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Greece boat disaster: Survivors blame Greek coastguard for tragedy (www.bbc.com)

submitted 1 year ago by homoludens@feddit.de to c/news

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[–] Lowbird 7 points 1 year ago

From the article:

The German non-governmental organisation Sea-Watch charters boats to rescue migrants and refugees in the Mediterranean. It said it does not have enough information yet to assess exactly what happened but its head of operations told us: "Towing an old vessel with hundreds of people on board in heavy seas is sure to fail and be a disaster.

"According to what we know from the pictures and the testimonies, it's not a safe way to rescue the people on the boat in distress."

Your headline puts all blame on the human traffickers and absolves the coast guard, but if the coast guard that is meant to rescue people instead caused, or even partially caused, their mass death, even if through incompetence, that is news. This was hundreds of people that died.

I haven't heard a single person defend the traffickers' actions, but it's much harder to fix that side of the problem than it is to determine how one's own nation responds. It's worthwhile to see news about things you can actually have a chance of doing something about.

Letting people die, allowing the coast guard to commit mass negligent homicide (or whatever it ends up called) without consequence or any attempt at reforming it, and denying all responsibility because someone else screwed the refugees over first would be absurd and morally bankrupt.

It'd be like finding someone bleeding out in an alley, and instead of calling an ambulance you stab them or punch them a couple times. That's still criminal as all hell, even if the person might have died anyway before you showed up.