Greece: Court Hearing for Egyptian suspects in deadly migrant boat sinking postponed until Tuesday
Washington PostJul 03, 2023
The Facts
According to the European Union's border and coast guard agency, Frontex, Athens offered no response to an offer to send a plane to monitor the migrant boat that later sank. Authorities rescued 104 people, and 82 bodies have been salvaged from the wreck; UN agencies fear this is a fraction of up to 750 people who may have been on board.
The fishing boat left Libya in the early hours of June 13, with approximately 750 migrants on board. A plane operated by Frontex offered to monitor the situation, but never got an answer from Greek authorities who later said the ship had requested uninterrupted passage to Italy.
The Spin
Narrative A
Not only has Greece abandoned asylum-seekers fleeing from impoverished, war-stricken homelands, but it has also prosecuted activists attempting to alert authorities to the whereabouts of those headed toward its borders. The government is violating international law, and Athens should reallocate its resources toward defending the vulnerable instead of imprisoning them and those trying to help them.
Narrative B
While politically liberal European countries are the loudest proponents of open borders, under the current system of first-to-receive-first-to-deal-with, they don't bear nearly the same responsibility dealing with migration as Greece, Italy, and Malta. Hopefully, a new system of offering money per migrant rather than settling them will be passed — if not, the entire continent will soon be overwhelmed by migration on a scale it cannot cope with.
Establishment-critical narrative
The global community's biased focus on maritime disasters shows how much work there is to be done. There was round-the-clock media coverage of the Titanic submersible wreckage, but scant coverage of this horrific catastrophe in real-time. The global media and community of nations must work together to refocus attention on the regular and tragic maritime disasters whose victims are migrants from the Global South.
