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The Guardian view on danger at sea: The contrast between the frantic hunt for a missing submersible and the failure to save migrants drowning in the Mediterranean is illuminating (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 2 years ago by alyaza@beehaw.org to c/news@beehaw.org

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A massive operation is under way to find and save a stricken vessel and its passengers. As time passes, anxious families and friends wait with growing fear. The US coastguard, Canadian armed forces and commercial vessels are all hunting for the Titan submersible, which has gone missing with five aboard on a dive to the wreck of the Titanic in the north Atlantic. The UK’s Ministry of Defence is also monitoring the situation.

It is hard to think of a starker contrast with the response to a fishing boat which sank in the Mediterranean last week with an estimated 750 people, including children, packed onboard. Only about 100 survived, making this one of the deadliest disasters in the Mediterranean. Greece and the EU blame people smugglers, who overcrowd boats and abuse those aboard them. But both have profound questions to answer about their own role in such disasters. Activists say authorities were repeatedly warned of the danger this boat faced, hours before it went down, but failed to act.

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[–] Lowbird@beehaw.org 11 points 2 years ago (10 children)

I'm glad this article exists; this has been bothering me. Specifically, I'm bothered that, while aljazeera featured the stories about the boat of refugees as and after it was happening, I haven't seen it crop up in U.S. news at all. One of the deadliest disasters in the Mediterranean, and... crickets.

Then a submersible with a handful of white rich lads gets lost and it's all over the papers and all anyone can talk about.

To be fair, part of this is the fact that the submersible story has a lot of wild and novel details to it, plus the novel "oh god imagine being trapped in a submarine" fear factor, that make it great for getting attention and clicks, but nevertheless.

The other part of it is that people see "poor, brown refugees drowned at sea in the Mediterranean, once again" and feel completely disconnected from that and glaze over. The refugees don't get the same automatic "what would that feel like if it were me" empathizing, and the situation doesn't get the same scrutiny of rescue details and chances and what exactly went wrong that resulted in hundreds and hundreds of innocent people drowning at sea.

And they were in a BOAT. They knew where the boat was. The boat was reachable. They just let them die.

It's true that we're talking about different countries and different organizations, but this is a recurring pattern. Refugees are being systematically and repeatedly allowed to drown when they are very near to people who could help them. Other people get prioritized and rescued like they're kings.

[–] PotentiallyAnApricot@beehaw.org 2 points 2 years ago (5 children)

Systematically being the key word. There is no way to claim that what keeps happening to boats carrying migrants is accidental. It's a policy decision. So awful.

[–] Exilfranke@feddit.de 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

It is a policy decision. And sadly, it is a pretty popular one. Rescuing these people would mean that the rescuing country needs to grant them asylum. Doing so would incentivize more refugees to choose this dangerous path as it would be a passage to Europe.

This is one of the reasons why the far right political parties in Italy are so successful. They promise Italians that they would stop this type of immigration. And the rest of the EU accepts this quietly because it solves their own issues with immigration.

[–] PotentiallyAnApricot@beehaw.org 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

It's infuriating. I think that tacitly allowing people to be hurt or die for personal/political gain is one of the worst things a human being can do. And yet so many people - from fascists to liberals- seem to be on board. It's so normalized. It's the same at every border. Completely preventable. Completely unnecessary. Insane that "I don't want those people moving here so let them die instead" is seen as a normal and politically centrist take.

[–] Novman@feddit.it 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

You are right. The social situation with migrants ( mostly MENA ) is so bad that people is infuriating with far-right cause the number of migrants entering by sea is higher than previous government. The people read english and starting to blame european unions and mostly american government to force us to accept migrants cause their ideology. They see far-right government as a sort of a puppet of foreign interest. They say: why you send weapons to ukraine when we have an actual invasion and you help them? I understand that americans have different views, european point of view is starting to become really really different.

[+] NuPNuA@lemm.ee 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

[deleted]

[–] PotentiallyAnApricot@beehaw.org 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Disagree. There are no adequate proper channels, and at least in my country those have been narrowed and obstructed and restricted out of existence. The process is deliberately expensive, difficult, overly beaurocratic, and inaccessible for most people - and a lot of countries don't take disabled folks or very poor people or [insert other indefensible reason]. Governments do that on purpose to prevent people from being able to come 'legally' at all. But presenting yourself at a border to request asylum is always legal under international law- that is a proper channel. So countries try to create ways to make that impossible, or very dangerous, or allow bad things to happen to those people, hoping it will dissuade people from coming to exercise their human rights. It doesn't work, and people die, and we all say "how sad but they had it coming". They didn't! As human beings we have a responsibility to help other human beings, even if they broke a rule we made up on purpose to criminalize them and make them seem less deserving of our help. Being personally annoyed at a group of people isn't a good enough reason to treat them the way most governments have. If they actually wanted people to immigrate "legally" instead, they'd open the borders and staff them adequately and fund programs for people to start their lives.

Edited for typos.

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