7th August 2023:
In June this year a ship carrying some 500 - 700 migrants sank off the coast of Greece. Up to 600 people, including 100 children in the hold of the ship, were drowned (see e.g. here).
Boats laden with immigrants and seeking refuge in Europe sinking are not uncommon. Every year, thousands of immigrants are drowned in the Mediterranean. Since 2014 some 27,000 drownings have been officially recorded, though this is likely the tip of the iceberg. European authorities impede the passage of NGO boats aimed at helping migrants, coastguards turn a blind eye, and the media largely stays silent, unless it involves western peoples, such as the sinking of the Titan submersible which happened at the same time as the sinking of the Messenia.
But this case is more sinister, for according to the accounts of survivors, it was the Greek coastguard who deliberately capsized the ship:
“The Greek boat [coastguard] tied a rope in the middle of the boat. It went right, left and then right again, very quickly. Then the boat capsized, and everyone fell into the water,” and “Then, they [the Greek coast guard] sailed away and watched us from afar. We spent about two hours in the water”
The three survivors are being held at the Malakasa refugee prison north of Athens. The reporter had to speak to the survivors through a barbed wire fence, as the survivors were being forcibly prevented from leaving the camp to speak to the reporters gathered outside. Prison guards were also forcing the survivors away from the fences so that they could not speak to the press.
It seems that the Greek authorities are carrying out deliberate acts of murder on migrant ships. The narrative given by the coastguard directly contradicts what the survivors say, and instead states that the vessel gave out no distress call, that it refused any assistance and continued heading north, that it was steering wildly on its own account and that that was what caused the boat to overturn, and that by the time they arrived on the scene most of the people were already drowned.
It's not just the three survivors that managed to speak to the press that contradict the account. The Greek coastguard say that the boat refused assistance and did not ask for help, yet AlarmPhone, an NGO for migrant ships in the Mediterranean, said it received a distress call from the ship and informed the authorities. Furthermore, activist Nawal Soufi alerted the Greek authorities the same day after receiving distress calls from the passengers on the ship requesting help. Furthermore, an independent investigation of marine tracking data shows that the ship had been stationary for 7 hours before it sank, also directly contradicting the Greek coastguard narrative (see here). This was also confirmed by AlarmPhone who stated that people on the boat who called them had said the boat was stationary. In short, the migrant ship was drifting and sending out distress calls prior to it sinking, but the coastguard did nothing. In the early hours of that morning, in the dark of night, according to at least three survivors the boat was deliberately sunk by the coastguard.
Even without the survivor testimony *(see below) the evidence suggests that the Greek coastguard service deliberately left the boat in distress waiting for it to sink before offering any assistance, and that is still murder. The sinking of the Messenia contrasts sharply to the reaction to the sinking of the Titan submersible, which was carrying half a dozen millionaire passengers who had each paid £250,000 for the journey. The Titan received massive media coverage and millions of pounds of emergency response from coastguard and emergency teams from multiple countries.
Most of the passengers of the Messania were Syrians fleeing the NATO war, or Pakistanis fleeing the economic crisis in their home country. Europe has long maintained tariffs against other countries and at the same time forced those other countries to open up their economy to western business interests. The world is not a free market, it has been deliberately rigged to benefit the colonial powers, a situation which impoverishes other countries and feeds the disparities in wealth, and which in turn fuels these kind of migrant cycles. The wealth of Europe has come largely from militarisation and imperialist expansion and not from the labours of its citizens. As such, not only does it have a duty to restore that stolen wealth, and to cease exploiting the economies of countries who are less powerful politically, militarily or economically through rigged world trade rules, but it owes a massive debt to the rest of the world for the hardship it has inflicted (never mind the GHG emissions it has poured into the atmosphere). Instead of addressing these heavy debts - the real debt crisis in the world - the west continues to turn its nose up in the air and blame others for the problems that it is causing, and it is in that general attitudinal milieu of arrogance and imperial dominance that European coastguards can get away with (at the very least) turning a blind eye to the sinking of a refugee ship killing hundreds of innocent people. The lives of these people are the price tag that European economic privilege costs.
The evening after the sinking of the Messenia, thousands of people gathered in Athens to hold a vigil for the hundreds of lives lost. Across the rest of Europe, there was a wall of indifference.
*Although the Greek government have dismissed the survivor's claims that the coastguard deliberately overturned the boat, they have not state their reasons for doing so, and neither have they, as far as I am aware, interviewed the 104 surviving passengers in their custody to find out what they have to say about the events, nor allowed journalists to access them. That, in my view, only bolsters the survivor's testimony.