A leading humanitarian group on Thursday criticized Greece for its treatment of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos, repeating allegations of illegal deportations back to Turkey and claiming authorities are using starvation as a weapon against some migrants.
Médecins Sans Frontières, known by its French acronym MSF, said in a statement that the situation for asylum seekers on the eastern Aegean island is “continuously deteriorating”.
“Many people were exposed to violence and alleged kidnappings by unidentified masked people, resistance that forced them to leave Greece, arbitrary arrests and deprivation of food and shelter,” he said.
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The Greek government has ordered an investigation into allegations that a group of migrants were illegally deported back to Turkey from Lesbos. Last week’s New York Times report said the migrants were taken onto a Greek coastguard boat which left them on a raft at sea to be picked up by the Turkish coastguard, who returned them to Turkey.
Athens has repeatedly denied persistent allegations that it engages in such deportations, known as pushbacks. Lesbos is an important landing point for thousands of people looking for a better life in Europe, who cross illegally from Turkey in small boats supplied by smuggling gangs.
Doctors Without Borders condemned the Greek government for its alleged mistreatment of migrants. (Nicolas Economou/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
MSF said on Thursday that fear of resistance was preventing many newly arrived migrants from accessing their health services, while others who could not be found may have been secretly deported.
“When we are alerted to new arrivals in urgent need of medical assistance, we spend hours – sometimes days – looking for them, as they are often hidden in the forests,” said Nihal Osman, MSF coordinator in Lesbos. Osman added that, as of June 2022, MSF has been unable to find 940 people at their reported locations.
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The group also claimed that Greek authorities stopped giving food on May 17 to people who completed the registration process at a Lesbos center for asylum seekers to stay while awaiting examination of their proposals.
“The government is using food as leverage to force people out of the facility,” Osman said. He also described conditions as “terrible” at another center where newly arrived asylum seekers are sent for days, saying it was overcrowded and located in a very remote location.
There was no immediate comment from the Greek government.
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Nearly a million people arrived in Greece from Turkey in 2015, most arriving on Lesbos. Subsequently, numbers dropped, and since 2019, Athens has stepped up patrols at sea to further reduce arrivals.
