AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

We look now at a damning exposé of the deadly crackdown on asylum seekers by Greek authorities. A new BBC investigation reveals evidence of the Greek coastguard abducting and abandoning asylum seekers in the Mediterranean Sea, where thousands have died, mostly from Africa and the Middle East, as they attempt to reach Europe. The film, Dead Calm, finds the Greek coastguard caused the deaths of as many as 43 migrants in the Mediterranean over a period of three years, including of nine asylum seekers who had reached Greek soil but were taken by the Greek coastguard back out to see, then thrown overboard.

The investigation analyzes at least 15 incidents between 2020 and 2023, verifying reports made by humanitarian aid groups which have long accused Greek officials of international crimes as they target asylum seekers, often sabotaging and delaying rescue missions of those adrift at sea. Several eyewitnesses featured in the film corroborate the disturbing accounts.

This is a clip of Dead Calm that features Ibrahim, a Cameroonian migrant who says he was hunted by Greek authorities after arriving on the Greek island of Samos in 2021.

LUCILE SMITH: After crossing from Turkey, he’s now a refugee.

IBRAHIM: [translated] There were two policemen dressed in black and three others in civilian clothes. They were masked.

LUCILE SMITH: Ibrahim says he was beaten and strip-searched, and that the Greek coastguard took him and two other men out to sea.

IBRAHIM: [translated] They started with the Cameroonian. They threw him in the water. The Ivorian said, “Save me. I don’t want to die. Save me.” An incredible strength animated me. I survived.

LUCILE SMITH: He swam to safety, but the other two men died. We’ve heard allegations of a total of five separate incidents in which people were thrown into the sea by the Greek coastguard. In all, nine of them died. In a statement, the Greek coastguard strongly rejected all accusations of illegal activities and questioned the veracity of the testimonies we’ve gathered.

AMY GOODMAN: That was a clip of the BBC documentary Dead Calm: Killing in the Med? In another part of the film, a former Greek coastguard is shown footage of 12 asylum seekers being loaded into a Greek coastguard boat, then abandoned on a dinghy in the Mediterranean. He responds to the footage.

DIMITRIS BALTAKOS: I can see people getting on board the vessel, doesn’t seem like it’s forceful.

BEN STEELE: Can you see any small children?

DIMITRIS BALTAKOS: Yes, now I can. That’s something that happens. The migrants traveling the Aegean Sea, very often they abandon the children. They don’t seem to have the same affection that we have for children.

BEN STEELE: Do you have any questions about that video?

DIMITRIS BALTAKOS: I don’t. You need to understand something, that that’s not me trying to hide something. There are hundreds of videos showing the Greek coastguard saving people. Why save someone and let someone else die?

BEN STEELE: Should we take a break?

LUCILE SMITH: Yeah.

BEN STEELE: Have a cup of tea?

LUCILE SMITH: Yeah, it’s a good moment.

BEN STEELE: Yeah, yeah. Great.

DIMITRIS BALTAKOS: I’ll visit the loo.

AMY GOODMAN: During the break from the interview, the former Greek coastguard gets up from his chair. His mic is still on. He begins speaking on the phone to an unnamed person, in Greek, off camera.

DIMITRIS BALTAKOS: [translated] I haven’t told them too much? What do you think? Yes, it’s crystal clear, but what should I tell them? When you look at it from the outside, it’s very clear, isn’t it? It’s not nuclear physics. I don’t know why they did it in broad daylight. It’s clearly illegal. Obviously, obviously illegal. It’s an international crime.

AMY GOODMAN: A clip of the BBC doc Dead Calm, the former Greek coastguard caught admitting that actions by Greek authorities are, quote, “clearly illegal,” an “international crime,” in his own words.

This comes as Greek officials leading an independent investigation into a deadly shipwreck last year in the Mediterranean, which led to the deaths of well over 500 asylum seekers, recently summoned the head of Greece’s coastguard to testify on eyewitness allegations the Greek coastguard tied up the vessel, attempted to pull it, causing the ship to sway, which authorities strongly denied. It would capsize and sink. The tragic event is also featured in the BBC investigation.

I recently spoke with Lucile Smith, the producer of the BBC documentary titled Dead Calm: Killing in the Med?

LUCILE SMITH: The film, essentially, is a 90-minute documentary, which looks at and investigates alleged criminality by the Greek coastguard. There are two strands to it. On the one hand, we look at the Pylos shipwreck, which was the tragic story of a fishing trawler which left the port city of Tobruk last summer on the 9th of June and tried to journey to Italy, had about 750 passengers on it. But when it reached Greek territorial search-and-rescue area in the Mediterranean, it started to call for help. The Italian authorities were made aware of it. The Greek authorities were made aware of it. Frontex, Europe’s border agency, was made aware of it. And it sat there for — you know, the authorities had eyes on it for about 14 hours before it capsized. And when we started making — and, very sadly, over 600 people drowned, despite the fact that a Greek patrol vessel was there at the time of the capsizing.

And so, when this catastrophe occurred, lots of journalists started to investigate. And what transpired were allegations by survivors from the shipwreck that the Greek coastguard had, in fact, attempted to tow the vessel into Italian waters, and that, in doing so, the ship capsized. And various other things started to come out, that the patrol boat also had their cameras turned off, so a lot of kind of suspicious activity that — and journalists started to ask questions.

And so, when the BBC decided to commission this film, Ben Steele, the director, and I, we started investigating and looking into whether there was any kind of precedent of this sort of activity by the Greek coastguard. And unfortunately, what we found were very, very dark and serious, terrifying stories that are coming out of many of the islands that border Greece and Turkey, stories of asylum seekers, refugees, migrants arriving on Greek soil, and before they can reach a camp in order to seek asylum, they find themselves kidnapped by men in balaclavas who are armed. They say that they are often beaten. All of their belongings are removed. They are then brought onto a Greek coastguard vessel, brought out to sea and dumped in a — they call it a life raft. I wouldn’t call it a life raft. It’s a motorless dinghy, essentially, and left adrift in the sea. Sometimes the Turkish coastguard might rescue them. In fact, actually often, often they do. But what we found in our investigation was that in many cases, people die. And we found 43 deaths over 15 cases across three years.

And some of the stories were just awful. I mean, you heard Ibrahim there. He very bravely gave us his testimony for this film. And in his situation, he was thrown directly into the water without a life vest. The two other individuals he was with also, they drowned, very sadly. And, you know, before that, he was badly beaten by these men in the balaclavas.

And we spoke to other survivors. In one case, someone was thrown into the water whilst he had his hands zipped together. We had incidents of allegations of the Greek coastguard puncturing the life raft. In one terrible case, they failed to allegedly close the valve on the life raft. And we spoke with a survivor who lost his two children and his wife, as well as his nephew, and terrible footage, which was released by the Greek coastguard, where you watch — and 11 people drowned in that case, where you watch, you know, the father dragging their child through the water. So, just absolutely awful stories.

And the more and more we read about this, it started to kind of, I guess, strengthen the stories and the allegations that were coming out over what happened with the Pylos shipwreck. And it made it seem like, potentially, Pylos, that shipwreck, the shipwreck of the Adriana, potentially was, you know, an accident waiting to happen.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Lucille, could you talk about the overall militarization of the Mediterranean states of Europe against migrants coming from the Middle East or North Africa? And also, what is Frontex?

LUCILE SMITH: Sure. I mean, yeah, I mean, that’s a great question. I think it’s interesting if you look at — you know, let’s look at 2015, for example. 2015, we had in Europe a million refugees coming over from Syria. And it was very much — you know, it was a shock to Europe. And at that time, I suppose you could say that, you know, particularly if you compare to what’s happening now, Europe responded fairly well. I mean, Germany accepted the million refugees. And you had humanitarian organizations going over to Lesbos and Samos and many of the islands in Greece, as well as Italy. Today — it was very much a kind of all hands on deck. And I don’t know if you remember the famous photograph of that that young child, Alan Kurdi, very sadly, who washed up on the Turkish coast. And there was a kind of outpouring of sympathy.

You know, the picture today is very different. If you, as a humanitarian, want to go over to Italy or Greece and help rescue asylum seekers that are attempting to cross, you will most likely be arrested and thrown into prison and charged with smuggling. I mean, Greece’s second prison population are made up of smugglers, usually asylum seekers that are the ones that are driving the boat when they reach Greek soil. It’s a very, very different picture. I mean, if you look at the number of deaths in 2015 compared to the number of deaths in 2023, it is now 20 times deadlier. And that’s with a fraction of the number of people crossing. And even if you compared it to 2014, it’s twice as deadly, because, obviously, 2015, we had so many more people crossing. And so, it sort of begs the question of: Why is it so much deadlier? Why has it become deadlier?

And Frontex is Europe’s border agency. And Europe’s border agency, which kind of manage Europe’s border, they provide petrol and money to the nation-states for coastguard vessels. They provide vessels. They also patrol the coasts of Europe. And we interview the fundamental rights officer in the documentary. But, unfortunately, they were quite unwilling to really engage and really were unwilling to talk on the record about the reality on the ground and about these allegations and the stories that are coming out of Greece. And, in fact, they became so frustrated that they walked out of the interview. Yeah.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: So, in effect, are some claiming that this crackdown on migrants is actually working and leading to fewer people getting into Europe?

LUCILE SMITH: Well, Mitsotakis, the prime minister of Greece, would say so. He says that he’s managed to reduce migration by 90%. I don’t know how easy it is to verify that number. But, yes, you could say that it is effective. It is a deterrent. And based on the number of refugees that we spoke to, asylum seekers that we spoke to, generally, there was a kind of a reluctance to cross to Greece, and people were much keener to go to Italy. So, I suppose, yes, you could say that the level of violence that is occurring on these borders is effective in deterring people.

But then again, let’s face it, you know, people are disappearing; we really have no real clue about the true numbers of the people that are crossing. Many people don’t make it. And when people do arrive, they tend to disappear, because, as I’ve just explained, you know, if you are caught by the authorities in Greece, you will be most likely subjected to some very serious violence. So, it’s very difficult to have a clear answer to that.

And, I mean, you played a clip, as well, in there by a former coastguard official, who was shown some incredible evidence, shot by Fayad Mulla, who is a journalist and activist based in Austria, showing these men in the balaclavas placing asylum seekers, including a baby and children, onto a coastguard vessel, and they were eventually picked up by the Turkish coastguard. And the former coastguard official denied that they understood what they were seeing when — during the interview, but during a break, they then revealed that they felt it was a — they thought what they saw must be an international crime. And this is because this is an open secret. You know, everybody knows this is happening. The Greek government deny that it is happening, but the evidence is extremely compelling.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk more about this, Lucile. And this also shows the power — 

LUCILE SMITH: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: — of investigative journalism. While you say it’s an open secret, it’s astounding to hear this — you said he’s former Greek coastguard, saying, “Why did they do it in the middle of the day?” as he’s secretly saying this to someone.

LUCILE SMITH: Yes, that’s right. I mean, this is just — I mean, you know, people don’t want to — it’s a very hostile environment. You know, speaking out and speaking the truth is a scary thing. And it’s obviously much easier for me to do it here sitting in London than it is for someone who is in Greece. You know, it’s perhaps a convenient truth for the rest of Europe and for many in Greece. I mean, they’ve been bearing the brunt of this for a very long time. So it’s easier to kind of turn away.

But it’s very much — you know, when I first arrived on Samos to do some filming, I went to a restaurant. This is just anecdotal, but, you know, I went to a restaurant with the director and with one of our contributors. And we sat there, and someone came over to us, and they were just chatting and, you know, that, “Oh, you’re from Britain?” Well, you know, talking to us — you know, I went on a coastguard vessel. And they sort of looked at us, and it was a kind of wink, wink, shove, shove, you know, “Maybe we do pushbacks,” “pushbacks” being the term that people use, which we don’t use in the film, because we think it sort of downplays the violent nature of these illegal expulsions. But this is the thing. Everybody knows about it. And maybe it’s convenient, but no one dares speak out, because it’s a hostile environment, and it’s scary to speak the truth.

AMY GOODMAN: So, where is the accountability, for example — and we’ll go into the hundreds of people who die in one incident — but of migrants being thrown overboard by the Greek coastguard? Has anyone been held accountable?

LUCILE SMITH: No one has been held accountable. That’s the bottom line. You know, this is something that Frontex are aware of. It was very interesting, in the week after the film came out, you know, the journalism continues, and a news article came out in the EUobserver, as well as El País, which demonstrated some serious incident reports that had been written by — I don’t know if they were leaked or whether they got them through a Freedom of Information request. But they demonstrated that the the Fundamental Rights Office at Frontex were aware that it was very likely that people had drowned, had been thrown into the water by the Greek coastguard. And yet, nothing seems to happen, even though it says in Frontex’s regulations that if there are human rights violations, that Frontex should withdraw, or at least temporarily withdraw, withdraw in the long term, from that state where the human rights violations are occurring. But, you know, everyone knows about it. Who knows what’s being said behind closed doors? We just don’t know.

There’s a petition which is going around the EU that, you know, 30 MEPs, or just more than 30 MEPs have signed, asking for the EU to investigate what’s happened. The opposition party, off the back of the BBC’s investigation, spoke out against it, said that this needs to be investigated. So, people are speaking out, but it’s kind of, you know, let’s — it’s business as usual. I mean, the week after the film came out, over a hundred people were picked up by the Turkish coastguard in Greek assets, and including, I think, 14 children. So, this seems to continue. And so far, so far to date, no accountability.

AMY GOODMAN: I’m just looking at a piece in Al Jazeera that was dated June 17th. “Last summer, a shocking video of asylum seekers cable-tied and blindfolded in the back of a van on a Greek holiday island went viral online. At the time, the veracity of the video was questioned and Theodosis Nikitaras, the mayor of Kos, filed a defamation case against the NGO that published it. Now, new documents obtained from the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex) confirm the incident and pin the responsibility on individuals it describes as 'likely working in concert' with Greek authorities.” This is what you were talking about.

LUCILE SMITH: Yes. I mean, I’m familiar with that video. It was posted on social media by Tommy Olsen of Aegean Boat Report, who has been screaming about this for years and who’s a consultant on the film. You know, that video, we don’t feature it in the film. BBC hasn’t verified it. But, as you say, Frontex have looked into it and have said that it is likely linked to the Greek coastguard.

And what I would say, based on my experience of speaking with survivors, as well as lawyers and humanitarian organizations working on the ground, which is that, you know, I’ve heard stories of this, of people having their eyes taped. I mean, I had one terrible story that I was told, you know, of people being captured, kidnapped, brought into a prison cell, kept overnight, and were stripped naked and had their eyes taped, and then overheard someone being beaten violently. They described also electrocutions. And the next day, they were all brought onto a coastguard vessel, including this man who was, you know, barely alive and had been beaten all night. They had listened to the screams. And they put them on a — one of these motorless dinghies. And the man, they held the man in their arms, and he died in front of their eyes.

So, yeah, I mean, it’s entirely plausible that that video is indeed an example of some of what’s going on linked to the Greek coastguard. But, you know, as I say, the Greek authorities do deny it. And many of the men in the balaclavas, maybe women, as well, they often remove their insignia. So it’s very difficult, really, to track down who is doing what, and it’s very easy for the Greek authorities to keep denying it.

AMY GOODMAN: Lucile —

LUCILE SMITH: Even though, in so many cases, you can see they’re on a Greek coastguard vessel. But yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: Lucile Smith, talk about the criminalization of humanitarian workers.

LUCILE SMITH: Sure. I mean, unfortunately, this isn’t something that we managed to include in the documentary. But, yes, as you say, many humanitarian workers are criminalized now. So, you would not be able to go to Greece — and Italy as well, I would add, although I’m not as familiar with Italy, but I understand that this is happening there, as well. You would not be able to go out into the sea and, if somebody is drowning or needs help or is in distress, be able to rescue them. It is entirely now managed by the state.

And, you know, it’s difficult. You know, the cynic would say that what they have essentially done is removed the witnesses, so we can’t — really don’t have proper eyes on what’s going on. Others might say it shouldn’t really be up to NGOs or humanitarian workers to be doing search and rescue; it should be run by the state.

But either way, you know, we know that there are many individuals — Sarah Mardini, Seán Binder — Sarah Mardini is the subject to a Netflix drama, The Swimmers. She has been criminalized for doing search and rescue. This was all the way in 2019. And she wouldn’t say, and Seán Binder, who we spoke to for this documentary, wouldn’t say that — I don’t want to speak for them — that they are smugglers. But those are the charges that they’re facing.

So, it’s really a way to take back control of search and rescue, and perhaps also remove any witnesses. But, obviously, since that has happened, it would seem that this forced expulsion has become really, really common and looks, you know, very much like a policy. The repetitive nature of it looks like a policy. And there’s a clear time, 2020, when this really began and the criminalization also of humanitarian work has also begun. And that’s not to say that forced expulsions didn’t happen before then. But the scale is really quite — is dramatically bigger.

AMY GOODMAN: Lucile Smith, producer of the new —

LUCILE SMITH: Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: — BBC documentary. It’s titled Dead Calm: Killing in the Med? This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González. Thanks so much for joining us.