Almost two months after nine children and three women from Afghanistan and Syria lost their lives in the Farmakonisi tragedy, the controversy surrounding the incident continues to rumble on in Greece, and across Europe.
As a result, a public debate is being organised in Brussels this week to discuss measures that the European Parliament and other EU institutions can take to improve the situation and treatment of migrants in Greece.
On January 20, 2013, a boat carrying twenty-eight Afghan and Syrian migrants capsized near the Greek island of Farmakonisi in the Dodecanese area of the Aegean Sea, while being towed by a Greek coastguard vessel.
In their statements to the representatives of the Greek office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, survivors of the tragedy insisted that the accident occurred as the coastguard pulled the boat at high speed towards the Turkish coast during a storm.
Survivors’ accounts also claim that coastguard officers refused to help them as the boat sank, and even stamped on the hands of people clinging to the Greek vessel.
The Greek coast guard, however, vehemently denies the accusations.
According to an official statement, it had been trying to tow the boat, which had broken down, to Farmakonisi - and not to Turkey - after receiving a distress signal.
It put out a fire on the stricken boat and rescued 16 people from the water, the statement said.
Despite the denials of the Greek authorities, the tragedy prompted Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, Nils Muižnieks, European Union Home Affairs Commissioner Cecilia Malmström, the UNHCR, and several non-governmental groups, to urge Greece to conduct an independent inquiry.
Earlier in January, Commissioner Muižnieks also called on Greek authorities to end collective expulsions of migrants and asylum seekers trying to reach Greece and to “carry out effective investigations into all recorded incidents.”
As a result, an independent investigation has been promised by the Greek foreign minister, Evangelos Venizelos. However, he refutes accusations of an “illegal repelling to Turkey.”
Venizelos instead called on Frontex, the EU’s border management agency, to step up its efforts to prevent vessels carrying undocumented migrants from leaving North Africa in particular in the first place.
Public debate
The debate due to be held in Brussels this Thursday is titled Migration Policy: A Push Back for Migrants rights in Greece.
Organised by the Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants (PICUM) in cooperation with Amnesty International, The European Network of Migrant Women, EAPN, ENAR and Médecins du Monde, it will examine EU migration policies and its impacts on migrants’ rights in Greece.
Nikos Chrysogelos, a Greek MEP for the Greens who is co-hosting Thursday’s debate, insists that whatever the result of the inquest, “we must say sorry as a country and as a government, because it happened and we must know what happened there, and who is responsible for that”.
He continues: “But I have to say that it is the responsibility of the government, but also of the European Union and the Commission, because if you ask a country to protect its borders and then at the same time, you say we need a humanitarian migration policy, then there is a conflict”.
Echoing the same sentiments, Kriton Arsenis, the Greek MEP for the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D), who is also co-hosting the debate alongside Maria Eleni Koppa MEP, also S&D, has asked for the review of the Dublin Agreement (which forces asylum seekers to remain in the first country they land in), so that the pressure caused by immigrants on Greece can be lowered.
The deaths of migrants and asylum seekers trying to reach European shores are a recurring tragedy.
Increased security along the Greece-Turkey land border in Evros, combined with regular patrols by Frontex, and the construction of a 12.5-kilometre fence, has rerouted flows of irregular migrants and asylum seekers, including those fleeing the conflict in Syria, to Aegean Sea islands.
As a result, since October 2013 more than 150 migrants, the majority of them asylum seekers from Syria, have perished in "push backs" – a policy pursued since traffickers began taking the treacherous sea route from the Turkish coast to the Greek isles following the construction of the metal barrier along the land border that divides the two neighbours.
Recently, the death of over 360 migrants and asylum seekers in a single shipwreck off the Italian island of Lampedusa last October, managed to focus Europe’s attention on boat migration.
But, according to Human Rights Watch, policy responses have concentrated on surveillance and deterrence, with few new measures to help prevent loss of life with prompt rescue, the assessment and provision of protection needs, or the guarantee of swift and safe disembarkation.
