It was a crime, it was murder, the drowning of 600 refugees in the Pylos shipwreck!
Over six hundred families in Pakistan, Egypt, Syria and Palestine are mourning the loss of their loved ones who were on board the ship Adriana and ended up at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea, off the coast of Pylos, Greece, on 14 June 2023.
We join our voices with the survivors of the shipwreck who denounce that their ship sank after it was overturned by the violent towing of a Coast Guard vessel in order to be pushed back to Italy. The ship left Libya on 9 June and there were already deaths on board due to the appalling conditions before it sank. For 16 hours, on 13 June 2023, the Coast Guard and Frontex watched 750 people in distress and did not carry out a rescue as they were obliged to do to save people in distress at sea.
Only 104 survived while 82 bodies were recovered. Over 600 refugees drowned in the shipwreck. It was murder!
It is the most horrific racist crime on borders of fortress Europe against people persecuted by dictatorships, wars and starvation; people who tried to escape certain death from bombs, torture, extermination in their countries. They had the right to receive asylum and hospitality, but were treated like all refugees and migrants: with fences, persecution by the Coast Guard, border guards and Frontex, concentration camps, pushbacks and murder.
The Greek government of the New Democracy, the champion in covering up the crime of Tempi, is trying to cover up the responsibilities of the Ministry of Shipping and the Coast Guard for the crime of Pylos, this time blaming nine survivors. Nine survivors are brought to trial on 21 May in Kalamata on charges of causing a shipwreck, migrant trafficking and criminal organisation.
We stand by the victims, the survivors and their families who are seeking justice, and to punish the real culprits, the government, the Coast Guard, Frontex. Closed border policies have cost over 20,000 drowned refugees in the Mediterranean since 2015 to date.
Such policies have been worsened under the new European Pact on Migration and Asylum. As Amnesty International has denounced, this pact will “lead to greater suffering, and put more people at risk of human rights violations”. Meanwhile, the British government is pushing ahead with its racist and inhumane plans to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda, thus breaching international human rights law.
It is racist policies like these that pave the way for the rise of the far right and fascists internationally, and contribute to the danger of them becoming even stronger in the European Parliament in the elections to be held on 6-9 June 2024. The link between racist migration policies and the far right is made clear by Fabrice Leggeri, who was the boss of Frontex, the EU border agency, from 2015 to 2022, when he resigned while under investigation for fraud. He directed FRONTEX while it authorised pushbacks by masked Greek security guards, leading to countless deaths in the Aegean Sea. Leggeri is now a member of Marine Le Pen’s fascist party RN, and one of their leading candidates for the EU elections.
We must finally put an end to the horrors of murder at the borders! All refugees —men, women and children— are welcome with rights and not with persecution.
We say it with all the power of our voice!
No cover-up of the crime of Pylos, punish the murderers, vindication of the victims of the shipwreck of Pylos! Refugees welcome! No to closed borders with fences, FRONTEX and their murderous pushbacks!
We support the mobilisation in Athens on 20 of May and in Kalamata on 21 May for the trial of the nine refugee survivors of the Pylos shipwreck.