Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on Friday railed against Europe’s failed response to the refugee crisis after at least 22 people were reported to have drowned in two separate shipwrecks, the latest in a series of deadly episodes in the Aegean Sea this week.
Addressing the Greek parliament in Athens, Tsipras criticized European leaders, saying they had not provided a safe alternative for the thousands of migrants and refugees trying to reach Europe by traveling in rickety boats across treacherous seas.
“The waves of the Aegean are not just washing up dead refugees, dead children,” he was quoted by The Associated Press (AP) as saying, but also “the very civilization of Europe.”
Photo: EPA
On Friday, 19 people were killed and 138 were rescued off the Greek island of Kalymnos, in the southeastern part of the Aegean Sea, the AP reported, citing the Greek Ministry of Merchant Marine, and at least three people died and three were missing after another boat sank off the island of Rhodes.
The past week has proved particularly lethal for migrants trying to make the short, but often dangerous journey to Greece from Turkey. Bad weather was cited in the sinking on Wednesday of a large wooden smuggling boat off the Greek island of Lesbos.
The death toll in that disaster rose to 16, the AP reported, with 274 reported rescued and one migrant missing.
Greece, debt-ridden and strained of resources, has found itself an unwanted center of the migration crisis. More than half a million migrants, buffeted by civil war and poverty in the Middle East and elsewhere, have poured into the country, often via Turkey, in hopes of moving on to wealthier and more welcoming European nations.
Although the EU has promised to provide some financial help, Greece has said that its creditors should weaken their demands for austerity to offset the country’s efforts to cope with the migration crisis.
Nevertheless, some countries, including Hungary, which has also been coping with a migrant influx, have blamed Greece for fanning the crisis by not adequately policing and securing its borders.
International Organization for Migration spokesman Joel Millman said that the group was very concerned about the situation, and that winter would make conditions for migrants even tougher. He said the Greek government had been helpful in dealing with the crisis, given the economic strain.
Although Greece has been the primary entry point for migrants, asylum seekers have been trying other routes.
On Friday, rescuers in Spain said they had found the bodies of four migrants who had died as they tried to sail to Spain from Morocco, the AP reported, and 35 others were missing.
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