“I don’t care what is going to happen, but my son cannot stand it anymore. Look, he is turning blue, he cannot breathe anymore. He cannot breathe, and he wants to eat.”
The respondent and his family have been pushed back two times, in May 2018 and in June 2018. The first time was just before the Ramadan. The second time was just at the end of Ramadan. The first time they just took their phones, and pushed them back. The second time was harder, the journey was harder. They took their phones, clothes and shoes – and they had to go barefoot. Both times they were pushed back on a small boat.
The first time they tried to cross to Greece, his child was just a few weeks old. (It was just before Ramadan). They were together with his family, his brothers family, and another family. The entire group was about 40 people, but they split up just after they had crossed the river. They walked for more than five hours from the riverside, five or six hours. Then they took a break and tried to take some rest next to a tree. There was a white van that came to them while they were resting. Two people got out, with normal, civil clothes, and they had guns and hand chains. They were wearing sunglasses. Both of them were dressed in black pants, and blue t-shirts. Like light or dark-blue. But these were normal clothes, not from any organization or so. Their behavior with the group was normal.
One of those two guys tried to communicate with them in Turkish. The respondent speaks some Turkish. They told them directly: ‘please, turn off your phones and give them to us’. They asked him (the man): ‘please, do not take us back to Turkey. We don’t want to go back to Turkey’. And he said: ‘no, I am not going to bring you to Turkey. Don’t worry’. They asked him: ‘will you bring us to a camp?’. And he answered ‘Yes. Not to Syria, not to Turkey, not to Syria’. Then they got with him in the car, a small van. They were with just three families.. He drove them for about half an hour (perhaps an hour) until they arrived to a place close to the river. This was around 1 pm in the afternoon.
There, they put them all together in one small room, - women and children as well. It was like a small detention center inside a military place. In that room there was nothing. His son was crying a lot. His wife asked them for milk, but they said no. The child cried and cried, and also the mother was crying a lot. And then, finally, they let her go outside to make him milk. In total, they stayed for two days without food. It was really bad. It was good that they brought some milk with them, so they could give it, although cold, to the baby.
The Greek police were there. Their clothes were the official police clothes, which is dark blue, and they were with a normal police car. Although the place looked like a military place, the people there looked like police. And there were also women present there. They had checked them before they entered the room. They had taken all their stuff and left it outside. The room was really stinky, and his son was all the time crying. There was trash next to the door. Multiple times they asked them to, please, let the kid go out. The child became blue, because he was crying a lot and the smell was terrible. At a certain point, he (the respondent) could not stand it anymore and started to hit the door really hard. Then the soldiers ran inside to him – with their sticks –, but he said ‘I don’t care what is going to happen, but my son cannot stand it anymore. Look, he is turning blue, he cannot breathe anymore. He cannot breathe, and he wants to eat’.
Every half an hour the police were bringing in more people. Eventually, there were around 60 or 70 people inside the detention center, from all around the world: Afghani and Pakistani, Syrian etc. Around 7 pm in the evening, the Greek police came to take them out and give them to the commando’s. It was still light. They were with around 15 people. The commando’s were masked, all of them. And terrible. They scared them. And nobody could talk. There was one man who tried to talk, and they beat him up.
The detention place was about two to five minutes away from the river. The police took them from the detention place and walked them to the river. They had taken all of their phones. Some people didn’t get their bags back. His family got their bags but not their phones. And then they moved them to the river, one by one. The commando’s were really mean. The German commando’s had made a fire next to the river. And they were choosing people. Anyone without a family or children, they took all of their stuff and threw it into the fire. Even their shoes, everything. At least half of the people, they did this.
The respondent had some personal documents with him. They wanted to take them from him and throw it into the fire. His wife had some important documents with her, like a birth certificate, wedding papers, .. They were crying a lot to them: ‘please, please, don’t take it away from us’. They did not take it from them.
He refers to them as German commando’s, ‘because we know what the Greeks look like. They did not look Greek’. They were really tall, young and muscled and said ‘go, go!’. There were some other persons with them, who tried many times to cross the river and they knew. They said to them that these are the German commando’s. They were not talking. You could only see their eyes. They were wearing something on every part of their body, even gloves. He doesn’t know if these were uniforms, because they were not allowed to raise their heads to look to them. Even when they were being put in the boat they could not look, because they had to keep their heads down. They were beating people up.
After the first time being pushed back, they stayed for around one month in Turkey, until shortly after the Ramadan finished. The second time they tried, they suffered a lot while crossing the river. From the Greek side of the river, they walked for about six hours. They were with around 30 persons. In that village, there was a church that they tried to get into, because they thought that they may find help there as they are refugees. Suddenly the police showed up, and started to chase them. They started to run away from them, him, his wife and their child, were trying to run away from the police. His son was now around 2 months old.
His wife was so afraid, due the first time when they were pushed back that gave her such a bad experience. She was so afraid of being pushed back, that she got paralyzed, she froze, could not run. He tried to take her hand and to run with her, but the police were running after them and screaming to stop, to freeze and to not run. They were hiding from the police in some old abandoned building. But soon, the police found them and brought them back to the village where they brought all the 30 persons together. They asked them if anyone has a mobile phone or something similar, and took them away from them.
There was one guy who spoke a little bit of English. He was translating for the group, and begged them to not push them back again. All the thirty people in their group were Kurdish, some of them from Afrin and some from Kobani. The police however did not believe them, and mocked them. They said: ‘are you all 30 people Kurdish?’. He had his passport with him, and said: ‘here is my passport. It is Kurdish, it is written here.’ But the police refused to take a look at it.
They waited there, on the streets, for about 30 minutes. It was in the morning, around 11 or 12 am. The police men mocked them and started to laugh at them. They stopped passing cars and asked the drivers to bring them back to the borders. But the people inside the cars were looking at them and refused to take them back to the river. After one hour of standing there, the police brought a car and brought them to a small house with two small rooms. They drove for about 30-45 minutes and then they put them inside the house. They spent around five hours in that small house. They were thirsty and starving. There was no food, no water to drink. They heard the police speaking Greek, although most of the time they were not talking. The man who could speak English very well, he knocked on the door and begged them to at least give the children some water and some food. They opened the door and started to hit this guy. They demanded he stayed silent. Another 3 hours passed and then that small car – came to hand us over to the commando’s. The police put all the bags inside the small car and drove them to the river.
At this point, near the borders, they took their bags and started screaming at them. There was a group of military persons, wearing military uniforms, they were around 8 persons. He could not see their faces, only the eyes. They were covered with black masks. They were talking with them in hand signs, pointing at them to scare them, and they forced them to look down. They checked each of them and took everything, even their shoes. Eventually they gave them back their documents, passports and money – but that’s all. They dropped their other stuff, phones and bags, in the river. His son was crying. And they took him. When the respondent took his son back, they hit him. Two of them; one caught him from behind and the other started to hit him. They tried to make him silent. He begged those militaries, to at least give them some clothes for his son. Because his sons clothes were completely wet. Then they pushed them back over the river. We went to the Turkish land without even our shoes.
In Turkey they could barely walk because they did not have shoes on. The first village were they arrived they met a person, and asked him for a phone to call the Turkish military to bring them to a city. For one hour they tried calling the military, but no one responded to their call. After that, it was around 10 pm, they started to walk to another village that was much further from them. They walked for around 5 hours, until they reached another village which had a mosque. There, in the mosque, they spent the night.