Mitsotakis blasts critics of migrant boat rescue operation
As Greek authorities continued to search, with diminished hopes, for victims and survivors of Wednesday’s sinking of a trawler carrying as many as 750 migrants, conservative leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis blasted criticism of the rescue operation, by opposition politicians and members of non-governmental organizations
Critics, Mitsotakis said at a campaign stop in the town of Sparta, should have turned their ire to traffickers, whom he called “human scum.”
“It is very unfair for some so-called ‘people in solidarity’ (with refugees and migrants) to insinuate that the (Coast Guard) did not do its job…These people are out there (around the clock) battling the waves to rescue human lives and protect our borders,” Mitsotakis said during an election campaign event in Sparta.
Mitsotakis, the favorite to win a second four-year term in elections on June 25, attacked the main opposition Syriza for its own record on migration while in government.
“Those who today appear as the so-called authentic humanitarians are those who allowed detention camps such as Moria to exist. The same who, a few days ago, were condemned by the European Court of Human Rights for the wretched conditions at Moria.”
The notoriously overcrowded migrant camp of Moria, on the island of LesVos, across from the Turkish coast, opened in January 2013 under a three-party coalition government led by New Democracy, saw its population swell during the great migration crisis of 2015. It operated throughout the Syriza government of 2015-19 and burned down in September 2020. Just before it did, it was estimated that 20,000 lived in a camp designed to accommodate 3,000.
Mitsotakis also attacked Syriza for “opening the doors to millions of people” in 2015 and defended his own more restrictive policies, vowing to continue them.
“We followed a different migration policy…fair and strict, of monitoring and guarding our borders. A policy which resulted in illegal crossings dropping 90 percent,” he told the crowd.
he Greek coast guard announced early Saturday afternoon that one Greek Navy frigate and four other vessels are operating 47 nautical miles (54 miles; 87 kilometers) southwest of the town of Pylos in Greece’s southwest. Earlier, two helicopters from the navy and coast guard had joined the operation, the coast guard said.
The resCue operation is taking place in rough seas, with near gale-force winds, and in some of MediterraneaN’s deepest waters. at over 5,000 meters (16,400 ft).
To date, 104 survivors have been rescued and 78 bodies have been retrieved from among the passengers of the trawler that carried as many as 750 men, women and children from Syria, Egypt, the Palestinian territories and Pakistan. No survivors or bodies have been found since Wednesday, the day of the accident.
The survivors have been taken to a migrant reception center outside Athens. A few have been visited by relatives residing in other European countries.
The Egyptian embassy in Athens on Saturday shared a list of 43 Egyptian migrants, including minors, who survived the shipwreck. The survivors are all men from Cairo and the Nile Delta provinces of Sharqia and Menofia, the list shows. The embassy said the list was provided by Greek authorities.
A successful rescue operation took place Saturday in Italy where a coast guard vessel from the port of Roccella, in Calabria, rescued 96 migrants on a sailboat in difficulty, more than 100 nautical miles (115 miles; 185 kilometers) off the port. The turbulent seas made the rescue diffIcult but, with the assistance of a Portuguese coast guard vessel operating for Frontex, the European Union’s border agency, and several commercial vessels, the rescue was completed.
On Friday, Italian authorities had informed their Greek counterparts of the presence of a sailboat near where Wednesday’s disaster took place. The Greek coast guard monitored the sailboat, which was proceeding normally. A spokesperson could not verify it was the same boat that was rescued off Italy Saturday but assumed it was.
———————
Sam Magdy in Cairo and Nicole Winfield, in Rome, contributed to this report.
[AP]
