Daring human smugglers use social media to lure migrants fleeing Syria
ISTANBUL — A crackdown on smuggling Syrian migrants from Turkey to Greece has pushed the human trafficking business underground and onto social media, often with deadly results: At least five more migrants died making the journey Tuesday.
Despite the risks of hypothermia and drowning, Syrian refugees fleeing to Turkey to escape a civil war are willing to pay steep prices to smugglers who have become increasingly aggressive in their advertising and other tactics to boost profits.
The “Smugglers Market” group on Facebook has 640 members and features contact information for smugglers, as well as “competitive prices” for a litany of forged documents necessary to resettle in Europe. They range from marriage licenses for $50 to university degrees for $350 and a new passport for $1,250, according to an advertisement posted by Mohammad el-Yusef.
Syrians keep paying even though the trip across the Mediterranean Sea is so hazardous. The peril was underscored Tuesday, when five migrants making the trip from Turkey to Greece drowned when their flimsy dinghy capsized. The Turkish coast guard said it was carrying out a search and rescue effort for 16 missing passengers.
There have been at least 177 migrant deaths at sea in January alone.
Adding to the danger of the voyage, the smugglers sell at huge markups counterfeit life jackets filled with packaging — rather than buoyant material — that actually causes migrants to sink faster.
Facebook said in a statement to USA TODAY that "it's against Facebook's community standards to coordinate or encourage human smuggling, and we remove any such content as soon as we become aware of it. We encourage people to use the reporting links found across our site so that our team of experts can review content swiftly."
Malek Samiah, a Syrian from Aleppo, said the smuggling business is slightly slower but still steady, and he has slashed prices to $550, down from the going rate of $1,000 during the milder “boating season.”
His complete package includes a private bus from Istanbul to the coastal city of Izmir, where a 35-person boat will carry the group on the treacherous, 40-minute journey to the shores of Greece, the gateway for thousands of refugees into Europe daily.
“It’s a very, very nice trip, there is no need to worry,” said Samiah, who arranges trips every two or three days. He sends potential customers a video featuring a prior successful boat trip, packed with jubilant passengers in bright orange life jackets, cheering as they approach the coast of Greece.
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Abu Alhakam, another smuggler, said he charges around $700 because his boats are “Russian,” and his crew has enough contacts throughout the journey to ensure it is sufficiently safe.
He said that after Syrian refugees arrive at the Greek side, they will be registered into refugee camps either by the Red Cross or the Greek police, and would have the opportunity to eventually be transferred to Germany.
Greek President Prokopis Pavlopoulos and other leaders have criticized Turkey for its lax policy toward smugglers, which he called a “type of slave trade” in a Jan. 18 interview with the German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung.
"I have a strong fear that Turkish smugglers have the support of the authorities, in particular, border authorities who act like they have seen nothing," Pavlopoulos said.
Turkey has responded to such complaints by targeting human trafficking networks and arresting hundreds involved in ferrying migrants to Greece.
After seeing a record number of migrants seek safety and more prosperous lives in Europe for two straight years, European leaders are facing an even larger influx this year amid a growing backlash from their own populations.
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Turkey is host to at least 2.2 million refugees, many of whom fled their homes with only what they could carry on their backs. Many of an estimated 300,000 Syrian refugees in Istanbul survive outside of refugee camps without help from international aid organizations.
Last year, more than 500,000 refugees arrived in Greece on flimsy rubber boats, and migration experts expect those numbers, along with the death toll, to rise. Last Friday, at least 43 people, including 17 children, drowned in the Mediterranean Sea between the coasts of Turkey and Greece.
"Once again ... ruthless human smugglers at the Turkish coast crammed dozens of refugees and migrants in risky and unseaworthy vessels and led innocent people, even young children to perish," the Greek shipping ministry said after Friday's incident.
The International Organization for Migration estimates that 45,361 migrants and refugees have arrived in Greece by sea so far this month, compared to 1,472 recorded by the Greek coast guard for all of January 2015.
“If you compare the numbers we saw in the height of October to December, they are subsiding a bit, but there are still around 2,000 people crossing per day,” said Abby Dwommah, spokesperson for the migration group.
Tara Alshahadeh, a Syrian refugee from Damascus who has lived in Istanbul for two years, weighed all that. She said she once considered hooking up with smugglers to reach Europe but realized it was not worth risking her life, and all she needed was "to be safe."