Pushbacks Across the Evros/Meriç River: The Case of Parvin

For years, migrants and refugees crossing the Evros/Meriç River from Turkey to Greece have testified to being detained, beaten, and ‘pushed back’ across the river to Turkey, by unidentified masked men, in full secrecy, at night, and without being granted access to asylum procedures.

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 wider ecosystem of border defence. Its natural processes have been weaponised to deter and let die those who attempt to cross it and to obfuscate this violence and deflect responsibility.

For independent researchers, the militarisation of this border region makes access extremely difficult; a restricted ‘buffer zone’ runs along both banks of the river. Detention centres and border guard stations are often located within this buffer zone, keeping detained people out of sight and without access to legal support.

Witnesses describe having their phones, documents, and possessions confiscated and often thrown into the river, suggesting an operation that is carefully designed to remove any potential evidence of human rights violations.

During the first half of 2020, Parvin, a young woman from Iran, entered Greece six times in an effort to claim asylum in the EU, only to be repeatedly pushed back to Turkey.

The violence she was subjected to during her pushbacks is diverse in nature, spanning detention, torture and summary expulsions in the Evros/Meriç, apprehensions deep inside the Greek mainland, ‘drift-backs’ in the Aegean Sea, and extended periods of detention in quarantine camps in Turkey. Parvin was also an early witness to the violent events at the Kastanies/Pazarkule border fence in late February 2020, which would leave at least two dead, Muhammad al-Arab and Muhammad Gulzar, and several more injured.

Parvin digitally recorded many of her crossing attempts via location sharing, video recordings, voice and chat messages, and photographs. We analysed this material in order to corroborate Parvin’s testimony and reconstruct her journey and experiences of ‘pushback’.