Refugees who survived the Samos shipwreck arrive in Piraeus, Athens. Demotix/Nikolas Georgiou. All rights reserved.Reading the mainstream press this past month, by any standards the reactions and commentaries on the latest slaughter of the innocents in the Mediterranean and Aegean has been especially sick. Even the self proclaimed liberal newspapers such as the British Guardian publish and promote ignorance. Helena Smith, the Guardian's reporter in Athens noted (Guardian 23 April 2015) that the migrants 'elect' to travel in the clapped out boats of the smugglers.
No they don't Helena. Are you stupid? You think that the refugees coming to Samos packed in rubber boats choose to come this way instead of on the daily ferry which now comes to the island from Turkey? The ferry costs about 35 euros. The refugees pay anything between 1500 and 4000 euros for the same journey. There is a safe way to come to Samos and to all the front line Greek islands that form this part of the wall to Fortress Europe (Lesbos, Chios, Kos, Rhodes ….). But let's not talk about this. Instead the EU is now talking of bombing the smugglers in north Africa and taking military action against the smugglers wherever they are in the Aegean and the Mediterranean. Frontex the private agency charged by the EU with guarding these borders has been going down this road for years. As we have said before living on Samos now means that Europeans soaking up the sun on their sunbeds do so to the sight and sounds of the militarised boats that patrol up and down our shores.
Let the refugees on the ferries and the smugglers will disappear soon enough, as will the patrol boats.
