Greece targets – After volunteering to help asylum seekers in Greece, former aid monitor Tommy Olsen is now wanted in the country amid a crackdown that UN human-rights officials say targets activists and chills the work of people trying to defend the right to asylum.
In 2015, when hundreds of thousands of people were trying to reach safety in Europe, Tommy Olsen left his home in Norway and went to Greece—the gateway island country that was absorbing most of the arrivals.
On the Greek island of Lesbos, he joined hundreds of volunteers helping people who had fled war and repression. Later, he created an NGO, the Aegean Boat Report, which monitors the plight of asylum seekers in Europe.
Today, Olsen is not volunteering anywhere. He is wanted in Greece, caught up in a crackdown on refugees and on people trying to defend their right to asylum. “I didn’t know what I walked into,” Olsen says.
The case sits at the intersection of migration policy and the legal peril that can follow human-rights advocacy. Mary Lawlor. the UN special rapporteur on human rights defenders. has condemned Greece’s harsh migration policies and the way the government is targeting activists like Olsen. But Lawlor’s criticism does not stop at Greek borders. She says Europe as a whole shares some responsibility for the atmosphere that turns defenders into targets.
In her view, the language around the issue has hardened. “The whole notion of migration is a dirty word now,” she says. “The whole notion of refugees is a dirty word now.”
A new episode of Reveal. produced by reporters Dinah Rothenberg and Viola Funk from the Berlin podcast studio Slowly Media. returns to Greece to describe what that hardening looks like on the ground. The reporting describes refugees and human rights defenders facing legal and. at times. physical attacks from authorities attempting to seal the country’s borders.
The episode is an update of one that originally aired in January 2025. but the core conflict remains sharply human: the work that once looked like direct help now appears. to Greek authorities. as something closer to interference—something that can bring consequences even for people who arrived with the intention of protecting asylum seekers.
Greece refugees Tommy Olsen Aegean Boat Report Lesbos asylum seekers human rights defenders Mary Lawlor UN special rapporteur migration crackdown