Pushbacks Across the Evros/Meriç River: Analysis of video evidence

In December 2019, Der Spiegel received a series of videos filmed on a Turkish Border Guard’s mobile phone and on a surveillance camera installed on the Turkish banks of the Evros/Meriç river. These rare videos document a pushback operation as it unfolds for the first time. We were commissioned to analyse the footage and to investigate its veracity. Through our analysis we were able to accurately geolocate and timestamp the footage, and to demonstrate that it indeed captures a pushback operation from the Greek to the Turkish banks, a few hundred metres away from a Greek military watchtower.

Satellite photo showing a Greek military watchtower in close proximity to the location of the pushback, 22 April 2019. (Image courtesy of Google Earth)

These videos corroborate several testimonies of migrants crossing the Evros/Meriç river from Turkey to Greece, who have testified to being detained, beaten, and ‘pushed back’ across the river to Turkey, by unidentified masked men and in full secrecy, without being granted access to asylum procedures. Pushbacks, as this practice is called, contravenes a series of European and international laws. The Greek and EU authorities systematically deny any wrongdoing and refuse to investigate these reports.

The Evros/Meriç river delineates the only ‘land’ border between Greece and Turkey. Spanning from the Trilateral border with Bulgaria in the North, where the river is called Maritsa, to the Aegean Sea in the South, this so-called ‘natural’ border has, in recent years, been incorporated into a broader ecosystem of border defence. Its riverine characteristics have been weaponised to deter and kill migrants attempting to cross it.

For independent researchers, the militarisation of this border region makes access extremely difficult. A ‘buffer zone’ restricting civilian access to the border runs alongside both banks of the river. Detention centres and border guard stations are often located within this buffer zone, keeping detainees out of sight and without access to legal help.

Witnesses describe having their phones, documents and possessions confiscated, and often thrown into the river, suggesting an operation carefully designed to obscure all possible evidence of human rights violations.

The results of this investigation have been submitted to the State Prosecutor of Orestiada, Evros, the State Prosecutor of Thrace, and the Greek Ombudsman.