#Greece migrant boat disaster

[hussyknee]

Pitchbot Hall of Fame tweet 💀💀

(alt included)

[citruscloudsandmoon]

2023 seems like an year of death for Pakistanis.

[memenewsdotcom]

Greece migrant deaths rise

[starlightshadowsworld]

I get why people are talking about the whole submarine titanic thing.

It's awful.

But I'm here to address a different boat related tragedy.

One that absolutely breaks my heart.

Where a boat of migrants sank off the coast of Greece.

This boat had 300 Pakistanis and more than 500 Syrians.

The boat was carrying migrants from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria and Egypt who were fleeing their countries dire economic conditions.

And we're trying to reach relatives in Europe.

What happened with the submarine is a terrible thing.

I just wish this story got the same coverage.

One is about billionaires the other about people escaping economic disasters.

Both about people losing their lives.

[nemoverne]

In light of the OceanGate incident, I’d like to bring more awareness to another similar maritime incident that I feel more people to need to know about. Just last June 14, a fishing boat named the Andrianna sunk off the coast of Greece while it was trying to carry in Libyan and Pakistani immigrants, dozens of whom died in the sinking: https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/06/17/world/greece-boat-worst-ever-tragedy-mediterranean-sea-intl-hnk/index.html

[conhivemindcent]

Sorry to bring back up the Titan submersible, but I find it fascinating in a very morbid way. Mostly in terms of the news. This will be the media student in me talking but to me, it’s a perfect example of so many of Galtung and Ruge’s news values. I’ll also be looking at the migrant boat that sunk off the coast of Greece for similar comparison and why an American centric website would probably see more news relating to the submersible.

Put simply, one of Galtung and Ruge’s news values is proximity, aka how close to home it was and how meaningful it is to the people there. Since the submersible launched from Newfoundland, Canada would’ve gotten more news stories about the submersible. Meanwhile, the boat with the immigrants was found off the coast of Greece, with more stories about it there. Since the USA is closer to Canada than Greece, they got more stories about the sub than the boat.

Another value is currency. This is why me, a Brit, got more news coverage on the boat for the first few days. The UK has a known immigration problem and some really dodgy laws about it (basically in most circumstances you can only apply for a permit once you’re in the country but entering the country without a permit is illegal, so it’s a catch 22), so something about immigration would always be more relevant. However, the antithesis recency would affect how in the last few hours of the sub being missing when the air was thought to be running out (so morning and afternoon of 22nd June) there were more stories on the sub.

A fourth value is uniqueness. Sadly, a migrant ship sinking with people dying and going missing is not an uncommon thing nowadays. A maritime disaster involving billionaires touring the Titanic? Never happened before, I hope it will never happen again (and it most likely will not). Of course the news will focus on something that hasn’t happened before - when will they get the chance to do it?

There’s also the values of Elite People. These people were billionaires. The people on the migrant ship were most likely just normal unnoteworthy people. And also recency - the Messenia boat occurred in the 14th June, and by the time the debris of the boat had been discovered it has already been a week.

I think it is important we take these news values into consideration and also how we as a community on Tumblr can see how we played right into these. An American website with a large American usership would naturally gravitate towards an American story, no matter how global it claims to be. In addition, it’s unusual enough with such strange circumstances that jokes and criticisms were bound to occur. The continuity (another news value) of the story with the search was also intriguing, as we saw it play out first hand with the initial disappearance, the potential signals, the discovery of the wreckage. Add in a level of expectedness (another news value - these people would either be found or not, and let’s be honest they were more likely to be dead than alive) and we have a perfectly newsworthy story to top the trending page for a few days.

It’s something I find fascinating, how despite people saying we should focus on the Messenia migrant boat disaster, we were still echoing the news perfectly on the site. One thing I’ve noted is that I didn’t really see anybody mentioning it before the Titan set out, but once the searching started it started becoming more relevant and trending a little below it. This isn’t a call to do better, this is just something I’ve noticed.

If there’s any saving light, out of the estimated 750 (maximum) of migrants, 104 have been confirmed alive and rescued. And I’m so happy for that.

[apricitystudies]

 what i read in june. 2023:

(previous editions) bold = favourite

race & gender

a few good men (usa)

catching the men who sell subway groping videos (china/japan)

wonder women

i learnt about masculinity from a colombian telenovela

the romance scammer on my sofa (nigeria)

politics & current affairs

have assisted dying laws gone too far? (canada)

inside man (usa)

cruel, paranoid, failing: inside the home office (uk)

portugal’s radical drugs policy is working. why hasn’t the world copied it?

the twenty-first century of (profitable) war (usa)

history, culture, & personal essays

i called everyone in jeffrey epstein’s little black book

ngũgĩ wa thiong’o: three days with a giant of african literature

the man in the iron lung

a mother’s exchange for her daughter’s future

30 years ago, romania deprived thousands of babies of human contact

inside the secretive world of penile enlargement

the promise that tested my parents until the end

greek migrant boat disaster

drowning in lies

‘If they had left us be, we wouldn’t have drowned’

survivors of greek migrant tragedy say coastguard rope toppled boat

greece imposes silence around shipwreck of overcrowded migrant boat

[straightlightyagami]

In case anyone is not aware that the migrant boat disaster in Greece is far from an isolated incident. Thousands of people have died crossing the Mediterranean. Seeking asylum is a right recognized by the Geneva Convention. The political groups daring to assert that the act of migration is "genocide" by "diluting" the "white" population in their countries and the states that attempt to prevent refugees from entering their borders have blood on their hands.

[ausetkmt]

Video shows migrants waiting before ill-fated migrant boat voyage

03:41 - Source: CNN

CNN  — 

The hull of the fishing trawler lifted out of the water as it sank, catapulting people from the top deck into the black sea below. In the darkness, they grabbed onto whatever they could to stay afloat, pushing each other underwater in a frantic fight for survival. Some were screaming, many began to recite their final prayers.

“I can still hear the voice of a woman calling out for help,” one survivor of the migrant boat disaster off the coast of Greece told CNN. “You’d swim and move floating bodies out of your way.”

With hundreds of people still missing after the overloaded vessel capsized in the Mediterranean on June 14, the testimonies of those who were onboard paint a picture of chaos and desperation. They also call into question the Greek coast guard’s version of events, suggesting more lives could have been saved, and may even point to fault on the part of Greek authorities.

Rights groups allege the tragedy is both further evidence and a result of a new pattern in illegal pushbacks of migrant boats to other nations’ waters, with deadly consequences.

This boat was carrying up to 750 Pakistani, Syrian, Egyptian and Palestinian refugees and migrants. Only 104 people have been rescued alive.

CNN has interviewed multiple survivors of the shipwreck and their relatives, all of whom have wished to remain anonymous for security reasons and the fear of retribution from authorities in both Greece and at home.

One survivor from Syria, whom CNN is identifying as Rami, described how a Greek coast guard vessel approached the trawler multiple times to try to attach a rope to tow the ship, with disastrous results.

“The third time they towed us, the boat swayed to the right and everyone was screaming, people began falling into the sea, and the boat capsized and no one saw anyone anymore,” he said. “Brothers were separated, cousins were separated.”

Another Syrian man, identified as Mostafa, also believes it was the maneuver by the coast guard that caused the disaster. “The Greek captain pulled us too fast, it was extremely fast, this caused our boat to sink,” he said.

The Hellenic Coast Guard has repeatedly denied attempting to tow the vessel. An official investigation into the cause of the tragedy is still ongoing.

Coast guard spokesman Nikos Alexiou told CNN over the phone last week: “When the boat capsized, we were not even next to (the) boat. How could we be towing it?” Instead, he insisted they had only been “observing at a close distance” and that “a shift in weight probably caused by panic” had caused the boat to tip.

The Hellenic Coast Guard has declined to answer CNN’s specific requests for response to the survivor testimonies.

Direct accounts from those who survived the wreck have been limited, due to their concerns about speaking out and the media having little access to the survivors. CNN interviewed Rami and Mostafa outside the Malakasa migrant camp near Athens, where journalists are not permitted entry.

The Syrian men said the conditions on board the migrant boat deteriorated fast in the more than five days after it set off from Tobruk, Libya, in route to Italy. They had run out of water and had resorted to drinking from storage bottles that people had urinated in.

“People were dying. People were fainting. We used a rope to dip clothes into the sea and use that to squeeze water on people who had lost consciousness,” Rami said.

CNN’s analysis of marine traffic data, combined with information from NGOs, merchant vessels and the European Union border patrol agency, Frontex, suggests that Greek authorities were aware of the distressed vessel for at least 13 hours before it eventually sank early on June 14.

The Greek coast guard has maintained that people onboard the trawler had refused rescue and insisted they wanted to continue their journey to Italy. But survivors, relatives and activists say they had asked for help multiple times.

Earlier in the day, other ships tried to help the trawler. Directed by the Greek coast guard, two merchant vessels – Lucky Sailor and Faithful Warrior – approached the boat between 6 and 9 p.m. on June 13 to offer supplies, according to marine traffic data and the logs of those ships. But according to survivors this only caused more havoc onboard.

“Fights broke out over food and water, people were screaming and shouting,” Mostafa said. “If it wasn’t for people trying to calm the situation down, the boat was on the verge of sinking several times.”

By early evening, six people had already died onboard, according to an audio recording reviewed by CNN from Italian activist Nawal Soufi, who took a distress call from the migrant boat at around 7 p.m. Soufi’s communication with the vessel also corroborated Mostafa’s account that people moved from one side of the boat to the other after water bottles were passed from the cargo ships, causing it to sway dangerously.

The haunting final words sent from the migrant boat came just minutes before it capsized. According to a timeline published by NGO Alarm Phone they received a call, at around 1:45 a.m., with the words “Hello my friend… The ship you send is…” Then the call cuts out.

The coast guard says the vessel began to sink at around 2 a.m.

The next known activity in the area, according to marine traffic data, was the arrival of a cluster of vessels starting around 3 a.m. The Mayan Queen superyacht was the first on the scene for what soon became a mass rescue operation.

Human rights groups say the authorities had a duty to act to save lives, regardless of what people on board were saying to the coast guard before the migrant boat capsized.

“The boat was overcrowded, was unseaworthy and should have been rescued and people taken to safety, that’s quite clear,” UNHCR Special Envoy for the Central Mediterranean Vincent Cochetel told CNN in an interview. “There was a responsibility for the Greek authorities to coordinate a rescue to bring those people safely to land.”

Cochetel also pointed to a growing trend by countries, including Greece, to assist migrant boats in leaving their waters. “That’s a practice we’ve seen in recent months. Some coastal states provide food, provide water, sometimes life jackets, sometimes even fuel to allow such boats to continue to only one destination: Italy. And that’s not fair, Italy cannot cope with that responsibility alone.”

Survivors who say the coast guard tried to tow their boat say they don’t know what the aim was.

There have been multiple documented examples in recent years of Greek patrol boats engaging in so-called “pushbacks” of migrant vessels from Greek waters in recent years, including in a CNN investigation in 2020.

“It looks like what the Greeks have been doing since March 2020 as a matter of policy, which is pushbacks and trying to tow a boat to another country’s water in order to avoid the legal responsibility to rescue,” Omer Shatz, legal director of NGO Front-LEX, told CNN. “Because rescue means disembarkation and disembarkation means processing of asylum requests.”

Pushbacks are state measures aimed at forcing refugees and migrants out of their territory, while impeding access to legal and procedural frameworks, according to the Berlin-based European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR). They are a violation of international law, as well as European regulations.

And such measures do not appear to have deterred human traffickers whose businesses prey on vulnerable and desperate migrants.

In an interview with CNN last month, then Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis denied that his country engaged in intentional pushbacks and described them as a “completely unacceptable practice.” Mitsotakis is widely expected to win a second term in office in Sunday’s election, after failing to get an outright majority in a vote last month.

A series of Greek governments have been criticized for their handling of migration policy, including conditions in migrant camps, particularly following the 2015-16 refugee crisis, when more than 1 million people entered Europe through the country.

For those who lived through last week’s sinking, the harrowing experience will never be forgotten.

Mostafa and Rami both say they wish they had never made the journey, despite the fact they are now in Europe and are able to claim asylum.

Most of all, Mostafa says, he wishes the Greek coast guard had never approached their boat: “If they had left us be, we wouldn’t have drowned.”

[bisexualbailorgana]

thinking about how 500 people, mostly women & children, are still missing after a boat carrying migrants sank off the coast of greece and the search and rescue operation seems limited entirely to the greek coastguard who may even be at fault for the disaster. meanwhile 5 billionaires go missing at sea while on a vanity trip and suddenly the us coastguard & navy are on it as well as canada and even france sends a ship from across the atlantic (x). they got the military involved!! for 5 people!! not to mention the submarine search has had live news coverage on the bbc since it began while there’s very little being reported on the migrant boat disaster. like you don’t have to be a genius to see what this says about how the west views migrants and refugees, its almost laughable how obvious it is it’s not even a metaphor at this point!!

[itkrnowsyou]

fuck that submarine i thereby implore you to read this report and any further reports on this tragedy i know it’s fun to explore the mental gymnastics behind the idiocy of the rich and the phenomenon of a white man’s hubris but the lack of response and acknowledgment bothers me so much

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/06/18/asia/pakistan-deaths-migrant-boat-disaster-greece-intl-hnk/index.html

[stele3]

https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/23/europe/greece-migrant-boat-disaster-investigation-intl-cmd/index.html

https://abcnews.go.com/International/stunning-rebuke-putin-wagner-chief-russias-invasion-ukraine/story?id=100335756

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/biden-sign-executive-order-expanding-access-contraception-2023-06-23/

https://www.latintimes.com/bolsonaro-court-trial-could-leave-him-political-wilderness-nearly-10-years-545027

https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/beyond-extreme-ocean-heat-wave-in-north-atlantic-is-worst-in-170-years/ar-AA1cVgDz

https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/long-covid-linked-to-mental-health-conditions-says-new-federal-advisory/

https://www.foxnews.com/world/thousands-displaced-heavy-monsoon-rains-ravage-indias-northeast-climate-change-seen-factor

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/atlanta-clerk-approves-cop-city-petition-language/ar-AA1cRmC4

[clorofolle]

I'm seeing so much oceangate stuff on my dash. I can understand why the media got obsessed with this story, but not why everyone on tumblr did. I'm seeing a lot of posts about the 19 yrs old for example - and yeah, of course I'm sorry for the kid. It sucks. And I get the compassion fatigue. I get not being able to be empathetic and grieve and be mad all day for every single disaster that happens. But I feel like the kind of things you choose to pay more attention to, and why you choose them, should be examined more carefully.

Yes, that kid was 19 and scared shitless of the trip, and it sucks he had to die. But... this was one person, who took a bad decision. You remember the boat full of migrants that capsized off the coats of Greece? There were... hundreds of people there, many of them children. And they were also really scared, and died an horrific death. That's without even taking into account the kind of life they had to endure before, if they thought this was a chance worth taking for something better.

Please, do reflect on what kind of tragedies you see talked about more often. And ask yourself why that happens. I tried giving myself answers - I'm still not sure what's the right one. Is it because tumblr is quite americanocentric, and usually uninterested with events happening in other parts of the word? Is it simply because those were rich people who died, and thus they got more coverage, and people tend to only comment whatever headlines they see that are bigger? Or is it some kind of almost on-purpose turning away from actual, preventable tragedies, ones that are symptomatic of bigger than life societal issues - and instead choosing to focus on what amounts to "rich people drama"? Because, let's be honest: 750 migrants left to die on a boat is just heart wrenching, and makes us feel hopeless and powerless. But four millionares dead for their own stupidity? That stops being a simple tragedy, and starts being entertainment.

If you read this post - if nothing else, I hope it could've helped you reflect on why you engage with the sort of news that you do, and if there's any news that you tend to ignore on purpose instead. I know I do. I'm trying to change.

[mudwerks]

(via Greece boat disaster: Capsized boat had 100 children in hold, BBC told - BBC News)

Survivors from a fishing boat that sank off southern Greece in one of Europe's worst migrant disasters say up to 100 children may have been on board.

At least 78 people have already been confirmed dead in the disaster.

But many more could still be missing at sea, with reports suggesting that up to 750 people were aboard the vessel.

At least 11 arrests have been made including several Egyptians on suspicion of people trafficking, Greek TV reports.

The coastguard has been criticised for not intervening earlier but authorities say their offers of aid were refused.

Rescuers are still searching the area where the boat capsized almost 50 nautical miles off the south-west coast, as hopes of finding more survivors dwindle.

The boat had been heading to Italy from the Libyan port of Tobruk when it went down.

[gwydionmisha]

Greece finds no more survivors of migrant boat disaster with hundreds missing

[beardedmrbean]

Pakistani nationals on board a dilapidated fishing trawler that sank off the coast of Greece last week, killing at least 78 migrants, were forced below deck unlike passengers of other nationalities, survivors reportedly said. 

Some of the 108 who were rescued following the disaster Wednesday are now speaking out as Pakistani police have announced the arrest of three traffickers in connection to the sinking. 

"All the people involved in this tragedy will be brought to justice," Pakistan’s Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah Khan said in a statement. The country is observing a day of mourning on Monday, with flags flying at half-staff. 

The vessel was carrying as many as 750 people, including scores of Pakistanis, when it sank in international waters. A search-and-rescue operation has since been underway. 

Desperate for a better life, many Pakistanis pay up to $8,000 to traffickers to smuggle them to Europe through Iran, Libya and Turkey, according to The Associated Press. 

Survivors who spoke to first responders said Pakistani passengers on board the trawler were forced below deck while people of other nationalities were allowed on the top deck, where they had greater chances of surviving in the event of a disaster, The Guardian reported. 

The news organization, citing Pakistani media, also said around 300 Pakistanis are feared to have died in the sinking, while the country’s ministry of foreign affairs said only 12 Pakistanis have been counted so far among the survivors. 

GREEK COAST GUARD DEFENDS ITS RESPONSE TO SHIPWRECK 

Conditions on board the ship were so dire before the sinking that six people died after it ran out of fresh water, The Guardian also reported. 

"We started the journey at dawn on Friday. Around 700 of us were on board," one migrant reportedly told investigators looking into the disaster. "We were traveling for three days and then the engine failed." 

The ship sank off the Peloponnese peninsula in southern Greece. 

In Greece on Monday, a court postponed a hearing for nine Egyptian men being held there over accusations of being migrant smugglers involved in the sinking of the ship. 

The court in Kalamata pushed back the hearing to let the suspects and their lawyers review testimony provided over the weekend by nine Syrian and Pakistani survivors, according to the AP.

The news agency reported that the Egyptians were identified as members of a smuggling ring by some of the survivors, and face charges of participating in a criminal organization, causing a shipwreck, and endangering lives.