Greece: hundreds of people drowned in a shipwreck

Once again the borders of the European Union (EU) they are stained with death, this time in the Ionian Sea. A great movement is needed in defense of migrants. Capitalist imperialism leads to barbarism.

During the early hours of Wednesday 14 June there was a new shipwreck off the Greek coast, atIonian Sea. On this occasion an old fishing boat sank with hundreds of people on board. He had sailed from Egypt and stopped in the Libyan city ofTobruk, where the migrants boarded, who sailed for five days before sinking.

Terrifying figures of dead and missing

Until Thursday 15, they had been found 78 corpses and 104 survivors. According to estimates of the people who were saved, in the fishing boat there were some 750 people. The figures indicate that there are hundreds of people missing at sea. There were Syrian immigrants on the crashed ship, egyptians, Pakistanis and Palestinians. The doctor Manolis Makaris, head of Cardiology at Kalamata Hospital (the city closest to the shipwreck) cared for many survivors. And he conveyed to the ERT network the terrifying testimony of a survivor who saw “one hundred children in the hold” of the ship., where women also traveled.

murderous cynicism

Greek authorities declared three days of mourning and detained nine Egyptians, among whom would be the captain of the boat, on charges of human trafficking. And the Greek Supreme Court ordered the opening of an investigation to clarify responsibilities. The Athens government claimed that the migrants rejected the help of the coast guard. They are cynical. Athens has been carrying out hot returns of migrants seeking asylum for years and is reluctant to provide humanitarian aid at sea. The concrete thing is that the Greek coast guard approached the fishing vessel overloaded with people in international waters, He filmed it before it was shipwrecked and did nothing to help people in an emergency to save their lives..

Borders of death

Such brutalities are not exceptions, are repeated inSpain, France, Italy YGreece, among other countries. It is the disastrous result of the construction of “Fortress Europe” by the authorities of the European Union, the governments that make up it and its neighboring gendarmes, like Morocco and Türkiye. Greater or lesser extent, They are all necessary accomplices in shielding the external and internal borders of the imperialist bloc.. They do it to prevent the entry of desperate people fleeing wars., of repressive regimes, of hunger and poverty. In the EU there are no “advanced democracies”, but a Block made up of governments insensitive to the human rights of African immigrants, Asians and other regions of the world.  

In defense of migrants

It is necessary to generate a large unitary movement so that there are no more deaths at the borders, punish those responsible for so many avoidable tragedies and for themigrant rights. The land and sea borders of the rich European Union are being built by piling up the corpses of thousands of people who only want a better life.. It is a repeated example of the barbarism to which the system of capitalist imperialism leads.. We must defeat them to build a world without borders, with full social and democratic rights, something that can only come from the hand of socialism.