The European Union’s toughened approach to migration and border management has come in for criticism after hundreds of people were feared to have drowned in a shipwreck off the coast of Greece.
There were 104 survivors and 78 bodies were brought ashore after the packed fishing vessel capsized and sank about 80km from the southern coastal town of Pylos, though as many as 750 people were reported to have been on board.
Nine Egyptian men, aged between 20 and 40 years, were arrested over the shipwreck on Thursday evening. Greek authorities said they faced charges of negligent manslaughter, exposing lives to danger, causing a shipwreck and human trafficking.
As relatives of some of those who were on the ship frantically searched for their loved ones among the survivors, questions began to be asked about why a rescue operation had not been mounted in time.
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In a joint statement 10 NGOs including the International Rescue Committee, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Médecins Sans Frontières, and Oxfam demanded that “the EU must not be complicit in the loss of lives at sea”.
It said that the illegal forceful ejection of asylum seekers and “systematic failures to engage in search and rescue” had become “the EU’s de facto migration management policy”.
An image released by the Greek coast guard taken from a helicopter hours before the disaster showed the deck of the boat perilously crowded with people, several of whom can be seen waving for attention.
The Greek authorities have told journalists that those aboard had paid $4,500 to traffickers for a passage to Italy and that they refused help, saying they wanted to continue to their destination.
However the distress hotline Alarm Phone has said the boat had reported being in distress long before it sank and that it had notified coastguard authorities in Italy, Greece and Malta, as well as the EU border agency Frontex.
[ Sally Hayden: How has the mass drowning of people become normalised?Opens in new window ]
Frontex said it had detected the boat on Tuesday morning, and had informed “the competent Greek and Italian authorities”. It sank in the early hours of Wednesday.
Greek authorities have denied overseeing the forceful ejection of asylum seekers on its sea and land borders despite repeated accusations by rights groups and the UN. Greece’s ruling Conservative party won a landslide election last month after hardening its stance on migration, beefing up border patrols and building steel border walls.
Across the EU migration policy has hardened since the flows of people began to surge in 2015 due to the Syrian civil war, and the union has set aside joint funds to develop Frontex into its largest single body with a staff of 10,000 and the task of helping member states control their borders.
Last weekend European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen travelled to Tunisia, a key departure point for migrants, and offered €100 million in funding for border management and to help break “the cynical business model of smugglers and traffickers”.
Detected crossings of the central Mediterranean migration route reached a record level of 42,200 in the first four months of this year, Frontex said last month, accusing smuggling gangs of using “makeshift metal boats hastily assembled within hours of departure”.
A landmark deal to reform migration policy reached last week aims to relieve the pressure on the EU’s border states, and streamline asylum procedures and deportations.
But in a joint statement the International Organisation for Migration and the UN Refugee Agency UNHCR said that increasing safe migration pathways and boosting search and rescue capacities were essential, describing the Mediterranean as “the most dangerous migration route in the world”.
“The duty to rescue people in distress at sea without delay is a fundamental rule of international maritime law,” the statement read.
The UNHCR assistant high commissioner for protection, Gillian Triggs, appealed that “the EU must put safety and solidarity at the heart of its action in the Mediterranean”.
Irish Green Party MEP Grace O’Sullivan called the sinking “entirely predictable”, saying that “current policies in the EU and in Greece have contributed to this situation”.
