Greek shipwreck: hi-tech investigation suggests coastguard responsible

Western countries spend a lot of time and money informing their populace that refugees aren’t human, they’re menaces. There’s plenty of narrative spin about how rapes increase with them, or how they don’t integrate into society properly, how their children can’t follow the new country’s laws and teachers can’t discipline them for fear of being called racist, how they breed too much and will soon take over our country, they steal jobs, etc etc etc.

I’m not surprised there’s not significant outcry when hundreds are drowned. Much of the population is already taught to view them as a threat to be eliminated.

Having talked to a few Greek people, it's seems that Greece is European only by their pure presence in the EU. Their police/military human-rights culture (or lack there of) seems at par with Tunisia, or maybe even worse.

I think most people have assumptions about EU countries where they just classify any EU country as the Netherlands. The article shows that this is not a case of a rogue coast-guard but that the whole system in Greece is rotten from the inside-out.

Oh man, I can't think of a single reason why an article written today wouldn't have caused widespread rioting yet. Not One.

But in seriousness, these incidents do historically [1] go through the court system. Unfortunately Greece tends to just get in trouble for not following proper procedure since they turn off video and etc which prevents getting enough evidence for a larger crime.

Let me know when Russia agrees to payout any penalty for its invasion of Ukraine.

[1]: https://www.infomigrants.net/en/post/41810/european-court-sl...

> yet there is no shred of outcry from the Western countries

It’s covered in both American and UK national news. The Guardian is a UK news media org.

Did this have good enough coverage in the EU, especially the conclusion?

In this case, they murdered children so it would be strange if this was ignored on the continent.

> Let that sink in for a moment.

awkward phrasing choice

Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal all have their own version of this (to a more or less limited extent) by virtue of being the Southern most countries in the union. It's an impossible position to be in and no matter how they try to deal with it it never works to anybody's satisfaction. The Greek coastguard seems to have a lot to answer for based on the evidence presented, but I somewhat doubt those 'Western countries' (of which they consider themselves part) are going to take action. Because if they did those Southern states could just throw up their hands and say 'if you know how to deal with this then you will have to show us'. And nobody is willing to take that up. Long term the only way to deal with it is to arrange for economic parity with the countries on the other side of the divide and that's not going to happen in the next 50 years, maybe not even in the next 100. But it worked well for Mexico and the United States right up to the point where Trump came to power, then it all went to pieces. But I do believe that that is the only way out and until then we will see one tragedy after another.

Europe has a strong xenophobic streak running through it at the moment, in each and every country there is a right-of-center party either ruling or gaining strength to the point that people are seriously worried they will be able to unite. Most of these campaign on fear-of-the-other and immigrants are obviously a very convenient scapegoat. Housing shortage, the social contract that has become unstable, school quality and so on, each and every problem is traced back to immigration, no matter how ridiculous the link. And it gets lapped up as gospel.

I'm all for getting to the bottom of this and bringing the Greek coastguard leadership as well as anybody that was on that boat to justice. But I cynically doubt that this will happen, and that even if it should happen that something fundamental will change.

When the EU replaced Italy's search & rescue-focussed Op Mare Nostrum in 2014 with it's border security-focussed Op Triton, deaths in the Mediterranean increased markedly, in some cases by as much as 1,600% between years.[0] This also led to a thriving coastal slave trade in Libya, to which Frontex happily return people if they are detected close enough that the Libyan Coast Guard can reach them first.

Whether this particular incident was intentional or accidental, and whether those responsible will be punished or not, the whole regime has been consciously constructed to produce exactly this kind of result.

To quote the book Necropolitics, by Achille Mbembe:

> In an increasingly Balkanized and isolated world, where are the most deadly migrant routes? It is Europe! Who claims the largest number of skeletons and the largest marine cemetery in this century? Again, it is Europe! The greatest number of deserts, territorial and international waters, channels, islands, straits, enclaves, canals, rivers, ports, and airports transformed into iron curtain technologies? Europe! And to top it all off, in these times of permanent escalation—the camps. The return of camps. A Europe of camps. Samos, Chios, Lesbos, Idomeni, Lampedusa, Vintimille, Sicily, Subotica—the list goes on.

[0]: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:UNHCR2.png#mw-jump...

Unfortunately this has already been happening for a decade or more since the NATO "intervention" in Libya and it has little to do with climate change.

It's already been happening. It will just keep growing.

> Two of the coastguard sources told the Guardian they believed towing was a likely reason for the boat capsizing. This would not be without precedent. In 2014, an attempt to tow a refugee boat off the coast of Farmakonisi cost 11 lives. Greek courts cleared the coastguard, but the European court of human rights passed a damning judgment in 2022.

One case in court - it happened before.

On the other hand, 'climate change' is the excuse used by rich countries for not building the infrastructure required to support increased migration.

And there's probably a significant overlap between the people calling for wide open borders and those who'd protest to block large infrastructure construction projects for environmental reasons.

Exactly this outcome was predicted decades ago and has been happening for at least ten years now.

Absolutely yes. If you do some envelope math about the scale of the problem, you realize it'll be a crisis like nothing we've ever faced before.

For example, in Bangladesh, 45% of the population (74m people) live within a meter of sea level. Bangladesh is in some ways like a huge Mississippi River delta.

Imagine what would happen if 74m people had to flee their homes... It's tough because humanity has never dealt with a migration on that scale. But the outcome will certainly be chaotic, there won't be supply chains to feed that many people let alone house them and provide sanitation. And in that level of chaos there will be military response and violence.

Blaming immigration into Europe on climate change seems like a stretch. It's about political and economic instability.

Unfortunately, probably 'yes'.

And the degree to which we have so far proven to be unable to solve problems at that scale doesn't give me high hopes that we'll deal with this gracefully. Adapt, move or die seem to be the options on the table and 'die' is the default option if you fail at the other two.

I would say that “such matters” are of much higher value to humankind than toiling on APIs and widgets in pursuit of profit for shareholders. Truly, immeasurably more valuable than the bullshit most of us work on. This would be like comparing the work of Upton Sinclair to that of Larry Ellison; but perhaps I’ve missed your point.

...you mean investigative journalism? Of such matters as the deaths of hundreds of people? Possibly at the fault of government officials?