Testimony of a woman pushed back 54 times before she and her family made it to Greece
We left from Canakkale, Turkey in a super cold winter night in 2022. I was with my husband and my two- and seven-year-old children. There were 45 people in the boat, including 15 children and 18 women. The engine power was 30 horse power. There was a 1-month-old baby and the oldest person was about 60-70 years old. Just the children had life jackets. The weather was super cold, the sea was wavy, and I was shaking and crying. More people were crying and screaming. In the beginning the sky was clear and I saw the stars and a half moon but after that the sky became cloudy. We spent almost 3 hours in the boat.
We arrived at the island of Lesvos, in an area with a forest. We walked for 2 to 3 hours. I don’t know how many times I fell, until we reached a very high point in the mountain at around 4 a.m. We could hear dogs, all night we were shaking, all with wet clothes in December. We stayed there until 11:00 in the morning. We called UNHCR and Alarm phone, they said they will ask Doctors to help us. When one baby was crying a man heard us. We saw him take his phone and start making a phone call. We tried to run away but that was very hard. We were very cold with a lot of children. Just two single men and one unaccompanied minor managed to run away.
Very soon four masked men surrounded us, they saw the others running away but I think because we were a lot of people, they decided to not follow the three who escaped. They were wearing a dark blue uniform, they all had guns and batons. They said we have to go down very fast; it took us around 20 minutes. They were pushing us, shouting and beating up whoever was not going fast. At some point I had to jump from a height. When I jumped, I felt a lot of pain and when I was trying to stand up one of the masked men beat me with a baton on my back. They pushed a very old man, and I am sure his ankle was twisted. He was not able to move anymore, and two men went to help him. When we got down after a few minutes a black van with ten more masked men arrived.
They were all about 30-40 years old, some of them had the same uniform and some of them not, they all had guns and batons. After a while a man who had an emergency bag came, he was wearing a mask too. He put some cream on the old man’s ankle and pressed it and left. After his ankle looked better. He tried to walk and one of the masked men kicked him.
One of the men asked who speaks English. One poor young man around 20 years old from us said I speak a bit of English. As soon as he spoke, they took him and beat him up, they told him he is a spy or a police officer from Afghanistan or a journalist. They searched his body to see if he has any tattoo, after they ask him to tell us to give all our phones to them and whoever doesn’t give his/her phone, and we find it later we will kill the person. Just me and another woman managed to hide our phones. We were somewhere in the forest, we were not allowed to move, they searched everyone. We were yelled at, they were saying bad words to us, we got beaten up, they touched women everywhere even one of them put his hand inside the underwear of one of the women. They were all men but touched all my body.
They took all of our stuff. After they put us in a black van. My husband tried to send our location to Alarm Phone but inside the van the phone was not working at all. We were in the van for around 2-3 hours going around, everyone was vomiting, and there was not enough air. One woman passed out and we were shouting to stop the van all the time. They stopped once for ten seconds, opened the door and closed the door again. We could see from a tiny hole next to the van door that three or four cars were following us. Finally, the van stopped. One of the men opened the door, and they were shouting and pulling us outside. Our clothes were full of vomit. There was a valley and when they took us down there was a white big boat and one small boat waiting. 7 or 8 men came out of the cars which were following us, and they searched us again on the beach. They start putting people in the small boat to get inside the big white boat.
They were putting about 10 people in the boat with one of the masked men. Before getting in the small boat and to the big boat they searched us again and again. 4 people were inside the big white boat, 3 of them were wearing masks but one of them did not have a mask, he was young around 25 years old with green eyes. All were wearing blue uniforms. They put us in a queue, one by one we got searched again by the 4 men in the boat. They found one phone from a woman. They pushed her and threw her phone to the sea. They were very violent; they lifted up a woman’s dress and everyone saw her breasts. They put women and children in the back of the boat and covered us with a fishing net. They put all of the men in front and asked them to take off their pants. They were pretending that they were searching them. But it was more for humiliating them.
We were about one hour in that boat, when we got very far they threw two life rafts in the sea, they were tied to each other. They shouted at us and said we have to jump down, I was super scared because of my children. They were pushing whoever was delaying just for one second. They pushed my husband. I put my children before me, they jumped to their father and after I jumped myself fast to avoid getting pushed. After me they pushed a pregnant woman. The time was around 15:30-16:00 in the afternoon. They left us there and were watching us from very far. My husband called the Turkish coast guard to help us, no one had a life jacket and the sea was very wavy. After 30-40 minutes, the Turkish Coast Guard arrived and took us back to Turkey.
Lesvos, Greece 2024
| Stories of Resistance, Lesvos 2025 Despite blanket denials from Greek authorities, “pushbacks” in the Aegean Sea and Greece’ Evros border region are a horrifying reality. For years, the Legal Centre Lesvos has collected hundreds of testimonies of survivors of border violence. Together with Fitilia, over the next year we will publish a series of these anonymized* accounts, with the intention to show that behind every statistic, there is a person risking their life to reach Europe. While these stories highlight the brutality and violence of Greek and European border policies, they are also stories of resisting border regimes. They are a call to action – a stark reminder of the urgent need to continue the fight to dismantle the borders that surround us and with it the violence of Fortress Europe. *All identifying details, including names and exact dates have been removed, however, the stories published remain true to the survivors’ own accounts, and all have consented to the publishing of their testimonies. |