us into the sea from a coastguard boat without even asking whether we knew how to swim,” the state-owned Anatolia news agency quoted Muhammedi Alti, a Lebanese national.

Alti said he was trying to escape the war in Lebanon and paid smugglers to take him to the Greek island of Chios, across the Turkish coast. The Greek troops on the island captured the migrants, put them on a coastguard boat and dumped them near the Turkish coast, according to Alti.

“I still can’t believe what we have lived through. We managed to swim to the shore with my wife,” said Alti. “We had thought that human rights would be more valuable in Europe.”

Turkey, which has long and porous borders, is a major human smuggling route into Europe.

Thousands of migrants from countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia try to enter Europe each year – from Africa in overloaded boats across the Strait of Gibraltar to Spain; from Turkey across the Aegean to the Greek islands; over the Adriatic from Albania to Italy; or in the back of trucks through the Channel Tunnel between France and England.

Hundreds have drowned off the Turkish coast while attempting to reach Greece or Italy or were killed when they stepped on mines along the Turkish-Greek border.

European Union countries are pushing Turkey to crack down on illegal migration.