aegeanboatreport.com | 10 March 2022
Human rights belongs to everyone, or do they?
On Tuesday March 8, a boat carrying 20 Palestinians from Gaza, 10 men, 3 women and 7 children, landed on the south east shores of Chios, not far from Nenita.
After arriving they fled to the woods in the surrounding areas, in fear of being found and arrested by Greek police. The group remained in the area for a while, the feet of the small children couldn’t move very fast, the dark made it even more challenging.
At 05.00 people from the group made contact with Aegean Boat Report, they asked for assistance., “hello, we are on the island of Chios, we want to apply for asylum, we are all Palestinians from Gaza, we have many children, please help us”.
In the next hours we received pictures, videos and location data, documenting their presence on Chios, small children, tiered and soaking wet from the rain, shivering from the cold, sitting straight on the ground.
We followed the group´s movements on Live location on whatsapp, slowly moving north. At 07.30 we received a message from the group, “police are chasing us, please help us, we have small children, we are afraid”.
Their location showed that they were in the outskirts of Nenita, a short message was sent, “ police caught us, we are afraid”.
People were rounded up, but a group of six young men managed to get away, and moved quickly from the area, heading west. Police were chasing them, but gave up after a short while. Aegean Boat Report got a short message from them 07.40, “many of us were arrested, all the children, we managed to run away, they will be returned, please help”. 20 minutes later we lost contact with the group of six, and didn’t hear from them anymore, perhaps they ran out of power on their phone.