By Sofia D., Red Phoenix correspondent, Minnesota.

On June 14, a fishing boat containing around 750 refugees from Syria, Egypt, Pakistan, and Palestine capsized off the coast of Greece, killing up to 650 people on board. The blame for the massacre lies squarely with the Greek authorities, representing the larger fascistic and capitalistic factors which created the conditions for this situation. While the details are fuzzy, any plausible version of events points to this unavoidable conclusion.

The most charitable interpretation comes from the Hellenic Coast Guard who say they offered help but were rebuffed, the passengers instead preferring to go straight to Italy, and that the boat finally sank with an uneven distribution of passengers from a rush to grab the food and other resources offered by two merchant vessels. But the Greek authorities already have a reputation for refusing aid to migrants, or even actively stranding or sinking migrants, especially since 2020. The Coast Guard claimed that they had not been in physical contact with the fishing boat when it capsized, which is inconsistent with survivors’ testimonials.

The other interpretation, supported by testimony from the survivors, and consistent with the Greek authority’s practices in the last three years, is that the vessel drowned after the Coast Guard carelessly “aided” the boat into Italian waters, shifting the responsibility off of Greece and onto Italy. This policy is known as “pushbacks,” an illegal strategy for shirking the “responsibility to rescue.” In this particular instance, the Coast Guard seems to have attempted to quickly tow the unstable boat out of Greek waters, resulting in the loss of balance and subsequent capsizing.

In either case, the Hellenic Coast Guard neither attempted an actual rescue mission, nor offered any real aid in reaching Italy. Rather, they left the task of solidarity and aid to the under-equipped merchant vessels Lucky Sailor and Faithful Warrior, under the umbrella of ‘Search and Rescue Greece.’ The logs from Faithful Warrior corroborate that the ship was aiming for Italy, and that the captain refused Greek assistance. At this point the Coast Guard should have mobilized to properly assist the vessel and the passengers on board. Instead they engaged either in a sloppy and deadly mishandling of the ship, or an equally deadly complete non-engagement.

These actions are representative of Greece’s new general policy towards migrants, which is to contain the flow of refugees. This policy has a threefold origin:

(1) The chauvinistic refusal of many European nations to take on refugees, which for many years placed Greece in a position of accepting refugees from war, leading to an over exertion of Greece’s capacity to house and process migrants;

(2) The refusal of the European Union to offer adequate aid to Greece regarding the refugees;

(3) Rising nationalism due mainly to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the deepening crisis of capitalism which fans the flames of the already-reactionary government. In this regard, Greece’s once unique place in the European Union as an open door for migrants and refugees has shifted, with the nation now in an analogous position to any other EU country. This conclusion is supported by the rapidly decreasing number of migrants and refugees able to get into Greece.

The stagnating and crisis-laden economies of Europe are unwilling to sacrifice their profits for humanitarian purposes. They instead turn to nationalism and reaction, blaming the unstable and flickering economies on migrants. But the real thieves are the capitalist class which exploits and ruins these countries, creating economic desperation, while stoking the energy crisis and fanning the flames of climate change. It is this exploitation which creates the phenomenon of such refugees in the first place. They flee to Europe not because of some inherent economic and cultural “superiority,” but rather, because of the predictable and inevitable consequences of imperialism’s effects in their homelands. The conditions in Egypt, Syria, Pakistan, and Palestine are all the result of either the ruthless bourgeois crushing of legitimate national liberation struggles and socialist struggles, or inter-imperialist conflicts which destabilize these countries to extract profits.

As the flock of capitalism comes home to roost, the entire globe becomes mired in economic and political crises, and the workers and toilers suffer most of all with nowhere to turn. The capitalists observe this scene from their nest, vultures picking at a dying world. 

Categories: Greece, International