Last month’s tragedy of the Adriana that capsized and sank off the coast of Greece, leading to the shocking death of 600 passengers, in large part women and children, finally has an explanation. It can no longer be shelved in the convenient category (convenient for European political leaders) where the only culprits are the crazed smugglers who jam migrants in floating wrecks in order to maximize their returns. We now have evidence beyond any shadow of a doubt that the Greek government is responsible for all those deaths, having failed to rescue them.
Reuters, two days ago, had already raised doubts, reporting that six witnesses had said the Greek Coast Guards contributed to the tragedy, by throwing a rope that capsized the migrants’ boat. Their statements predictably clashed with the public statements given by the Greek coastguard and government, denying that any rope had been thrown.
But today we finally have the whole picture, carefully put together by a New York Times investigation. And it amounts to a devastating case against the Greek authorities, drawing from satellite imagery, sealed court documents, more than 20 interviews with survivors and officials and recordings of radio signals transmitted in the final hours of the tragedy.
The conclusion? In the words of the Times journalists, Matina Stevis-Gridneff and Karam Shoumali, “the scale of death was preventable”. Note the term “scale of death”, it is a carefully chosen term that takes into consideration the special circumstances and the overloading of the Adriana.
It is the case, to be sure, that many deaths could have been expected even in a normal rescue operation, given the massive number of passengers carried by the Adriana, compounded by the absolute disregard displayed by the Egyptian smugglers for the safety of women and children assigned in the middle deck and tragically trapped in it when the ship capsized. They reportedly even beat back with belts any Pakistani migrant that tried escaping from the bottom hold to reach the deck - the only place where anyone had a chance to escape.
In the end, only 104 people were reportedly rescued while bodies still keep turning up.
But what comes out very clearly from the New York Times recounting of events is that the Greek government never treated the situation as a rescue: For the Greek authorities, it was a standard law enforcement operation. They never sent a navy hospital ship or rescue specialists; instead, they came with a team that included four masked armed men from a coast guard special operations unit.
For now, the Greek Ministry of Maritime Affairs told the New York Times it would not respond to detailed questions because the shipwreck was under criminal investigation, with a number of people, including the smugglers, arrested.
Last week in Brussels, the Greek Prime Minister once again repeated what the Greek authorities have said from the start: namely, that the Adriana was sailing to Italy, and that the migrants did not want to be rescued. But satellite imagery and tracking data obtained by the New York Times show definitively that the Adriana was drifting in a loop for its last six and a half hours and wasn’t headed for Italy.
By Day 4, according to testimonies and interviews, six people in the hold of the ship, including at least one child, had died.
The next day, June 13, the captain sent a distress call to the Italian authorities in the expectation that the Italians would rescue them.
As the New York Times recounts it, the Italians immediately alerted Frontex, the European Union border agency, and a reconnaissance plane was sent out by midday. Reportedly, two German journalists touring the Frontex command center at that time noticed “images of a rusty blue fishing ship” in trouble on the screen. Frontex rushed the Adriana coordinates to the Greek authorities since it was in Greece’s search-and-rescue area. A helicopter was sent within two hours.
All the Greeks did by evening (7 pm) was to ask two nearby commercial tankers to bring the migrants water, food and diesel to continue their journey.
Read the rest of the story on Impakter, click here
Comments