We left from Canakkale in the early morning. I think it was 5:15 or 5:20 when we left Turkey. I was on my own. September 2022. It happened more than one year ago, so I don’t think I will remember all of the details, but of course, I will never forget the fear I had at that time. I think we were about 50 to 60 people with me. The weather was a bit cold, or maybe because it was early morning. The sea was a bit wavy but the sky was very clear. We had a guy with a broken leg with us and he told us last time when he tried to cross he got beaten by the Greek Coast Guard and they broke his leg. I was very scared because he said they beat everyone but they beat single men more.
Our dinghy was not very big or we were lots of people because I remember we were sitting very close and next to each other. Our dinghy was black and we had some water inside. We drove about an hour and a half and just two people had their phones on and were checking the location as we travelled. We were very close to Lesvos island. I think in 15 to 20 minutes we would have arrived but suddenly a grey vessel showed up that I knew was the Greek Coast Guard.
When they got close we saw four men on it with black clothes. Three of them had the same uniform and face mask, but one of them, who was an old man with white hair, didn’t have the uniform or face mask. The guy with the broken leg said: “They are the ones who beat me last time”.
We were very scared. The person who was driving the boat was very scared. He said it is better if we go back ourselves and do not get beaten by them. So he just turned the dinghy towards Turkey and shouted: “Okay, no problem, go Turkey”. But the masked men started shouting: “Stop, stop”. The children and women on the boat started crying.
We were shouting: “Go Turkey, please, help help”, but they kept shouting: “Stop, stop” and getting closer and closer. They got too close to us. We were thinking they would pass right over our dinghy. When they saw we were not going to stop, two of the masked men on the Greek Coast Guard boat started beating us on our heads with long spears/poles. They beat the children, women and especially the person driving the boat. They also beat me.
We were very scared. A lot of water came inside the boat. We were all wet. They kept shouting at us. While two of them were beating us, the other one tied a piece of metal or something very heavy with a rope and he kept throwing to us to stop the boat and we kept throwing it down. They hit the boat driver very hard on his arm and he started bleeding from his arm. All of this took around 15 minutes. They had a smaller boat inside the vessel when they saw we were not gonna stop, they were getting ready to throw the smaller boat in the water. We were all shouting “Stop stop, no help”. We were super scared.
Then suddenly the engine of our boat stopped working. When the masked men saw from the vessel that our engine was not working they stopped and relaxed. That was horrible. We thought they would kill us, we were super scared. People started to be angry at the person who had been driving the boat, we said we did not stop and we will regret it now. Then one of the masked men came with another long spear/pole and he took our petrol gallon without getting inside the boat, after he shouted and asked us to give him the engine. We gave him the engine.
When they took everything they left us alone.
We were kind of happy that they left us but we were in the sea with nothing with a lot of water inside the dinghy so we called the Turkish Coast Guard and after 15 or 20 minutes they arrived. They 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.