#migrant shipwreck survivors

[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

[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.”

[captaindibbzy]

Remember when that sub imploded and everyone was having a moral panic about caring about it when at the same time a ship went down off Greece and surely we should care about that instead, like people couldn't care about two things? And I was saying how this kind of stuff was pretty common it just didn't normally break in to the international news cycle?

Well

You should know it's still pretty commonly happening.

[beardedmrbean]

At least 60 migrants have died after a rubber dinghy ran into trouble in the Mediterranean Sea, according to survivors.

The 25 survivors were picked up by the Ocean Viking, a vessel operated by the humanitarian group SOS Méditerranée.

They told their rescuers that they had set off from Zawiya on the Libyan coast several days before being rescued.

The engine of the dinghy broke down after three days, leaving the boat adrift without food or water.

The survivors said that the victims included women and at least one child. They are believed to have died from dehydration and hunger, not drowning.

SOS Méditerranée said the Ocean Viking team had spotted the dinghy, which set off last Friday, with binoculars on Wednesday and had staged a medical evacuation in co-operation with Italian coast guards.

It said the survivors were "in very weak health condition" and were all under medical care.

Two of them, who were unconscious and in critical condition, had been flown to Sicily by helicopter for further treatment, the group added.

The remaining 23 are still on board the Ocean Viking, along with more than 200 other migrants who were rescued from two other boats.

The vessel is heading for the port of Ancona, about four days away, but the team has requested a closer port of safety.

"The people who were on the boat in distress, lost at sea for almost a week, went out of water and food very quickly, according to the survivors," said an SOS Méditerranée spokeswoman on board the ship.

"People died along the way. I met a man who lost his wife and one-and-a-half-year-old baby. The baby died the first day, the mother the fourth day. They were from Senegal and had been in Libya for more than two years."

The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said last week that 2023 was the deadliest year for migrants since records began a decade ago, with at least 8,565 people dying on migration routes worldwide.

The UN agency said the figure was 20% up on the year before.

Its report found that the Mediterranean crossing continued to be the most dangerous journey, with at least 3,129 deaths and disappearances during 2023 - the highest toll since 2017.

[mariacallous]

The Greek Coast Guard on Wednesday stated that at least 78 migrants have been found dead after a fishing boat was wrecked off Pylos, Peloponnese. So far, 104 migrants have been rescued.

A rescue operation took place in the early hours of the morning in international waters 47 nautical miles southwest of Pylos.

Italian authorities informed the Greek authorities about the boat, which was carrying a large number of migrants. The Greek media reported that about 400 people were on board. Other reports have put the number as high as 750.

The boat had been deported from Libya, bound for Italy. The migrants were not wearing life jackets.

The survivors have been taken to the port of Kalamata, in the Peloponnese, where a reception centre with first aid has been organized in collaboration with the General Secretariat of Civil Protection.

The fishing vessel was spotted on Tuesday by a EU border protection agency FRONTEX aerial vehicle and by two ships. A Greek boat sailed to the spot, while a helicopter took off at the same time.

In successive telephone calls to the fishing vessel, offering assistance, they received a negative response, stating the vessel’s desire to continue the voyage to Italy.

The boat later capsized and sank. Two patrol boats, a coast guard’s lifeboats, a frigate of the navy, seven ships sailing alongside, a helicopter of the navy, and an unnamed aerial vehicle are operating at the site of the investigations.

Six such shipwrecks with migrant victims have occurred in the first six months or so of 2023.

More than 70,000 refugees and migrants have arrived in Europe’s frontline countries this year, with the majority landing in Italy, according to UN data, the BBC reported Wednesday.

The European Court of Human Rights condemned Greece in July 2022 for violating the European Convention of Human Rights over the sinking of a migrant boat in 2014 in which 11 asylum seekers, among them eight children, lost their lives.

CNN journalist Christiane Amanpour asked Greek ex-PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis if he will order a full and independent investigation into a New York Times video allegedly showing Greek authorities illegally setting adrift some migrants in the Aegean. “I have already done so, Christiane. I take this incident very seriously. It is already being investigated by my government,” said Mitsotakis.

On 5 June, MEPs in the LIBE committee debated the situation in Greece with home affairs commissioner Ylva Johansson.

The European Union submitted an official request to Greece for an independent investigation into the pushbacks of refugees-immigrants after The New York Times video document.

[euginemicah]

Scores drown in Atlantic route migrant boat tragedy

A shipwreck this month, off the coast of Morocco this month leaves almost seventy people dead. By Linda Bordoni Survivors said there were 69 people on board the vessel that sank as they tried to reach Spain earlier this month. According to a statement released by Mali’s Minister for Malians Living abroad on Thursday, the migrants in the boat “numbered 80 at the start, with only 11 survivors.” “25…

[head-post]

4 migrants die as boat capsized off Greek island of Samos

At least four migrants died in the eastern Aegean Sea on Monday when a small boat carrying them from neighbouring Turkey sank near the island of Samos, Greek authorities reported.

The coast guard said five more people were rescued after the accident, but it was unclear how many were on the boat or if they were missing.

The bodies of the four women were recovered in a massive search and rescue operation involving three Coast Guard patrol boats, a private vessel and an Air Force helicopter. Crews also searched ashore in case survivors managed to make it to shore.

The Coast Guard said several migrants were later found on the island of Samos, but it was not immediately clear whether they were survivors of the shipwreck or had arrived separately. At least 30 migrants were initially on board the ship, according to the coastguard.

Greece was a favourite entry point into the European Union for migrants and refugees from the Middle East, Africa and Asia in 2015-2016, when about 1 million people landed on its islands, mostly in inflatable boats. The flow of people declined but increased again last year.

Read more HERE

[buttercupkg66]

A teenage girl was raped and strangled to death by an Iraqi migrant as the boat they were on sank in the Mediterranean, horrified witnesses have claimed, with the attacker surviving the shipwreck that saw dozens killed off Italy.

[alaturkanews]

Greece shipwreck survivors seek justice

It's been a year since a fishing trawler packed with migrants capsized off the Greek coast claiming some 750 lives. It remains, to this day, one of the deadliest boat disasters in the Mediterranean, and questions still linger over the tragedy. Abdulvehab Ejupi reports. Subscribe: http://trt.world/subscribe Livestream: http://trt.world/ytlive Facebook: http://trt.world/facebook Twitter:…

[tieflingkisser]

Over 180 migrants dead or missing in latest tragedy off Yemen, UN agency reports

At least 49 migrants have been killed, including many women and children, and a further 140 are missing after the boat they were on capsized off the coast of Yemen on Monday, the UN International Organization for Migration (IOM) has reported.

Some 260 people were abroad the vessel that had departed from Bossaso, in northeast Somalia, in the early hours of Sunday, bound for Yemen, about 330 kilometres (about 205 miles) away. “This recent tragedy is another reminder of the urgent need to work together to address urgent migration challenges and ensure the safety and security of migrants along migration routes,” Mohammedali Abunajela, IOM spokesperson, said in a news release on Tuesday. “Our thoughts are with the victims and their families as we remain committed to supporting survivors and improving search and rescue efforts in the region.” Search and rescue efforts are ongoing despite significant challenges due to a shortage of operational patrol boats, a situation further complicated by the ongoing conflict. Seventy-one people, including six children, have been rescued and are being supported by IOM. The agency has mobilized two mobile medical teams to provide immediate assistance, and its psychologists are providing mental health support. Local community members, including fishermen, played a crucial role in the aftermath by assisting with the recovery efforts and helping to lay the deceased to rest at a cemetery. The latest tragedy comes on the back of two separate shipwrecks on the same route along the coast of Djibouti, claiming the lives at least 62 migrants. There has been a sharp rise in migrants travelling from the Horn of Africa to Yemen, spurred by political and economic instability, alongside severe droughts and other extreme weather events in countries like Ethiopia and Somalia.

[keep reading]

[progressglobenews]

Jacobin:

The focus on arresting smugglers is not only misplaced on those trying to make the journey themselves, but is also a distraction from the facts of why so many people want to make these journeys, and why they are so dangerous. It is a distraction from the fact that Europe has spent years tightening regulations, pouring millions into border control agreements, and illegally pushing back as many people as possible.

[ausetkmt]

BBC.com: 60 migrants die in dinghy in Mediterranean, survivors say

At least 60 migrants have died after a rubber dinghy ran into trouble in the Mediterranean Sea, according to survivors.

The 25 survivors were picked up by the Ocean Viking, a vessel operated by the humanitarian group SOS Méditerranée.

They told their rescuers that they had set off from Zawiya on the Libyan coast several days before being rescued.

The engine of the dinghy broke down after three days, leaving the boat adrift without food or water.

The survivors said that the victims included women and at least one child. They are believed to have died from dehydration and hunger, not drowning.

SOS Méditerranée said the Ocean Viking team had spotted the dinghy, which set off last Friday, with binoculars on Wednesday and had staged a medical evacuation in co-operation with Italian coast guards.

It said the survivors were "in very weak health condition" and were all under medical care.

Two of them, who were unconscious and in critical condition, had been flown to Sicily by helicopter for further treatment, the group added.

The remaining 23 are still on board the Ocean Viking, along with more than 200 other migrants who were rescued from two other boats.

The vessel is heading for the port of Ancona, about four days away, but the team has requested a closer port of safety.

"The people who were on the boat in distress, lost at sea for almost a week, went out of water and food very quickly, according to the survivors," said an SOS Méditerranée spokeswoman on board the ship.

"People died along the way. I met a man who lost his wife and one-and-a-half-year-old baby. The baby died the first day, the mother the fourth day. They were from Senegal and had been in Libya for more than two years."

The EU's border agency Frontex told the BBC that it raised the alarm last Friday after spotting a vessel with more than 50 people onboard near the coast of Libya. It did not specify if it was the same rubber dinghy picked up by the Ocean Viking.

Frontex says one of its aircraft out on a routine trip spotted the vessel within Libya's rescue zone and so alerted the Libyan authorities.

The EU agency says it also issued a mayday alert to all other boats in the area to help the vessel - and contacted Italian and Maltese rescue coordination centres too.

Frontex says its aircraft needed to return to dry land to refuel and it didn't know what happened to the vessel after the initial observation.

The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said last week that 2023 was the deadliest year for migrants since records began a decade ago, with at least 8,565 people dying on migration routes worldwide.

The UN agency said the figure was 20% up on the year before.

Its report found that the Mediterranean crossing continued to be the most dangerous journey, with at least 3,129 deaths and disappearances during 2023 - the highest toll since 2017.

Julia Black, a IOM Project manager, told the BBC that "not as many people are crossing now but almost as many people are dying".

"With the 300 deaths recorded this year so far that's nearly the same as last year, so I am greatly concerned that we are going to see a record-breaking year in terms of the number of deaths in the Mediterranean."

[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. 

[mariacallous]

Greece’s minister for migration blamed people-traffickers for the latest fatal incident off the country’s coast, as the search continued on Thursday for migrants who went missing when their boat sank near the island of Samos in the northern Aegean Sea.

So far 16 people have been rescued and four dead bodies found – two of them children. An offshore patrol vessel, a coast guard vessel, a rescue team vessel and land forces have been participating in the rescue operation.

Greece’s public broadcaster ERT reported that a dinghy carrying an unknown number of people ran aground on rocks at almost exactly the same spot as an earlier boat sank on Monday. Eight people died in Monday’s incident, six of whom were children, while another 36 were rescued alive.

“It is always estimated that bad weather conditions also play a role, however, in late November, as we approach December, the weather at sea worsens and therefore all this activity carried out by criminal organisations becomes more risky,” Greek Migration and Asylum Minister Nikos Panagiotopoulos told SKAI TV on Thursday.

“These people are responsible for loading a large number of people and children onto boats to transport them to the Greek islands. And in these weather conditions, the chances of an accident, a shipwreck with deaths, with drownings at sea are increased,” Panagiotopoulos added.

The International Organisation for Migration, IOM says the Eastern Mediterranean as an important maritime route used by migrants to enter Europe, involving journeys by sea from Turkey and, to a lesser degree, from Cyprus and Bulgaria.

The IOM has said that, so far, 1,933 people have died or gone missing in the Mediterranean, 102 of them in the Eastern Mediterranean.

The Eastern Mediterranean saw migrant numbers rise by 15 per cent in the first nine months of the year, to 45,600. September was the busiest time on the route, with 6,750 detections, compared to 5,600 detections in the Central Mediterranean, the EU border agency Frontex reported in a press release in October.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, UNHCR has said that so far this year, up until November 24, a total of 55,998 migrants reached Greece, 48,984 of whom arrived by sea.