The Borders Newsroom seeks to sustain public interest journalism in the context of nested crises at Europe’s external borders, ranging from confrontation at Greece’s land and sea borders with Turkey, to abuses of asylum seekers in the Western Balkans, to the arrival of Covid-19. These emergencies have created states of exception that threaten the 1951 refugee convention and right to asylum. The Borders newsroom exists to detect and decode disinformation and empower investigative journalism, local and international, in this hostile context, while holding the main EU agencies, state and non-state actors to account. It provides domain expertise and tools including open source investigation. It aims to be a nerve centre for journalism that provides an evidence-base for a public debate on challenges to fundamental rights, rule of law and right to asylum that arise from border enforcement policies and the EU asylum and migration system.
NEWSROOM BORDERS

Detained below deck
How asylum seekers are held in secret prisons on commercial ships to facilitate illegal pushbacks from Italy to Greece
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Europe’s Black Sites
How refugees are being arbitrarily detained and tortured at secret facilities along EU borders before being illegally forced back across borders
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Shot for Seeking Asylum
First visual evidence of live ammunition being used against asylum seekers trying to reach Bulgaria brings into sharp question the EU’s approach to border control
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Reconstructing the Melilla Massacre
How visual evidence, witness testimony and ground reporting can be combined to prevent a cover up by Spain and Morocco
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“We were slaves”
The Greek police are using foreigners as “slaves” to forcibly return asylum seekers to Turkey
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Frontex, the EU Pushback Agency
Frontex’s internal database suggests the EU border agency is involved in illegal pushbacks on a massive scale
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Aegean Pushbacks Lead to Drowning
Examining what whistleblowers claim is a new tactic of throwing asylum seekers overboard off Turkish coast
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Who died at Europe’s border?
Using open source to restore some humanity to the death toll of nameless and faceless people in the Poland-Belarus standoff
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Unmasking Europe’s Shadow Armies
Getting the visual evidence that removes the layer of plausible deniability from illegal pushbacks of asylum seekers in the Balkans and Aegean
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Moria: After the Fire
Tracing a year in the life of asylum seekers who survived the blaze that destroyed Europe’s largest refugee camp
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Frontex in the Central Mediterranean
The EU borders agency plays a direct role in the Libyan coast guard’s interception operations contrary to previous denials
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Frontex Chapter III: Agency in Turmoil
Allegations of toxic culture at the EU’s border agency reveal a leadership under investigation over fraud and mismanagement.
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Frontex Chapter II: Complicit in Pushbacks
Illegal pushbacks in the Aegean aren’t rogue actions of the Greek national coast guard but operations undertaken with the support or connivance of an emerging EU super agency
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Masked men
The most violent pushbacks at Europe’s external borders are done by men in balaclavas. Are they vigilantes or clandestine state forces?
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Pushbacks Chapter two
Greek coastguard employing more aggressive tactics in intercepting asylum seekers and towing them back on life rafts towards Turkey
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Torment in Turkey
Encouraged by Erdogan, thousands took to the Pazarkule border gate. But they soon realised they were pawns in a power game
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The Killing of Muhammad Gulzar
The death of a Pakistani man during a standoff at the Greek-Turkish border raised serious questions. We consider the evidence
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Pushbacks Chapter one
Documenting a new wave in Greece of extrajudicial deportations overland and at sea, a practice that came to be known as deep pushbacks
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