The emotion is palpable in Greece, to the point that the country will observe three days of mourning after the sinking, Wednesday June 14, of a boat carrying migrants. According to the Prime Minister’s office, the disaster could have caused hundreds of victims. The Coast Guard said it recovered 79 bodies and rescued 104 people, but survivors said nearly 750 people were on board.
The fishing boat the victims were on board capsized in international waters off the Peloponnese peninsula in the Ionian Sea, about 87 kilometers from the Greek coast. “There has been a dramatic increase in the death toll, which is increasing hour by hour,” said to the English newspaper The Guardian a Greek official. “The fishing boat was 25 to 30 meters long. Its deck was full of people, and we assume that the interior was just as full,” said Nikolaos Alexiou, spokesman for the coast guard, on the antennas of Greek television ERT.
“It could be the worst maritime tragedy in recent years in Greece,” said Stella Nanou, of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), on the same television channel. Capital legislative elections for the country will take place on June 25, and the leader of the left-wing opposition Alexis Tsipras, like his main opponent, current Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, has announced that they are suspending their electoral campaigns.
Spotted by a Frontex plane
This Thursday, June 15, the Greek coast guard continues the search. Two patrol boats, a helicopter and six other vessels from the region are inspecting the waters west of the Peloponnese coast, according to the greek daily Il Kathimerini. Operations are made difficult by strong winds and the fact that the sinking took place in one of the deepest areas of the Mediterranean.
The ship departed from the Libyan port of Tobruk, and was destined for southern Italy. According to the Greek port authorities, a Frontex surveillance plane had spotted it on Tuesday afternoon. The European agency then contacted the Greek Coast Guard, which offered to help the ship. The passengers of the boat refused any help, even though they were not wearing life jackets, according to the same source.
Gateway to Europe
A behavior that has been criticized by humanitarian associations. At the microphone of France InfoJérôme Tubiana, Migration Advocacy Officer at Médecins Sans Frontières, explained that it “is really shocking to hear that Frontex flew over the boat and there was no intervention because the boat refused any help”.
The European agency had already been singled out in 2022 by a report from the European Anti-Fraud Office (Olaf) for having had knowledge of, and even having co-financed, illegal refoulements of migrants off the coast of Greece. “Instead of preventing the ‘push back‘, the former boss Fabrice Leggeri and his collaborators concealed them. They lied to the European Parliament and covered up the fact that the agency supported certain rejections with European taxpayers’ money”, summarized then the german magazine Der Spiegel.
In recent years, Greece has become one of the main gateways to the territory of the European Union. A state of affairs that has pushed the country to toughen its management of migrants. “Under a conservative government, in power until last month, authorities have taken a tougher stance on migration, building fortified camps and tightening border controls,” says The Guardian. Since the start of the year, 44 people have drowned in the eastern Mediterranean, according to the IOM. Last year, they were at least 372.