Photo: Vastria CCAC under construction as of February 2025. Photo credit: Anonymous
In the last quarter of 2024, Greek islands experienced a significant increase in arrivals, with 19,009 people reaching Greece by sea between October and December, including more than 3,500 on Lesvos, according to UNHCR data. In parallel, Greece’s unlawful practice of pushbacks continued, with 3,413 migrants forcibly and clandestinely returned in the Aegean sea during the same period, according to the Turkish Coast Guard. These life-threatening border policies, which were recently recognised by the European Court of Human Rights as part of a systematic state practice, led in this three month period to the deaths of at least 36 migrants. As exposed in our recent joint submissions to the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, these policies are not only a root cause behind migrant disappearances during border crossings, they also constitute – through direct and indirect actions that endanger, abandon or fail to protect migrants – per se forms of enforced disappearance.
A recent condemnation of the Greek state for imposing inhumane and degrading treatment to migrants in the former hotspot camp of Samos, should serve as additional evidence that violations of fundamental rights are inevitable when concentrating people in camps. Instead, the current CCAC camp in Lesvos continues to host migrants in dire and unacceptable living conditions, worsened with the low temperatures and the increasing number of residents. Dozens of unaccompanied children continued to be unfairly detained in precarious conditions inside the former COVID-19 “quarantine” area of the camp, due to the insufficient numbers of places in specialised shelters on the island. Many – including people with disabilities – are still forced to sleep in shared flimsy Refugee Housing Units (RHUs) during the winter season. In parallel, despite ongoing legal challenges, serious environmental and foreseeable human rights concerns, the construction of the new massive EU-funded Closed Controlled Access Centre (CCAC) in the Vastria forest continues.
The continued interruption of interpretation services provided by the Greek state since May 2024 created severe obstacles for asylum seekers across Greece, delaying their interviews and limiting access to essential services such as healthcare. For Syrians, the Greek asylum service’s decision to suspend until further notice the processing of asylum cases has left many in administrative limbo, exposing them to uncertainty and fear of forced return to unsafe conditions.
In this context, the Legal Centre Lesvos (LCL) continued its crucial work challenging human rights violations and ensuring the criminal defense of migrants. A case of pushback from the island of Symi that LCL filed before the European Court of Human Rights in 2020, was recently communicated to Greece. Moreover, LCL continues to represent two of the Pylos shipwreck survivors, who despite having been unjustly imprisoned for nearly a year, were denied compensation. Following the closure of the investigation into the circumstances and responsibilities into the shipwreck in the Naval Court, LCL lawyers joined the lawyers of the survivors and victims, and called for an expanded investigation, highlighting the gaps and shortcomings in the current investigation, which fails to take into consideration all available evidence.