A survivor of a life-threatening pushback at sea, G.R.J. (anonymized for his protection) has filed a complaint to the UN Human Rights Committee against Greece, exposing the obstacles to access justice in Europe’s courts.
At 15, he was taken out of a Samos refugee camp by Greek officers and abandoned at sea on an inflatable raft. After the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) rejected his case as inadmissible, claiming he lacked sufficient evidence, G.R.J. now turns to the UN with the support of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), Global Legal Action Network (GLAN), and Human Rights Legal Project Samos (HRLP). “My motivation is to get justice,” says G.R.J. “and to prevent this from happening to other people.
The journey and pushback
As a Hazara, G.R.J.’s community was subject to systematic discrimination and persecution in Afghanistan. In 2018, during a record year of attacks by the Taliban, G.R.J. fled. Around the age of 13, he travelled alone through Iran and Turkey. Unable to apply for protection or legal papers in either country despite attempts to do so, he recalls, “I was always afraid of being deported to Afghanistan.”
One early morning in 2020, aged 15, G.R.J. reached the Greek island of Samos in a rubber dinghy. With another teenage boy as his companion, he walked to a refugee camp where they stayed the night. The next morning, his request to apply for asylum was ignored. Instead, Greek officers forced the two boys onto a Coast Guard ship, stole their phones and money, handcuffed them together, and slapped G.R.J. in the face.
Out at sea, they were abandoned on a raft. “We were holding each other’s hands,” he describes. “I was very scared and disappointed about life and thinking maybe we will die. The raft was leaking, and it didn’t have a motor or anything to steer with. I did not know how to swim, and the waves were so big.” The two had no other option than to paddle using their hands toward the Turkish coast, where they were picked up by the Turkish Coast Guard. G.R.J. returned to a life of hardship, including periods of homelessness, in Türkiye. He has since made it to Europe and been recognized as a refugee.
European Court of Human Rights: A legal maze
Survivors of pushbacks are forced to go to extraordinary lengths to seek justice for a practice that has become a routine feature of Europe’s violent border regime, enacted upon thousands of primarily racialized people every year. In early 2025 judges at the ECtHR recognized for the first time Greece’s systematic pushback practice and the inherent difficulty facing applicants attempting to prove pushbacks, given their secretive nature. Still, judges at the ECtHR found G.R.J.’s case inadmissible.
G.R.J. had provided photos, videos, locations shared in real time, Turkish Coast Guard records, and confirmation that the incident was recorded in a Frontex database. However, this was deemed insufficient. “The ECtHR is setting impossible evidentiary standards for survivors of pushbacks, let alone for a minor. Extraordinary efforts are made to gather and preserve evidence, yet the burden remains disproportionately on those subjected to border violence, with little scrutiny of the EU states and institutions enabling and concealing pushbacks. As the Court further restricts access to justice, survivors are left with almost nowhere to turn for legal redress,” says Niamh Keady-Tabbal, consultant legal advisor at GLAN.
Pursuing accountability
The Court’s denial of G.R.J.’s victim status also precluded the case’s referral to the Grand Chamber as well as a substantive evaluation of his claims. Now an important role falls to the UN to examine not only the evidence of GRJ’s pushback but also how Greece's systematic pushback policy denies access to justice for survivors, evaluating its incompatibility with international human rights law. “The clear refusal by national and regional courts to address the ritual violence normalized at European borders has resulted in an accountability crisis. The UN is one of the only remaining forums that can reckon with the severity and unlawfulness of the harm inflicted on G.R.J - and of pushbacks more broadly,” says Delphine Rodrik, senior legal advisor in ECCHR’s border justice team.
Meanwhile Greece continues to pursue a policy of blanket denial of its decades-long systematic pushback practice, despite long-standing and consistent documentation of it, as confirmed by the ECtHR. Access to justice is also obstructed, with not a single effective criminal investigation carried out into any pushback allegations to date, and no prosecution against a Greek official. Instead, large numbers of people on the move and those documenting pushbacks are disproportionately criminalized in Greek courts.
“The pushback of GRJ is part of a larger system that also includes the effort of EU and national decisionmakers to criminalize humanitarian aid and threaten civil society. This results not only in the unfair prosecution of people who have chosen to support an important cause, but most importantly in the criminalization of migration itself,” says Dimitris Choulis, human rights lawyer at HRLP Samos. “Without the support of solidarity actors, people on the move are left with no access to legal aid and counsel, facing a legal system that discriminates against them and systematically violates their procedural rights.”
View illustrations by Yorgos Konstantinou.
The case was further supported by Flip Schüller, lawyer at Prakken d'Oliveira; Amanda Brown, legal advisor at UCLA Law’s Promise Institute for Human Rights (Europe); and a group of UCLA Law students through the Promise Institute’s pro bono programme.
Read more about the case, legal strategy and issues of evidence.
