Greek Coast Guard ignored SOS calls from deadly migrant boat sinking: NGO

By Ahmet Gencturk

ATHENS (AA) – The Greek Coast Guard allegedly ignored SOS calls from a migrant boat that sunk off southwestern Greece late Tuesday and early Wednesday, leaving 78 migrants dead and hundreds still missing, as documented by an NGO and reported by investigative news outlet Solomon.

The international NGO Watch the Med-Alarm Phone said it had contacted the Greek authorities at 17.53 p.m. (1453GMT) on Tuesday and told them the coordinates where the overloaded vessel was located, reported Solomon.

The NGO also told them there were some 750 people on board, including many women and children, and provided them with a phone number for contacting the passengers themselves.

The EU border agency Frontex, Greek Police headquarters, the Citizen Protection Ministry, and the regional coast guard command in the southwestern province of Kalamata were also duly informed.

Solomon said the Greek Coast Guard had actually been aware of the boat since the “early morning” Tuesday, and was, “according to its own log,” in contact with the vessel from as early as 2 pm local time (1100GMT).

The coast guard claimed that the boat did not request help and even rejected it when asked.

But Solomon said this approach was neither legal nor humanitarian, citing legal experts as saying: “Accepting a denial of rescue or other intervention by the GCG (Greek Coast Guard) could make sense only if the vessel carried a state flag, had proper documents, had a proper captain and was safe. None of these applies in the case of the sunk trawler.”

It added, “The fishing vessel was undoubtedly in a state of distress that mandated its rescue at the latest from the moment the Coast Guard received, through Alarm Phone, an SOS message, which was transmitted to the group by the passengers,” adding that the SOS is mentioned nowhere in the coast guard’s log.

Commenting on the deadly incident, Nora Markard, a senior international law human rights expert at Germany’s Munster University, said: “International law unambiguously states that, on receiving information ‘from any source’ that persons are in distress at sea, the master of a ship that is in a position to render assistance must ‘proceed with all speed to their assistance’.”

In recent years the Greek Coast Guard and border police have been implicated in dozens of incidents of mistreatment of asylum seekers, from illegally pushing back vulnerable people in boats at sea to stripping, beating, and stealing from irregular migrants, leaving them naked and cold on the Turkish side of the shared border.

NGOs, European parliamentarians, and the Turkish government have called for investigations and accountability over the mistreatment.​​​​​​​