7 ms·

Greek shipwreck: hi-tech investigation suggests coastguard responsible

65 points by j-a-a-p 3y ago

wiz21c 3y ago
Blender put to good use !
m_a_g 3y ago
All the eyewitnesses already said that the coastguard caused this, yet there is no shred of outcry from the Western countries. The Greek coastguard drowned 500 refugees and immigrants. Let that sink in for a moment.
- SamoyedFurFluff 3y ago
  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.
  - nachomg 3y ago
    That's a lie, a dangerous and hateful one. Which country promotes that, do you have any examples?
    - djbusby 3y ago
      Previous USA president spent a lot of time lamenting immigrants at the southern border.
      - ethanbond 3y ago
        In the US, the President is not the state.
        hobs 3y ago
        If you elect a fear mongering racist to the presidency people might be forgiven thinking its official policy, and when they are able to effect policy directly, its the state. https://www.aclu-wa.org/pages/timeline-muslim-ban https://www.aclu-wa.org/pages/timeline-muslim-ban - the USA's official policy was banning Syrian refugees "Without looking at the various polling data," Trump said in a statement, "it is obvious to anybody the hatred is beyond comprehension. Where this hatred comes from and why we will have to determine. Until we are able to determine and understand this problem and the dangerous threat it poses, our country cannot be the victims of horrendous attacks by people that believe only in Jihad, and have no sense of reason or respect for human life." This was in reference to a woman who was the wife of an accomplice from Pakistan.
    - SamoyedFurFluff 3y ago
      Plenty of extremely popular western media are constantly funneling money about the terrors of immigrants. It’s so popular that they have buzzwords: great replacement, caravan, sharia law, etc.
- csomar 3y ago
  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.
  - giraffe_lady 3y ago
    The assumption you're making that the netherlands couldn't or wouldn't do something similar is interesting. I don't know, maybe they wouldn't. France certainly would. Where is the border around "real EU, and thus incapable of atrocity" you're drawing?
    - jacquesm 3y ago
      I'm pretty sure they would. We have a pretty strong anti-immigrant movement here and if what happened at the IND and the tax office is any guidance I highly doubt our coastguard would be immune.
      - giraffe_lady 3y ago
        I believe so too. It's a neat arrangement for the northern countries that get to keep their hands clean and humanitarian reputations intact because places like greece and italy do it for them. But if they had to do it they would. The same attitudes and dynamics that allow this to happen in southern europe are also in place in northern europe.
        jacquesm 3y ago
        It's a textbook case of externalization. For the Northern countries it turns into a line item in the budget, otherwise they can pretend the problem isn't theirs.
  - m000 3y ago
- lesuorac 3y ago
  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-slams-greece-for-endangering-migrant-lives https://www.infomigrants.net/en/post/41810/european-court-sl...
- chaostheory 3y ago
  > 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.
  - open-source-ux 3y ago
    "Did this have good enough coverage in the EU, especially the conclusion?" From the Guardian report: > "The joint investigation by the Guardian, German public broadcaster ARD/NDR/Funk and Greek investigative outlet Solomon, in collaboration with Forensi" (Forensis is a Berlin-based research agency which investigates human rights violations)
- meepmorp 3y ago
  > Let that sink in for a moment. awkward phrasing choice
- LovinFossilFuel 3y ago
  [dead]
- jacquesm 3y ago
  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.
  - chaostheory 3y ago
    > 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. Caught many people off guard, but this disease has also spread to Canada. They’re just a lot more subtle about it compared to most Western countries. Maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise to us since one could argue that it likely spread from the US? However, on a whole we still don’t blame immigrants for housing shortages and job losses (yet).
- DicIfTEx 3y ago
  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-to-license https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:UNHCR2.png#mw-jump...
AndrewVos 3y ago
How absolutely horrifying. Is this the future we can expect from climate change? Murdering the people who try to escape the suffering we have inflicted upon them?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- init 3y ago
  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.
  - csomar 3y ago
    The NATO intervention has nothing to do with this. The previous dictator created the threat to dissuade the EU from removing him. Now that he's out of the picture, the inevitable happened. A good lesson is to stop propping dictators in exchange for short-term stability. Based on the current events, the EU did not learn that lesson.
    - atlantic 3y ago
      No, the lesson is to stop interfering in other countries' internal affairs. The so-called refugees all originate from countries that suffered western military operations. "Humanitarian" intervention is the new colonialism.
      - sharikous 3y ago
        Pakistan did not suffer "Western military operations", at least not recently and at a big scale, and half of the refugees in the ship were probably Pakistani. "Humanitarian" intervention has always been an excuse to conquer, at least from the times of the Persian Empire or so. And there have been refugee waves wherever there had been war and famine - that is all over the globe, with nothing explicitly indicating the "western interventions" are outsiders
quazar 3y ago
Do these people have really have nothing better to do than doing "high-tech investigations" of such matters?
- frank_nitti 3y ago
  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.
- torsday 3y ago
  ...you mean investigative journalism? Of such matters as the deaths of hundreds of people? Possibly at the fault of government officials?
4booru 3y ago
[dead]
rkangel 3y ago
I have personal experience with Greece trying very hard to manage the public impression of safety in Greek waters. They understand that tourism is a key source of income do do some positive things try and keep it safe but they will also go to lengths to hide places where it might look bad. The event I'm talking about is this one: https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/mar/22/world.travelnews https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/mar/22/world.travelnews (an article which seems got the detail mostly right, which is unusual for anything I have direct knowledge of). I worked in that same resort teaching sailing the subsequent year (while legal proceedings were still pending), working with almost everyone named in the article. So from them and speaking to the RYA I have some detail (that I'm confident in) as to what happened. It was light winds, and three girls were sailing a catamaran and for a bit of fun were trapezing on both sides of the boat. The boat capsized and turned completely over. One of the girls ended up under the boat, became entangled in the trapeze wire and got her trapeze hook caught in the trampoline (canvas 'deck' of the catamaran). This meant that she was trapped underwater, and held there by various bits of metal that couldn't easily be cut. The rescue boats got there pretty quickly, but couldn't get her out. Colin gave her oxygen mouth to mouth while she slowly drowned. This was a pretty freak accident. There were some improvements to general safety procedures that came out of it (carry heavy duty wire snips in rescue boats, training in how to rapidly right boats that had turtled, also some trapeze harness designs that release the hook), but I can't see anything that the beach or rescue teams did wrong. If the same incident had happened at almost any other watersports centre the results would have been the same. That didn't stop the Greek's from prosecuting (and finding guilty) the watersports manager and deputy manager for negligence. From what we can tell that was politically motivated because it was a story that gained publicity and Greece wanted to protect the reputation of their watersports industry.
sneak 3y ago
"hi-tech investigation" - or maybe just listen to the survivors who were actually there who said that the Greek coast guard connected to, and capsized, their boat? It's good to have more evidence but this is additional - we already know this is a case of mass murder by a government.

65 points by j-a-a-p 3y ago

Blender put to good use !

All the eyewitnesses already said that the coastguard caused this, yet there is no shred of outcry from the Western countries. The Greek coastguard drowned 500 refugees and immigrants. Let that sink in for a moment.

SamoyedFurFluff 3y ago
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.
- nachomg 3y ago
  That's a lie, a dangerous and hateful one. Which country promotes that, do you have any examples?
  - djbusby 3y ago
    Previous USA president spent a lot of time lamenting immigrants at the southern border.
    - ethanbond 3y ago
      In the US, the President is not the state.
      - hobs 3y ago
        If you elect a fear mongering racist to the presidency people might be forgiven thinking its official policy, and when they are able to effect policy directly, its the state. https://www.aclu-wa.org/pages/timeline-muslim-ban https://www.aclu-wa.org/pages/timeline-muslim-ban - the USA's official policy was banning Syrian refugees "Without looking at the various polling data," Trump said in a statement, "it is obvious to anybody the hatred is beyond comprehension. Where this hatred comes from and why we will have to determine. Until we are able to determine and understand this problem and the dangerous threat it poses, our country cannot be the victims of horrendous attacks by people that believe only in Jihad, and have no sense of reason or respect for human life." This was in reference to a woman who was the wife of an accomplice from Pakistan.
  - SamoyedFurFluff 3y ago
    Plenty of extremely popular western media are constantly funneling money about the terrors of immigrants. It’s so popular that they have buzzwords: great replacement, caravan, sharia law, etc.
csomar 3y ago
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.
- giraffe_lady 3y ago
  The assumption you're making that the netherlands couldn't or wouldn't do something similar is interesting. I don't know, maybe they wouldn't. France certainly would. Where is the border around "real EU, and thus incapable of atrocity" you're drawing?
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    I'm pretty sure they would. We have a pretty strong anti-immigrant movement here and if what happened at the IND and the tax office is any guidance I highly doubt our coastguard would be immune.
    - giraffe_lady 3y ago
      I believe so too. It's a neat arrangement for the northern countries that get to keep their hands clean and humanitarian reputations intact because places like greece and italy do it for them. But if they had to do it they would. The same attitudes and dynamics that allow this to happen in southern europe are also in place in northern europe.
      - jacquesm 3y ago
        It's a textbook case of externalization. For the Northern countries it turns into a line item in the budget, otherwise they can pretend the problem isn't theirs.
- m000 3y ago
lesuorac 3y ago
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-slams-greece-for-endangering-migrant-lives https://www.infomigrants.net/en/post/41810/european-court-sl...
chaostheory 3y ago
> 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.
- open-source-ux 3y ago
  "Did this have good enough coverage in the EU, especially the conclusion?" From the Guardian report: > "The joint investigation by the Guardian, German public broadcaster ARD/NDR/Funk and Greek investigative outlet Solomon, in collaboration with Forensi" (Forensis is a Berlin-based research agency which investigates human rights violations)
meepmorp 3y ago
> Let that sink in for a moment. awkward phrasing choice
LovinFossilFuel 3y ago
[dead]
jacquesm 3y ago
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.
- chaostheory 3y ago
  > 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. Caught many people off guard, but this disease has also spread to Canada. They’re just a lot more subtle about it compared to most Western countries. Maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise to us since one could argue that it likely spread from the US? However, on a whole we still don’t blame immigrants for housing shortages and job losses (yet).
DicIfTEx 3y ago
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-to-license https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:UNHCR2.png#mw-jump...

AndrewVos 3y ago

How absolutely horrifying. Is this the future we can expect from climate change? Murdering the people who try to escape the suffering we have inflicted upon them?

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
init 3y ago
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.
- csomar 3y ago
  The NATO intervention has nothing to do with this. The previous dictator created the threat to dissuade the EU from removing him. Now that he's out of the picture, the inevitable happened. A good lesson is to stop propping dictators in exchange for short-term stability. Based on the current events, the EU did not learn that lesson.
  - atlantic 3y ago
    No, the lesson is to stop interfering in other countries' internal affairs. The so-called refugees all originate from countries that suffered western military operations. "Humanitarian" intervention is the new colonialism.
    - sharikous 3y ago
      Pakistan did not suffer "Western military operations", at least not recently and at a big scale, and half of the refugees in the ship were probably Pakistani. "Humanitarian" intervention has always been an excuse to conquer, at least from the times of the Persian Empire or so. And there have been refugee waves wherever there had been war and famine - that is all over the globe, with nothing explicitly indicating the "western interventions" are outsiders

quazar 3y ago

Do these people have really have nothing better to do than doing "high-tech investigations" of such matters?

frank_nitti 3y ago
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.
torsday 3y ago
...you mean investigative journalism? Of such matters as the deaths of hundreds of people? Possibly at the fault of government officials?

4booru 3y ago

[dead]

rkangel 3y ago

I have personal experience with Greece trying very hard to manage the public impression of safety in Greek waters. They understand that tourism is a key source of income do do some positive things try and keep it safe but they will also go to lengths to hide places where it might look bad. The event I'm talking about is this one: https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/mar/22/world.travelnews https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/mar/22/world.travelnews (an article which seems got the detail mostly right, which is unusual for anything I have direct knowledge of). I worked in that same resort teaching sailing the subsequent year (while legal proceedings were still pending), working with almost everyone named in the article. So from them and speaking to the RYA I have some detail (that I'm confident in) as to what happened. It was light winds, and three girls were sailing a catamaran and for a bit of fun were trapezing on both sides of the boat. The boat capsized and turned completely over. One of the girls ended up under the boat, became entangled in the trapeze wire and got her trapeze hook caught in the trampoline (canvas 'deck' of the catamaran). This meant that she was trapped underwater, and held there by various bits of metal that couldn't easily be cut. The rescue boats got there pretty quickly, but couldn't get her out. Colin gave her oxygen mouth to mouth while she slowly drowned. This was a pretty freak accident. There were some improvements to general safety procedures that came out of it (carry heavy duty wire snips in rescue boats, training in how to rapidly right boats that had turtled, also some trapeze harness designs that release the hook), but I can't see anything that the beach or rescue teams did wrong. If the same incident had happened at almost any other watersports centre the results would have been the same. That didn't stop the Greek's from prosecuting (and finding guilty) the watersports manager and deputy manager for negligence. From what we can tell that was politically motivated because it was a story that gained publicity and Greece wanted to protect the reputation of their watersports industry.

sneak 3y ago

"hi-tech investigation" - or maybe just listen to the survivors who were actually there who said that the Greek coast guard connected to, and capsized, their boat? It's good to have more evidence but this is additional - we already know this is a case of mass murder by a government.