this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2023
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I'm glad this article exists; this has been bothering me. Specifically, I'm bothered that, while aljazeera featured the stories about the boat of refugees as and after it was happening, I haven't seen it crop up in U.S. news at all. One of the deadliest disasters in the Mediterranean, and... crickets.
Then a submersible with a handful of white rich lads gets lost and it's all over the papers and all anyone can talk about.
To be fair, part of this is the fact that the submersible story has a lot of wild and novel details to it, plus the novel "oh god imagine being trapped in a submarine" fear factor, that make it great for getting attention and clicks, but nevertheless.
The other part of it is that people see "poor, brown refugees drowned at sea in the Mediterranean, once again" and feel completely disconnected from that and glaze over. The refugees don't get the same automatic "what would that feel like if it were me" empathizing, and the situation doesn't get the same scrutiny of rescue details and chances and what exactly went wrong that resulted in hundreds and hundreds of innocent people drowning at sea.
And they were in a BOAT. They knew where the boat was. The boat was reachable. They just let them die.
It's true that we're talking about different countries and different organizations, but this is a recurring pattern. Refugees are being systematically and repeatedly allowed to drown when they are very near to people who could help them. Other people get prioritized and rescued like they're kings.
while I certainly think the affluency of the victims is a factor it would be disingenuous to claim this is ALL it is.
For any regular occurrence, at some point apathy sets in. Car accidents are just not interesting to report after the hundreth time. If there were a dozen lost subs near the Titanic every year, I'm sure the story would lose it's luster too.
There's also the aspect that refugees are an ongoing and much more complex issue. You can't just save one ship of refugees. There will be another one in short order. And if you do save them all the question is what do you do with them? At the very least that'll cost you money. At worst it'll cost you political power. Are you going to realize what these people have gone through to get them to a point where they are willingly face these risks? Realizing that maybe something should be done about that is even costlier. And depending on the political landscape in your country most will just consider this "a self solving problem" anyway.
This is not to excuse what we're seeing. But we can't pretend that the stories should be covered the same. They aren't the same. One is much easier to cover than the other.
I see your point but just for the sake of discussion, try and change "refugees" with "people".
You should notice how all the other considerations simply are not worth the electricity used to transmit them on your screen.
I mean, in an ideal world that emotive argument would work. But this isn't an ideal world and that ignores all the additional baggage that comes with a country taking in these refugees/migrants loel housing, basic needs funding, healthcare, etc. This is on top of lots of European nations already suffering economically at the moment from the Covid fallout and the Ukraine situation. Just saying "we should save them as it's the right thing to do" is far to simple for the world we live in.
I agree with that. As I already said, what I wrote was not supposed to be an excuse but an explanation.
These people aren't citizens of the same countries though. Their country apparently didn't want to do anything and hoping random other countries take care of you is not a great plan. Countries have a duty to their citizens first, and nothing about the migrant situation helps Greece other than somehow convincing them not to come. The migrants are creating an emergency and expecting someone to come save them. Europe (nor the US) can't take care of their citizens right now - look at the news. Expecting them to expend resources for random other people is a fools errand.
And if it was just picking them up and dropping them somewhere safe like it would have been with the submarine that would be one thing, but that's not what you're asking is it? You want them to be taken in for the rest of their lives and likely supported while you have all the other problems expressed in this thread.
All of that is archaic nonsense that we could easily do better, but we waste our time and resources on a planet we are killing for no real reason other than "this is how we set things up centuries ago and people in power really find it helpful".
But then your morals I find absolutely disgusting.
For better or for worse, news outlets care about engagement. "50th boat full of migrants lost this year" won't get many clicks. "Billionaires in trouble under the sea" will. If you think these type of stories are under-reported, feel free to start your own blog or discussion forum.