Journalists banned from Europe's border

What is going on on the ground? Journalists are banned from entering the immediate border. The Greek government has declared the area a military exclusion zone. Only individual scenes reach the public; for example, when media and non-governmental organizations publish the testimonies of people who have been victims of violence. They are stuck on the Evros River on uninhabited islets without drinking water and cannot go to Greece or back to Turkey for days.

People who try to cross the border die again and again

In the end, it is often masked men who force them back to Turkey from the Greek side. This is what migrants report again and again. According to Greek information, more than 36,000 migrants were prevented from crossing the river border in August alone. But by what means, no one wants to say publicly. Greece denies any wrongdoing.

Green MEP Erik Marquardt speaks of a "wall of lies." "We know that people at the external borders are not only denied access to asylum, but are also treated in an inhumane way," he says. The political goal of reducing the number of asylum applications, he said, completely ignores people's dignity.

No one knows the number of corpses

People who try to cross the border die again and again. Forensics professor Pavlos Pavlidis examines their bodies at the Alexandroupolis University Hospital. The Greek police bring him the bodies, some of which have been exposed to the elements for months and are barely identifiable. There are refrigerated containers in front of the building.

Using personal items and DNA tests, Pavlidis is trying to give them back their names. A lighter, a bracelet. Via Whatsapp, he is in touch with relatives in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Syria, who are worried about the whereabouts of their loved ones. Last year, Pavlidis had 47 bodies on the table. This year, there were 51 by mid-September alone. Only three cases were criminal, he says; most of the wounds on the bodies were postmortem. How many bodies are never found, no one knows.

There are those who die. There are those who are forcibly returned to Turkey without the possibility of asylum. And there are those who are registered and come to a refugee camp. The lucky ones, you might think, but it hardly feels that way to the people in the camp.

The Fylakio camp, 15 kilometers from the border with Turkey, is surrounded by barbed wire and high fences. At the entrance, there is a sign: financed by the European Union. Three Green MEPs are visiting from Brussels to get a picture of the situation. Actually, they also wanted to see the Evros, i.e. the immediate border with Turkey, but at the last moment even they were denied access.

The camp director, Konstantinos Dimitriades, receives them in a white shirt. The migrants, he explains, must sign a consent form upon arrival that their freedom of movement will be restricted. It's a closed camp. Migrants stay here for a maximum of 25 days, Dimitriades says. Their freedoms can't be restricted longer than that.

As he tours the camp, the hallways are empty. People are housed in individual compartments divided by wire mesh: minors here, family there, those in quarantine there. They rattle the fences and shout in Arabic. Dimitriades assures the parliamentarians and journalists traveling with them, "You can freely look around the camp and talk to people."

The EU involved in a cover-up

But in the end, we are not allowed to look around so freely. If we approach the fences, the camp director or his representative will intervene. But one time we are faster. A boy shouts, "Don't believe them, they're not telling the truth!" He points to a girl's feet, which are covered with a pus-filled rash. Is there no doctor? Yes, he says, but he wouldn't give any medicine.

They wanted to get out, the boy says. He and his family have been in the camp for two months. Didn't the director just say that 25 days was the maximum? "An exception," says Dimitriades, who has hurried over and interrupted the conversation. He says the boy is lying. We are not allowed to ask any more questions.

Protecting its external border costs the EU a lot of money. Greece, for example, has received €3.39 billion for migration management since 2015, including €450 million from a pot for internal security and border protection (as of the beginning of the year). All measures financed with money from this fund must respect fundamental rights and human dignity. That is what the regulations say.

Frontex has described any misconduct as 'practices of the past.'

The border protection agency Frontex is also active in Greece — and has come under massive criticism. A report by the EU's anti-corruption agency OLAF says that Frontex staff was involved in covering up illegal deportations of migrants from Greece to Turkey. It was under wraps for a long time until the German “FragDenStaat” (Ask The State) portal recently published it together with Spiegel (a German weekly) and "Lighthouse Reports" (an investigative journalism nonprofit).

Based on the evidence collected, OLAF concludes that the accusations against Frontex "have been proven." Officials had committed "serious misconduct and other irregularities" by covering up pushbacks, failing to investigate or not handling them properly. In one case, for example, a Frontex aircraft moved away from the scene "to avoid witnessing incidents in the Aegean Sea." A few days after the report came to light, the border agency described any misconduct as "practices of the past."

On the day MEPs visit the Fylakio camp, Frontex officials are also present. Their full names may not be quoted. We ask how border crossings are prevented in practice. "All the information we have, we pass on to our Greek colleagues. We are never involved in preventing a border crossing," says an official.

The Greeks would then check people's documents and register them. But what happens to those who are denied entry? How do you turn people back? Another Frontex official weighs in.

"This concerns operational details," he says. That means: it's confidential.