Dead silence: The Greek tragedy that exposes the brutality at Europe’s borders

High on a cliff overlooking a bay on the Greek island of Lesbos, Fayad Mulla waits to witness a crime.

As the Austrian journalist’s cameras roll, a white van arrives on the road along the coast. The rear doors open and 12 people who were trapped inside are taken out.

They are taken to a speedboat by masked men. We see a baby being carried by one of these men and placed on the boat, which then travels to a larger ship waiting at the edge of the bay. This ship belongs to the Greek coast guard. It travels to the middle of the Aegean Sea, where the people taken from the transporter are thrown overboard onto rickety life rafts.

Just over half an hour into the recently released BBC documentary, Dead silence: Killing in the Mediterranean?This footage is the most striking in a series of sickening shocks delivered by this excellent film.

Director Ben Steele’s documentary tells two distinct but interconnected stories. The first is that of the Adriana, a dangerously overcrowded fishing vessel that capsized off the coast of Greece’s Peloponnese peninsula on June 14, 2023, killing more than 500 people in one of the deadliest refugee boat disasters in years.

The second reason concerns the alleged use of kidnapping and violence by the Greek Coast Guard and Greek special forces to prevent people from outside Europe from entering the continent.

As Mulla’s recordings, recordings from the Turkish coast guard and witness statements show, this also includes the abduction of refugees who have already landed on Greek islands and are then abandoned on life rafts outside Greek waters, where they have little chance of survival.

One of the film’s final analyses is that between 2020 and 2023, the Greek Coast Guard caused the deaths of 43 people who were expelled from Greek territorial waters or taken out to sea after reaching Greek islands. Nine of these people were deliberately thrown into the water.

Together, these stories clearly show where Europe stands on the migration issue today: politicians across the continent are embroiled in a brutal agenda designed to prevent people at all costs from reaching the safer shores they believe await them there.

The Mediterranean is now the world’s deadliest migration route, but the people who move along it will continue to do so as long as the powerful forces that drive them – war, political instability and oppression, severe economic inequality and climate change – remain unchecked.

Escape from war and waste

In the heart of Dead silence The story of the Adriana disaster is told by two young men fleeing the Syrian civil war. Mohammed and Abdelrahman were on board the boat when it left Tobruk, a port on Libya’s eastern Mediterranean coast, on the morning of June 9.

They had been told it would be a “VIP experience,” but when they arrived they found something far worse: men were on site with sticks and electrical cables to ensure that passengers did not act despite their concerns about boarding.

The gang that led the operation, which according to an investigation by Der Spiegel is linked to the family of the eastern Libyan commander Khalifa Haftar, had thrown supplies overboard in order to cram about 750 people onto the boat.

Below on the Adriana there were mainly people from Pakistan. In the middle there were women and children. On the upper deck there were Palestinians, Syrians and Egyptians.

In total, they paid up to three million pounds ($3.5 million) to be smuggled into Italy, according to New York Times journalist Matina Stevis-Gridneff, who serves as an expert voice throughout the film, adding that passengers could get a seat on the deck for about $50 extra.

“I don’t know why they did it in broad daylight… It’s… obviously illegal. It’s an international crime.”

– Dimitris Baltakos, former head of special operations of the Greek Coast Guard

The trip quickly starts to go wrong. The Adriana is lost. They run out of drinking water and the passengers have to consider whether to drink engine coolant.

Three adults and a child die when the ship reaches the Greek search and rescue zone on the fifth day. Only then is a distress call sent to the outside world.

But even though Frontex, the European Union’s border agency, sends a drone to monitor the situation, nothing is done to really help the passengers. And when the Greek authorities get involved, the situation becomes even more dangerous.

While Mohammed and Abdelrahman fear for their lives and take care of their fellow travelers, Dead silent investigates, partly through the work of Stevis-Gridneff, Mulla and Dutch journalist Romy van Baarsen, cases in which migrants and refugees are kidnapped from Greek islands and abandoned in international waters.

Ibrahim from Cameroon describes being kidnapped by masked men, beaten, strip-searched and then taken out to sea, where he and several others were thrown overboard into the water. He tells of an Ivorian man pleading: “Save me, I don’t want to die” before the water swallows him. An “incredible force” animates Ibrahim and he survives, swims to shore and vows to “testify for the oppressed”.

A Greek special forces agent, whom van Baarsen found through a dating website, tells her that the order to round up migrants arriving in Greece by boat came “from the minister.” In a stunning scene, Dimitris Baltakos, the former head of special operations for the Greek coast guard, reveals more information than he intends.

In his interview, Mulla shows footage of people being dragged from a van and taken out to sea, but he refuses to speculate on what happened or who is responsible.

He says that mothers who go to the Mediterranean “often abandon their children. They don’t seem to have the same affection for their children as we do.”

But then, during a break, he is recorded speaking in Greek to someone off-screen: “I didn’t tell them much, did I? 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… obviously illegal. It’s an international crime.”

Europe and its brutal border

No serving Greek official met with the BBC and Greek authorities told the filmmakers that it was not policy to turn away refugees from Greek territory.

Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Greece’s conservative prime minister, is present throughout the film, boasting about reducing migration by 90 percent, claiming the coast guard has saved “tens of thousands” and reminding us that Greece is “protecting not only Greek borders, but the borders of Europe.”

And while it is easy to blame the old, seafaring nation of Greece for abandoning its ancient code of conduct, xenia (Hospitality), this is really a story about Europe and the way in which vicious opposition to outsiders and panic about overpopulation have shaped not only border policy but also the domestic politics of many of its states.

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In the end, the captain of a luxury superyacht owned by a Mexican billionaire intervenes to rescue the few survivors of the Adriana, which capsizes when a Greek patrol vessel tries to tow it out of Greek waters (which the authorities deny).

The sight of desperate refugees dismounting from this powerful symbol of wealth is almost too obvious.

Jonas Grimheden, head of the fundamental rights department at Frontex, is tasked with being the human face of European border policy. He does his best to maintain his Scandinavian cool. Throughout the interview with the filmmakers, he remains firm but also concerned. Until, towards the end, the mask falls and there, in the vast Frontex headquarters in Warsaw, the discrepancy between the EU’s statements that no one should “die at sea on the way to Europe” and the reality that this is exactly what is happening can no longer be ignored.

As Dead silentAs I read the interwoven stories of The Last Man, which came to their devastating end, I thought of Daryan, an Iraqi Kurdish refugee I interviewed on the south coast of England, where he was being held in an internment camp.

Together with three other Kurdish asylum seekers, we walked from the Napier Barracks in Folkestone, built in Napoleonic times, to the beach. It was a beautiful day and the four young men were optimistic despite their circumstances.

Daryan recalled the crossing of the English Channel, which he described as difficult but bearable, especially when he saw the white cliffs of Dover and knew he would make it. He then described the seven days he spent on the Mediterranean.

He spoke of the people he knew who had drowned trying to reach Europe, the smell of vomit and the cries for help. “I will never forget it,” he said.

“Dead Calm: Killing in the Med?” is on BBC iPlayer.