MALAIKA MAHLATSI | Hero journalists expose asylum seekers' plight

The late former managing editor of Time magazine, Henry Anatole Grunwald, once said of journalism: “Journalism can never be silent. That is its greatest virtue and greatest fault. It must speak, and speak immediately, while the echoes of wonder, the claims of triumph and the signs of horror are still in the air.”

Over the past few weeks, independent journalists in Greece have been at war against European governments that have sought to sustain a campaign of untruths about asylum seekers and immigrants who perished at sea.

On June 14, a boat carrying an estimated 750 refugees sunk in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Greece. Most of the asylum seekers were fleeing from war-torn Syria, Egypt and Pakistan. Pakistan has been faced with violent political unrest after the arrest of former prime minister Imran Khan a month ago.

Only 104 people were rescued, with the number of recovered bodies standing at 82. The implication is that almost 600 people have lost their lives. This is one of the worst disasters that has ever occurred in the Mediterranean Sea, where numerous asylum seekers and immigrants die every year while trying to reach the shores of Europe from Africa and the Middle East.

In response to this horrific incident, the government of Greece, and indeed many governments across Europe, attempted to exonerate themselves by perpetuating the narrative that asylum seekers and undocumented immigrants who find themselves in peril in the high seas are principally responsible for their circumstances.

The Greek government further claimed that it did its best to help the asylum seekers and immigrants as soon as it became aware that their ship was sinking. Many European news outlets cemented this narrative, with some making debilitatingly racist and xenophobic commentary about the deceased persons.

But a courageous group of independent journalists in Greece decided to speak up, exposing the (in)actions of the Greek government, which intentionally ignored distress signals that were sent from the ship hours before it sank.

Along with human rights organisations, these journalists proved to the world that contrary to the official line that the Greek Coast Guard did not receive an SOS signal from the distressed boat, it did in fact receive it – as did the European Union border agency Frontex, Greek police headquarters, the citizen protection ministry, and the regional coast guard command in the southwestern province of Kalamata.

Though international law 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, this does not always happen where asylum seekers and undocumented immigrants are concerned.

There is evidence that European countries that are entry points through the Mediterranean Sea intentionally push back vessels carrying asylum seekers and immigrants, or delay in rendering aid when it is needed. The Greek Coast Guard in particular has been implicated in numerous incidents of abuse of asylum seekers, including stripping, beating and even stealing from them.

The world might have never known the truth about one of the worst maritime disasters in history had independent journalists and human rights defenders in Greece not insisted on speaking up even as their voices were initially being drowned out by the loud noises of government officials and state media that sought to tell blatant lies about vulnerable people whose only crime was to flee from war, violence, and economic and political instability.

Had the heroic men and women who let the truth out not done so, Greece and Europe broadly would have continued to present itself as just and humane towards asylum seekers. Now, the EU must confront its own shame and be honest about its complicity in the deaths that continue to happen in the Mediterranean Sea.

It must also confront its role in plundering and destabilising the countries whose people are left with no option but to flee, risking their lives in the unforgiving waters of a sea that is fast becoming the biggest graveyard for the poor.