Social Europe

  • EU Forward Project
  • YouTube
  • Podcast
  • Books
  • Newsletter
  • Membership

Border pushbacks: it’s time for impunity to end

Hope Barker 23rd December 2020

Research on pushbacks of asylum-seekers reveals a massive number of such human-rights violations—yet it could be just the tip of the iceberg.

pushbacks
Hope Barker

This month the NGO Border Violence Monitoring Network published a Black Book of Pushbacks, commissioned by the United Left group of the European Parliament. The book represents the most comprehensive repository of evidence to date, containing a total of 892 group testimonies detailing the experiences of more than 12,600 people on the move who were pushed back both in border areas and deep inside European territory.

While these numbers appear shocking at first sight, they only refer to the interviews undertaken by BVMN—a glimpse of a much larger and more far-reaching phenomenon. In spite of the 1,500 pages of documented evidence, which couples hard data (timings, geolocations, dates, officer and vehicle descriptions, medical reports and other corroborating evidence) with narrative accounts of pushback incidents, the official line of member states’ governments is point-blank denial.

In January, the Croatian Ministry of Interior rejected accusations of pushbacks as ‘false’ and in October the Greek minister of migration and asylum, Notis Mitarachi, claimed that ‘Greece does not participate in so-called push-backs’. Since 2016, BVMN has made it its mission to collect and document such evidence—the book seeks to foreground the realities facing those navigating the European Union’s harsh border regime.

Illegal in essence

Pushbacks, in their very essence, are illegal. They occur when people on the move are forced back over borders without being afforded the opportunity to apply for asylum; individual circumstances are not considered, no option to challenge the expulsion is given and violent methods are often employed.

They violate the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, articles 4 and 28 of the EU Charter on Human Rights, articles 3 and 33 of the European Convention on Human Rights and articles 5 and 13 of the EU Returns Directive, not to mention provisions in the legislation of member states. Yet not only are they occurring—they are co-ordinated and systematic. 

Pushbacks have become an increasingly prevalent yet unacknowledged pillar of the EU’s border regime. In the field it is hard to meet a person who has not experienced one or more incidents. As a field reporter in Greece, I have supervised or conducted more than 50 interviews with affected persons since 2019. When it comes to the Greece-Turkey land border, these interviews reveal a high concurrence among reported patterns of action.

In a typical testimony, groups are apprehended before being brought to incommunicado detention sites in the highly militarised Evros border area. They are held in these locations until enough people have been accumulated, with group sizes often reaching over 100. It is here that the authorities, often masking their identities with balaclavas, commit violent acts against people on the move, ranging from prolonged beatings, use of electric discharge weapons and shaving of heads to forced undressings.

From there, groups are taken to the Evros river, where further violence often occurs before they are loaded into rubber dinghies and ferried back to the Turkish side. A new tactic observed in multiple testimonies is officers using members of the transit group to drive these dinghies, perhaps to outsource blame for the actual pushback itself.

It seems near impossible to imagine that so many different individuals, speaking different languages to different reporters at different times, would be telling such a similar story if there were no truth to the matter. Yet that is the response competent authorities continue to advance.

EU culpability

We must not point the finger at Greece, or other perpetrating member states, alone. Looking at testimonies with a geographical lens provides a perspective which illuminates the EU’s culpability in this practice.

In Croatia and Greece, nearly 90 per cent of all recorded cases in 2020 detailed how pushback victims were subject to one or more forms of abuse that could constitute torture or inhuman or degrading treatment. This makes them the most violent pushback perpetrators, according to BVMN’s data. Particularly shocking stories which came out of the two member states this year include mock executions and allegations of serious sexual assault in Croatia, and more recently groups being stranded on an island in the Evros river between Greece and Turkey for days, without food, water or any kind of assistance.

That both Croatia and Greece are located at the edges of the EU—Greece the external frontier and Croatia the barrier to the Schengen zone—can’t be ignored. Is such violence and brutality, then, the price these member states are made to pay to fortify the EU’s borders?

Monitoring mechanism

If the EU is serious about stopping these violations, it needs to do a much better job than the independent monitoring mechanism proposed in the European Commission’s New Pact on Migration and Asylum. This method has already been trialled in Croatia, where the commission announced an extra €6.8 million for border surveillance, with an explicit commitment ‘to ensure that all measures applied at the EU external borders are proportionate and are in full compliance with fundamental rights and EU asylum laws’.

Several miscommunications followed around who was carrying out this monitoring project and whether it was actually in operation. An independent inquiry into the implementation of the grant, led by MEPs in collaboration with civil-society actors, revealed underspending, misreporting and a cover-up of the fact that no independent border monitoring mechanism was ever established. The commissioner for home affairs, Ylva Johansson, has continued to claim Croatian authorities have put a mechanism in place with the commission’s support.

There is a pattern, both within the competent authorities of member states and those tasked with monitoring their compliance in the EU, to deny the realities of what borders in Europe really mean to those navigating them. These unconvincing denials are further weakened by the publication of the Black Book of Pushbacks, which tells the stories of those who came to Europe seeking safety and instead experienced systematic human-rights deprivations, violence and even torture—at the hands of those tasked with protecting them.

Genuinely independent

What is required are genuinely independent monitoring mechanisms led by national preventive mechanisms and independent NGOs, funded by the commission or through an independent agency. These must include unannounced visits to border zones and police stations, enhanced cross-border collaboration in testimony collection and an alarm system which could be triggered by potential asylum-seekers in situations where their fundamental rights are violated.

Perpetrators of these violations must be held accountable, impunity must end and pushbacks must be stopped.

Hope Barker

Hope Barker holds an MSc in international social and public policy from the London School of Economics and is resident policy analyst for the Border Violence Monitoring Network.

Harvard University Press Advertisement

Social Europe Ad - Promoting European social policies

We need your help.

Support Social Europe for less than €5 per month and help keep our content freely accessible to everyone. Your support empowers independent publishing and drives the conversations that matter. Thank you very much!

Social Europe Membership

Click here to become a member

Most Recent Articles

u4219834664e04a 8a1e 4ee0 a6f9 bbc30a79d0b1 2 Closing the Chasm: Central and Eastern Europe’s Continued Minimum Wage ClimbCarlos Vacas-Soriano and Christine Aumayr-Pintar
u421983467f bb39 37d5862ca0d5 0 Ending Britain’s “Brief Encounter” with BrexitStefan Stern
u421983485 2 The Future of American Soft PowerJoseph S. Nye
u4219834676d582029 038f 486a 8c2b fe32db91c9b0 2 Trump Can’t Kill the Boom: Why the US Economy Will Roar Despite HimNouriel Roubini
u42198346fb0de2b847 0 How the Billionaire Boom Is Fueling Inequality—and Threatening DemocracyFernanda Balata and Sebastian Mang

Most Popular Articles

startupsgovernment e1744799195663 Governments Are Not StartupsMariana Mazzucato
u421986cbef 2549 4e0c b6c4 b5bb01362b52 0 American SuicideJoschka Fischer
u42198346769d6584 1580 41fe 8c7d 3b9398aa5ec5 1 Why Trump Keeps Winning: The Truth No One AdmitsBo Rothstein
u421983467 a350a084 b098 4970 9834 739dc11b73a5 1 America Is About to Become the Next BrexitJ Bradford DeLong
u4219834676ba1b3a2 b4e1 4c79 960b 6770c60533fa 1 The End of the ‘West’ and Europe’s FutureGuillaume Duval
u421983462e c2ec 4dd2 90a4 b9cfb6856465 1 The Transatlantic Alliance Is Dying—What Comes Next for Europe?Frank Hoffer
u421983467 2a24 4c75 9482 03c99ea44770 3 Trump’s Trade War Tears North America Apart – Could Canada and Mexico Turn to Europe?Malcolm Fairbrother
u4219834676e2a479 85e9 435a bf3f 59c90bfe6225 3 Why Good Business Leaders Tune Out the Trump Noise and Stay FocusedStefan Stern
u42198346 4ba7 b898 27a9d72779f7 1 Confronting the Pandemic’s Toxic Political LegacyJan-Werner Müller
u4219834676574c9 df78 4d38 939b 929d7aea0c20 2 The End of Progess? The Dire Consequences of Trump’s ReturnJoseph Stiglitz

Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

WSI Report

WSI Minimum Wage Report 2025

The trend towards significant nominal minimum wage increases is continuing this year. In view of falling inflation rates, this translates into a sizeable increase in purchasing power for minimum wage earners in most European countries. The background to this is the implementation of the European Minimum Wage Directive, which has led to a reorientation of minimum wage policy in many countries and is thus boosting the dynamics of minimum wages. Most EU countries are now following the reference values for adequate minimum wages enshrined in the directive, which are 60% of the median wage or 50 % of the average wage. However, for Germany, a structural increase is still necessary to make progress towards an adequate minimum wage.

DOWNLOAD HERE

KU Leuven advertisement

The Politics of Unpaid Work

This new book published by Oxford University Press presents the findings of the multiannual ERC research project “Researching Precariousness Across the Paid/Unpaid Work Continuum”,
led by Valeria Pulignano (KU Leuven), which are very important for the prospects of a more equal Europe.

Unpaid labour is no longer limited to the home or volunteer work. It infiltrates paid jobs, eroding rights and deepening inequality. From freelancers’ extra hours to care workers’ unpaid duties, it sustains precarity and fuels inequity. This book exposes the hidden forces behind unpaid labour and calls for systemic change to confront this pressing issue.

DOWNLOAD HERE FOR FREE

ETUI advertisement

HESA Magazine Cover

What kind of impact is artificial intelligence (AI) having, or likely to have, on the way we work and the conditions we work under? Discover the latest issue of HesaMag, the ETUI’s health and safety magazine, which considers this question from many angles.

DOWNLOAD HERE

Eurofound advertisement

Ageing workforce
How are minimum wage levels changing in Europe?

In a new Eurofound Talks podcast episode, host Mary McCaughey speaks with Eurofound expert Carlos Vacas Soriano about recent changes to minimum wages in Europe and their implications.

Listeners can delve into the intricacies of Europe's minimum wage dynamics and the driving factors behind these shifts. The conversation also highlights the broader effects of minimum wage changes on income inequality and gender equality.

Listen to the episode for free. Also make sure to subscribe to Eurofound Talks so you don’t miss an episode!

LISTEN NOW

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

Spring Issues

The Spring issue of The Progressive Post is out!


Since President Trump’s inauguration, the US – hitherto the cornerstone of Western security – is destabilising the world order it helped to build. The US security umbrella is apparently closing on Europe, Ukraine finds itself less and less protected, and the traditional defender of free trade is now shutting the door to foreign goods, sending stock markets on a rollercoaster. How will the European Union respond to this dramatic landscape change? .


Among this issue’s highlights, we discuss European defence strategies, assess how the US president's recent announcements will impact international trade and explore the risks  and opportunities that algorithms pose for workers.


READ THE MAGAZINE

Social Europe

Our Mission

Team

Article Submission

Advertisements

Membership

Social Europe Archives

Themes Archive

Politics Archive

Economy Archive

Society Archive

Ecology Archive

Miscellaneous

RSS Feed

Legal Disclosure

Privacy Policy

Copyright

Social Europe ISSN 2628-7641