Whoever kind of facilitates the entry is ought to be punished, is supposed to be punished
and that's what's happening on a large scale, not just in Greece but also on other external
borders.
And that's what's really behind the fight against smuggling on a European level that
is just now used to put a lot of people straight into prison after they arrive and hope to
deter others.
But what we've seen by now and what we've also seen with all the other potential border
closing policies, it doesn't stop people from coming.
It just makes it more dangerous and also more inhumane.
Welcome to Voices of Mytilini.
My name is Toby.
Prosecutions and convictions are some of the most structural and effective methods of repression
used against migrants EU-wide and in Greece.
It is also one of the least talked about.
Currently there are many migrants in Greece in jail either convicted or awaiting trial
on smuggling charges.
In addition migrants are also regularly subjected to other similarly vague charges like the
case of the Moria 6, the 6 people that were accused of starting the fire that burned down
the Moria camp here on Lesbos in 2020.
Often it takes very little time for the judges to produce a verdict and actual evidence does
not seem to be a requirement.
Also aside from some cases like the previously mentioned Moria 6, there has been very little
coverage by the media.
I want to take a look at some of those cases to give them more visibility but also to analyze
what is the underlying repression strategy of these practices.
In order to examine this I spoke to several people that can give us some insight in several
of the cases and the processes behind them.
First is Kim from Kant Evict Solidarity.
My name is Kim.
I am a member of the group You Kant Evict Solidarity which was founded in 2016.
We are a group of activists.
If you want me to explain what we are doing is if you hear about a case that some one
of the migrants get criminalized, we provide first legal support, try to make this case
public to bring in the media to make people and politicians aware of the unjustice happening.
Also an important part of our campaign is to be in direct contact with the people in
prison and with their families and friends to support them practically with money and
clothes and all the stuff and also to give emotional support.
So that they are very personal and that there are people in the world around to support
them, not agree to what happened to them.
You are also involved with some of the more well known cases that were happening the last
years.
Let's say the Moria 6 which has been happening since 2020 and Amir and Razuli with their
trials, their support and you work together also with other groups that are active on
legal center like Refugee Support, GIN, formerly known as CBT.
Yes.
My name is Julia and I'm active with an organization called Borderline Europe.
We are based on Lesvos but also in Sicily and in Berlin as well and trying to research
and document what's happening at Europe's borders and also intervene where we can, intervene
actively, do campaigns etc. and have been specifically working and focusing on the criminalization
of people on the move for steering the boat or driving the car that they used to come
to Europe in the past years.
First, it is important to understand what is meant with the word smuggling as opposed
to trafficking because these words often get used interchangeably but they do not have
the same meaning.
As an organization but also within our network we always emphasize that there is a difference
between smuggling and trafficking and especially in these cases people are charged with smuggling
and not trafficking and the difference is, I mean, in very simple terms that when you
talk about smuggling it involves people that people will, people want to be smuggled across
a border.
That doesn't mean that it cannot be violent or exploitation can be part of it but the
main difference between is that trafficking already implies that it happens against the
will of a person, that a person is transferred across a border or within borders against
their will and the big difference is that when we talk about smuggling, like the pretext
is that there are people that want to cross a border, they have the wish to cross a border
and then we have a lot of aspects surrounding it and very much connected to the European
border regime that kind of then create the conditions for smuggling, right?
Who smuggles for which price, which conditions, who do people have to rely on and this is
why there is a really big difference and we see it also on a political level that these
two concepts are often mixed up or conflated and we would assume that this is also not
being done without any intention because I would assume or I would hope that politicians
that are working on this topic on a very high political level know the difference and also
in the official UN cartas it's clearly defined there's a difference between human trafficking
and human smuggling but nevertheless it's always used in the same sentences, in the
same papers and we assume that's also a political motivation to kind of further criminalise
the act of smuggling to kind of equate it with this horrific crime of trafficking which
is a horrific crime in itself, whereas smuggling in itself is very simple, first of all nothing
more than transferring people across a border and then of course can be violent, can be
problematic but the term smuggling in itself to start with doesn't mean less or more than
just helping people to cross a border that want to cross that border.
I asked Julia from Borderline about some of the characteristics that these cases share
in common.
I mean you have the very specific characteristic that it's people that have just arrived,
they usually tend to have no connection to Greece before, no knowledge of the language,
no knowledge of the justice system or any context because what happens is that they
usually get arrested straight from the boat or the car which of course brings a lot of
very fundamental issues with it because usually if you have a lawyer from the very beginning
they can already tell you certain things to say, not to say they can be with you at the
very first hearing before the investigating judge that decides if you have to go to pre-trial
detention or not and we have had cases very rarely where for some reason it was possible
to send a lawyer straight away to the police station and this can make a difference if
you have someone from the very beginning but in the majority of cases that's not the case
and people have just arrived and they sign something at the police station, they don't
even know what's going on, they often don't even know that they're being charged with
something and then they go straight to prison and then of course inside of prison it's even
more difficult to connect to people or to find out who is a trustworthy source or not,
who is maybe an organisation or someone that could help me because inside of prison then you rely on
the information that's going on there so I mean this kind of criminalisation that we see with
boat drivers or car drivers, it has so many specific characteristics that makes this
criminalisation even more damaging and difficult. It brings me also to the topic of
structural problems or also factors that make it even more difficult for people that are charged
with smuggling. I mean apart from the law which is the main problem of course and the politics
behind it but also if you look at these cases in particular also this fact but I mean that's
Greek court style, I mean I think that's generally like it works but that you have this list of cases
for each day and you receive a number but you don't know when your trial is going to happen,
you don't know if it's actually going to happen. I mean for people that have just spent months in
pretrial detention waiting for their court session hoping that they will finally receive some decision
it's a really psychologically super stressful situation to sit there in this courtroom and
to wait and to wait not knowing whether it will happen or not and then you know also when I come
to monitor the lawyers always say well book for more days because we don't know if it's going to
happen on that day and also we don't know it's going to happen at all. So like there are so many
additional factors to this criminalization which is so problematic
as such that you know come on top of it that make it even more stressful.
In other words it seems that the EU is using anti-smuggling and anti-human trafficking
terms interchangeably in a cynical move to further arbitrarily criminalize migrants.
This in the hope to create another layer of deterrent and fear for people who are forced
to cross into Europe. In addition, in Greece itself it seems that the justice system is making it
deliberately difficult for migrants to get access to a fair trial and this further creates a climate
of fear and uncertainty for the people that have been arbitrarily accused.
Now I would like to highlight some of the individual cases that both Kim and Julia are
involved in. Keep in mind that the cases that are being mentioned are only three of many
and of these it is only the ones that the groups are aware of. For many that are arrested in similar
circumstances be it on the shore right after arrival or for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Arrests are often arbitrary because as you mentioned I mean also of course the trips
differ depending from where to where how many people are on the boat or biggest the boat and
also you probably know that better than me but yeah coming from Turkey to an island that's very
close it's probably often in theory also enough to be a very difficult situation for migrants.
It's very close it's probably often in theory also enough to know okay you have to just hold the
pinnacle. I don't know what it is in English but the engine in that direction but yeah this brings
me to another aspect that we also had cases where someone who speaks English took care of
the emergency frequency.
In case of a distress the person would be able to communicate with the coast guard
and that was also used as a reason to arrest this person. In this case it was English skills
not seafaring skills but it kind of was used as a proof or as evidence that this person is obviously
involved in the organization of the trip has a somehow structural role in the crossing
and yeah that led to this person being criminalized and imprisoned in the end.
So you know you also don't necessarily have to have steered the wheel or have to have actually
brought the boat from one shore to the other but which also
shines a light on the objectives the motives behind this criminalization when it's at the end
you know like the most important goal is to find someone that can be arrested as the smuggler in
the end. We see this in Greece we see this in Italy that also law enforcement is very much
concerned and very much interested and after people arrive to question to find out but who
drove the boat who drove the boat who is the person like we want to have at least one two people of
this boat that we can arrest and then also you know publicly have our numbers that we're fighting
smuggling that we have arrested already x y z amount of people in the last months you know so
reasons for arrests are very very creative and flexible. So there is the the thing in Greece
not only in Greece but I will first speak about Greece if the people are forced to flee and come
with a rubber boat from Turkey to Greece then the Greek government accused at least two of the
people from the boat mostly randomly to be the smugglers to drove the boat and get charged for
50 120 a lot of years so we decided as a group you can't affect solidarity that we want to take one
of these cases to bring this shitty thing to the public. So we did this with a case of Amir and
Akif Razuli it was like this when the when they come with a boat Amir's wife Fatimeh was
hyper pregnant and has a small daughter so he when the ghost guard approached he said hey hey hey
rescue my babies my wife my babies so he make his himself recognizable in the group so they arrested
him to be the smuggler and because they want to they arrested someone else which was Akif
and bring them in prison and give them a sentence of 52 years in the first trial and the lawyers
from legal center appeal against this trial and the outcome was much more better. First for Akif
even the prosecutor said there's no evidence at all that Akif steered the boat
and fortunately the judges follow the prosecutor because you have the unbelievable thingy
in Greece that even sometimes the prosecutor said there is no evidence about the accused person and
the judge judge the person so Akif get innocent after being three years innocent in prison
and for Amir they keep him guilty but they reduced his sentence to eight years
so he could apply for good behavior to be have good behavior in prison to come out and now he
is with his wife and his children. Like a recent example was a case on Crete where
Egyptian fisherman was charged with smuggling and sentenced to 280 years in the end and in this case
for example he had a son that had already migrated to the UK before and then this son tried to
organize somehow help for his father and then ended up at our organization. He was one of the
people on a big boat trying to actually reach Italy but the fact that he is a fisherman from
his profession made him and his other son and some other people take over some steering tasks
on the ship like yeah because that's why his profession becomes interesting or relevant
because this is also one of the reasons why he ended up in the position of being responsible
for some tasks on the ship but apart from that his story is yeah also unique but still the same
as the other stories that he wanted to migrate to Europe that he went on this boat with I think it
was 400 yeah almost 500 other people and that someone needed to steal the boat which should be
logical there should be always someone and especially a boat of this size you usually need
even more than one person you need people that take care of mechanics you need someone that's
taking care of direction whatever I mean I'm not a seafarer but this I know that one person is not
enough and yeah and then that's what we know from testimonies from people who did the crossing that
then it's usually that's some of like different reasons why people end up doing this but one of
the reasons is having experience in seafaring and usually the people themselves as well as the others
on board are happy if the person who takes care of trying to bring them across the ocean has at
least some experience this is one of the reasons sometimes money is an issue that people don't have
enough money for the crossing and then they do this kind of deal with the smuggler that they say
they will take care of the steering and then they only have to pay half of the price or nothing
and also in the case of the fisherman that was also one of the reasons that he yeah told or that
he testified that he and his son that came along that it would have been eight thousand euros for
both of them and they just didn't have the money so that was kind of how it came about and as I
said this is something that we see now on almost all the boats that this is what's happening that
um yeah the people who want to do the crossing have to do themselves and then who does it is
kind of in most of the cases determined by these factors which is then of course also very
cynical because then the criminalization doesn't just hit people who just want to migrate it also
hits those that are also economically the most marginalized amongst them kind of like a double
punishment another case that um I would like to ask you about is the samoz 2 case which is the
infamous case where the father gets charged for the death of his son that occurred whilst they
were crossing the sea in order to get to Europe
yes you can you can show that you can see I mean you can see the Greece
coast guard government becomes worse and worse and worse do a lot of illegal things
with his pushbacks not only in the sea but also from the land and as more as they become worse
as more they criminalized the migrants to don't rescue people who throw from a boat
let them die and then not accuse themselves but the father that he is responsible for the death
of his boy and want him to prison for 10 years this is unbelievable really unbelievable and we
create a so big solidarity campaign very good lawyers and he he becomes free but all the the
straddle this did with him it's really unbelievable so the father get charged and another person
because it's almost two they what happened with the court case the other person or he was accused
as a boat driver to be the smugglers so but he get found guilty but they get a small sentence not
the normal 50 100 years so he could apply for be free on parole okay
um yeah one of the most impressive ones that I also attended myself was the case of the
powers three that was got also a bit of attention that happened last summer and the yeah first
instance trial where three people from syria were charged with smuggling and I mean what's happening
during these courts and that's also not only for this court but that also often you know like just
people being informed of what's happening with them is often not given like translation is often
yeah either not provided or it's really problematic I mean also in this court case
there was no translator to start with so there was the question what we're going to do now and
then it was asked that someone's going to be brought from a nearby refugee camp to translate
so this level of also seriousness in these cases is often shocking shocking if you think of the
fact that it's about a long life sentences for the people that are concerned and um I mean also in
this case family members came along so that's also a part of our work if there are family members
that can come and want to come that we try to if they need or if they want to support with
traveling etc so also I was traveling with the uncle and the brother of two of the defendants
that came along to testify and you know they hadn't seen their family members in years because
they had fled Syria before and then they you know went to the police station to see them but
were only allowed to speak to them for 10 minutes and that's it not allowed to hug them not allowed
to touch them they were not allowed to give them the phone to call back home to their wives and
kids you know just this level of even in a trial that is really about this person and this person's
story in this person's future in the prison or not that the main persons the protagonists
they're more like a side figure that no one really cares about and I mean in this case in the case of
the power of three I mean there was even some time given because they had even two lawyers
the family members were there we were there as yeah trial observers and the court was aware of
it so they took some time and they put some effort into listen to people and to kind of yeah make
some efforts to have a proper trial
Well yeah another case which also shows some of these specifics that make this kind of
criminalization even harder is a case of Iranian elderly men that were sentenced to 18 years in
prison last year in tessaloniki and his daughters they both live in Berlin they had left Iran some
years before also like one example how we know about cases in this case the daughters reached
out and in this case we traveled to tessaloniki four times in order to attend the trial and
I mean there I also was with the daughters and also saw how distressing it is for them as well
of course and not just for the person for the father but as I mentioned before also the system
that you never know if the trial is going to happen or not then also in this time it was also
so yeah at the time where there were a lot of strikes by lawyers and the father is actually in
the prison in Athens that's also something I don't know why this is the case in Greece that people
I don't know if it's connected to capacities or whatever but that often people are put in random
prison locations that are very far away from where they were arrested and also from where their
trials are then happening which means in this case the father was brought from Athens from
koridalos prison to tessaloniki four times in a row and only at the fourth time his trial actually
happened waiting four times for finally having a decision on his case and for the daughters also
having to travel there four times and I mean it's a mental burden but also of course it's a
cost issue I mean people also have to be able to afford traveling from abroad four times to come
there to have accommodation there in order to testify in the court hearings and yeah that was
shocking procedure again to see how really it's about yeah prison sentence the life story of
someone and it's yeah you kind of feel like it's a side story that's yeah not really taken seriously
as mentioned previously the greek state uses every opportunity to criminalize migrants
and so-called boat driver cases are a big part of that but not the only part an example of this
would be the moria 6 the infamous case of the six people arrested for supposedly starting the fire
that burned down the moria camp in 2020 kim is one of the people directly involved with the solidarity
campaign
so these cases like the moria 6 for example I guess would be the most obvious one so just to
give the audience an impression practically how it works so you receive information about people
being criminalized like in other part of this podcast also will be parts of an interview with
julia from borderline who does mostly boat drivers support like captain support stuff
but in the case of moria 6 it's about the six people that were charged with starting the fire
that burned down the moria camp in 2020 yes if we want to go in more detail in this case
I will give you a kind of overview when this fire happened which burned the old moria camp in
september 2020 to the ground there was a big criminalization of the police of the government
to the migrants and to anyone who support the migrants if you try it yeah to everyone so
everyone gets a little bit scared and as we are a campaign you can't have solidarity which is more
more spaced in europe so we say okay we can jump in and take the first responsibility to go open
with this case in the public and pay the lawyers and all this because what happened was only a week
after the fire was a very very big media presence on the island they said okay now the situation
is under control we arrested the six migrants who did the fire now the situation is under control
everybody's safe we have the criminals so in this situation we jumped in and said okay we have to
find a representative legal representative for this teenagers and follow the case
and that means that you arranged lawyers for them and they were six some of them were minors i
believe yes we what we do was they arrested six two of them were already registered as minors
and from the other four which was already registered as adults 18 year olds adults we
organize with together with the lawyers but we do it with the family in the practical way pay it
to get their taskeeda or birth certificate to have proof that they are minors
but unfortunately the court doesn't accept that these papers now but we try our very best to
have these papers available and we be in contact with the family members to say look we know that
we know that your boy didn't do the fire we will support your boy
in prison and we will try to prove that they are innocent
unfortunately it was not accepted by the court until now even now a very very clear
evidence exists that this teenagers doesn't do the fire and even they are still in prison
and they have to wait there for probably another year
and it makes us feel very angry but also it is a little bit of
um of good to say it in a nutshell to be still in contact with these boys and tell them we are
still here we keep on being in solidarity with you and we believe in your innocence and all this
which they appreciate that they have not to go alone to this shit even they are now in prison
almost since three years because it's like pre-trial detention if memory serves correct
yes fire is september 2020 so september 2020 one week later they were arrested and the case
served in gil's court in 2021 in summer i believe in june 2001 yes june june 2001 so they spent
nine months in pre-trial detention and then they go to court they lose like they get convicted and
they are again still in prison yes this what you mentioned was a trial of the so-called adults
uh which are not uh and this court in rios was brutal it was really brutal it was clear that
sentences was already written they didn't listen to their lawyers at all they doesn't accept that
any witnesses of the defense lawyers and they sent these boys to prison for a sentence for 10
years to making this fire and uh danger uh people's life so the lawyer filed an appeal
which should a long time waiting for the appeal should happen uh in this march sixth of march get
postponed first to the eighth of march and get postponed again for march 2024
and this case um the evidence that's being brought against the the people isn't very strong
as far as i understand yes it's um a thing which we observed several times so the camp is organized
that every group has a so-called common community leader the job of the community leader is to be
in contact with the police and the police is in contact with the community leader and it happened
sometimes in other cases before that the police approached the so-called community leader and
we don't don't know exactly what they say to him them to him but they bring the community leader
to give a witness a written witness uh testimony that he saw this a group of teenagers making
moria in fire and he recognized five of them but he never showed up in the court
to give the testimony in court instead of that he got lifted his restriction to stay in las pos
so he left first to athens to the camp malagascar and then now he is in germany
so if i understand it correctly the police approached this so-called community leader
gets a written testimony from this person and then gave him permission to leave lesbos and by
extend the country yes that's this is something which happened not the first time we that's why
we said okay probably the police did the same shit as they already did in other cases
and we have a case we call this moria eight because eight people were accused where they
they did the same with so witness i will say in marks but when he was in germany he sent
a voice message saying i'm sorry i say wrong they forced me to say this now we have the same fact
there is this testimony the written testimony of a person which is now in germany so the lawyers
asked the forensic architectures and forensics to make research about the night of the fire
here forensic architecture is a group of people that through the use of public
media like social medias new statements photographs they reconstruct situations digitally
based on this data right yes exactly this they do from the night of the fire there are a lot of
of videos about this so they re they and if you take a video you have a time print so they did a
lot of research to make a timeline of the night of the fire so they constructed and also they asked
experts of fires how fire spread and all this so this all together they were able to make a timeline
where the fire there were several fires where the fire starts where it spread then and all this
so and this witness said said in my area section 12 but it doesn't matter in my area
i saw in the first night in this time a group of teenagers making fire
and from the timeline from seeing all the videos about the fire check this with experts
they find out that the fire started in different areas and was coming from the wind to the area
where he said the teenage teenagers make the fire and this you can see
absolutely clear if you have the timeline and all the videos about the fire so the fact
that he said he see in this area teenagers making the fire was wrong and there are no other witnesses
and provided by the prosecution no no so it's only this person that recanted abroad yes and
well established well researched evidence that actually these people that are charged
are not in fact responsible for this yes and he also makes some other mistakes saying yeah i see
the fire starting in this area and it was proven even by the by the fire brigade that in this area
the fire was doing in the next night
now that we have heard about the specifics of the moria 6 case
i would like to ask both kim and julia a bit more about what they do to support practically and how
we can support them practically so how do you get aware of cases like this because if it is as you
explained it that people get picked up straight out of the boat then how do you find people
to campaign for or to support anything there are different ways this happens and also a lot of
developments happened in the last months and years now that there are more groups
and working on it together like before it was really just randomly that i don't know by word of
word of mouth for example legal center less was unless was they work with someone else who said
my husband is in prison for that and that reason or yeah sometimes when people have relatives
outside that they try to find support and now as i said there have been
some developments in the past months and years where we try to work more on this topic that
now proactively people approach us because their father brother whatever was arrested so like the
past cases that we worked on on it was almost always due to a relative that knew about our
work about the work from the network and then approached us or also sometimes within prison that
someone we supported passes on the name and the contact to a fellow prisoner that then reaches out
or yeah or on samos which is a very specific context because samos is the only place where
people tend to be not sent to pretrial detention so they are arrested but then they have to stay
on samos but they don't have to go to prison and in these cases of course the people themselves
can go to a lawyer's office try to find support yeah but i mean it's now many more cases than
before but still of course compared to the overall number of people that are affected by this it's
still a very small number and maybe what's also interesting is we did some trial monitoring in
the past months in different places in greece and especially in the north and tessaloniki and in
komotini because now due to the pushbacks i mean we also see like there is also more people trying
to cross via the everos crossing and yeah like the people that monitored the trials there
they monitored smuggling trials happening on a daily basis you know 20 minutes next one next one
next one and we haven't heard of any of these cases you know there is such a black hole of
cases happening on a daily basis that we're not aware of just in theory we know that they happening
yeah okay so you support people legal with legal support and also with emotional and
practical support i assume because a court case of course involves money involves logistics like
bringing people back and forth and arranging trips and you personally also
are involved with some of the cases that can't affect solidarity does i'm personally involved
because i stay a lot of time already in lesbos midellini so i know people and i continue
be in contact with the people uh the times they are in prison and try to show them that we are
there that we are in solidarity that we care about them that we often supported also the families
giving them information providing money and all this and with prison also you mean that you
personally go to prison to visit people i also go to a visit but mostly it happened on the phone
on the phone okay so and the families they are in greece in europe or can be also outside yes
the families often are still in afghanistan and the very as everybody know i think i don't
must explain about the situation in afghanistan so we also try to provide them some support in
afghanistan as well or if they are already in europe also they need support and we try to do
in conclusion many migrants are in prisons for crimes they most likely didn't commit
and this is a direct result of greece not only using the police but also its courts as a tool
to further criminalize migrants and make their lives more precarious there are almost too many
cases to count and even for the ones that are known visibility can be a struggle with a few
exceptions and this does not only happen in greece but also in the rest of europe but there are
organizations run by dedicated people that try their best to find these cases and subsequently
support the charged people in an emotional or material ways organizations that also deserve
to be more well known in the description of this show i have provided links to both borderline and
cantevict solidarity as well as some other organizations that monitor trials regularly
this is a big pattern in in greece there are about thousand people in prison in greece
accused to be a smuggler nowadays most cases are on the afros on this
land border yes on this border which is a big river but it's the land border and but we
recognize that there are the same things going on all in on the borders so same is in italy
or also on the channel between france and uk so we create a network
to exchange informations and to be a strong network to fight against this which we call
captain support to support these people who are accused to be smugglers so we have created a kind
of network a very trustful network where we work together with our media support with our legal
support and with our personal support if people want to get involved with this for example if they
want to support borderline or get involved in another way what is the best way to to do that
or an easy way or the best way both are they can just get in touch there is also apart from
borderline we're also connected to something that's called captain support which is a network of
groups like ours but you know also a lot of our greek comrades and groups are involved there but
also italian groups also french groups you know all dealing with the same issue and there we're
constantly thinking of different ways that can support people affected but also might change
this whole politics in a long term and you know there is always stuff to do there is
trying to find these cases but then of course if you support one case there is
yeah things to do like finding a lawyer being in touch with the family trying to find the funding
for this case i mean obviously also these trials cost money yeah but if someone thinks this topic is
interesting to them and they want to get involved yeah they should just get in touch and i'm sure
there will be a way people can be useful trying to shed attention shed light on it shed attention
on it whatever their profession is if there are people like you doing a podcast journalists
podcast journalists and there is far too little coverage on this thing that is so crazy
that should concern people more but yeah there is the range from doing active support for family
members to writing reports and do monitoring about it i mean yeah especially in greece you know
also news monitoring there are a lot of like small little news reports in some newspapers that just
mention in one sentence ah again two people were arrested and if someone has an eye on that and
can point out that we also can learn about more cases that we can then try to support
this was voices of mitellini this week's episode was produced and edited by me toby
with many thanks to kim julia and additional thanks to alice
so
foreign
is
foreign