<b>Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 10th of December 2020</b> <i>Case name</i>: 20201210-AEG733 <i>Situation</i>: 17 travellers with a sick child were pushed back by Greek border police and brought back to Enez in Turkey <i>Status of WTM Investigation</i>: concluded <i>Place of Incident</i>: Evros river <i>Summary of the Case:</i> On 10th of December 2020 at 20:10h CET the Alarm Phone got a direct call from a group of 17 travellers. They got stuck in the Evros delta near Limni Nimfon, a lake on Greek territory. Among the 17 men was a 10 years old child which had a cold and needed help. The Alarm Phone collected all their names to inform the authorities (police, Frontex) and also human rights organizations. The shift team dialed some police stations later on but there was no outcome concerning rescue operations. First tweet was sent out at 22:03h. At 23:20h the Alarm Phone called the police station in Feres in Greek language. The officer wondered if it’s their jurisdiction and will do a research on that. He told the people can call 112 and should stay where there are. On 11th of December there where a lot of What’s App communication with the people. They informed the Alarm Phone that the child lost consciousness several times and that no one would responded to them. The shift team forward the telephone number of the police station in Feres and promised to stay in contact. All calls to police station in that area failed the whole night. At 07:35h the people still were in need of rescue. Another Tweet were published to denounce the non-assistance. In the messages between 9:00h and 10:00h the people reported their story: they have been caught by one police and pushed back to the border where the Turkish police came and brought them to Enez, from where they sent the GPS position from. In a tweet from 14:00h Alarm Phone addressed Frontex and UNHCR as silent actors in this case who didn’t prevent a push-back. Twitter chronology: 10th December 22:03h https://twitter.com/alarm_phone/status/1337140660583985158 11th December 09:03h https://twitter.com/alarm_phone/status/1337306883846180864 14h https://twitter.com/alarm_phone/status/1337381709202026498

This post was originally published on Watch the Med.