Having talked to a few Greek people, it's seems that Greece is European only by their pure presence in the EU. Their police/military human-rights culture (or lack there of) seems at par with Tunisia, or maybe even worse.

I think most people have assumptions about EU countries where they just classify any EU country as the Netherlands. The article shows that this is not a case of a rogue coast-guard but that the whole system in Greece is rotten from the inside-out.

The assumption you're making that the netherlands couldn't or wouldn't do something similar is interesting. I don't know, maybe they wouldn't. France certainly would. Where is the border around "real EU, and thus incapable of atrocity" you're drawing?

I'm pretty sure they would. We have a pretty strong anti-immigrant movement here and if what happened at the IND and the tax office is any guidance I highly doubt our coastguard would be immune.

I believe so too. It's a neat arrangement for the northern countries that get to keep their hands clean and humanitarian reputations intact because places like greece and italy do it for them.

But if they had to do it they would. The same attitudes and dynamics that allow this to happen in southern europe are also in place in northern europe.

It's a textbook case of externalization. For the Northern countries it turns into a line item in the budget, otherwise they can pretend the problem isn't theirs.

The EU is very much complacent with the current situation. There will be condemnation, but administrations across EU are very happy for having offloaded the dirty work to Greece and Italy.

And funny that you mention the Netherlands, because the Dutch government just resigned because the PM could not pass legislation to further restrict the number of asylum-seekers [1]. If Rutte is so hell-bent for that kind legislation while 2.000km away from the epicenter of the problem, one cannot imagine he would be the paragon of humanism, were the Netherlands closer to it.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-66139789

Western countries spend a lot of time and money informing their populace that refugees aren’t human, they’re menaces. There’s plenty of narrative spin about how rapes increase with them, or how they don’t integrate into society properly, how their children can’t follow the new country’s laws and teachers can’t discipline them for fear of being called racist, how they breed too much and will soon take over our country, they steal jobs, etc etc etc.

I’m not surprised there’s not significant outcry when hundreds are drowned. Much of the population is already taught to view them as a threat to be eliminated.

That's a lie, a dangerous and hateful one. Which country promotes that, do you have any examples?

Previous USA president spent a lot of time lamenting immigrants at the southern border.

In the US, the President is not the state.

If you elect a fear mongering racist to the presidency people might be forgiven thinking its official policy, and when they are able to effect policy directly, its the state.

https://www.aclu-wa.org/pages/timeline-muslim-ban - the USA's official policy was banning Syrian refugees

"Without looking at the various polling data," Trump said in a statement, "it is obvious to anybody the hatred is beyond comprehension. Where this hatred comes from and why we will have to determine. Until we are able to determine and understand this problem and the dangerous threat it poses, our country cannot be the victims of horrendous attacks by people that believe only in Jihad, and have no sense of reason or respect for human life."

This was in reference to a woman who was the wife of an accomplice from Pakistan.

Plenty of extremely popular western media are constantly funneling money about the terrors of immigrants. It’s so popular that they have buzzwords: great replacement, caravan, sharia law, etc.

Oh man, I can't think of a single reason why an article written today wouldn't have caused widespread rioting yet. Not One.

But in seriousness, these incidents do historically [1] go through the court system. Unfortunately Greece tends to just get in trouble for not following proper procedure since they turn off video and etc which prevents getting enough evidence for a larger crime.

Let me know when Russia agrees to payout any penalty for its invasion of Ukraine.

[1]: https://www.infomigrants.net/en/post/41810/european-court-sl...

> yet there is no shred of outcry from the Western countries

It’s covered in both American and UK news.

Did this have good enough coverage in the EU, especially the conclusion?

In this case, they murdered children so it would be strange if this was ignored on the continent.

"Did this have good enough coverage in the EU, especially the conclusion?"

From the Guardian report:

> "The joint investigation by the Guardian, German public broadcaster ARD/NDR/Funk and Greek investigative outlet Solomon, in collaboration with Forensi" (Forensis is a Berlin-based research agency which investigates human rights violations)

> Let that sink in for a moment.

awkward phrasing choice

Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal all have their own version of this (to a more or less limited extent) by virtue of being the Southern most countries in the union. It's an impossible position to be in and no matter how they try to deal with it it never works to anybody's satisfaction. The Greek coastguard seems to have a lot to answer for based on the evidence presented, but I somewhat doubt those 'Western countries' (of which they consider themselves part) are going to take action. Because if they did those Southern states could just throw up their hands and say 'if you know how to deal with this then you will have to show us'. And nobody is willing to take that up. Long term the only way to deal with it is to arrange for economic parity with the countries on the other side of the divide and that's not going to happen in the next 50 years, maybe not even in the next 100. But it worked well for Mexico and the United States right up to the point where Trump came to power, then it all went to pieces. But I do believe that that is the only way out and until then we will see one tragedy after another.

Europe has a strong xenophobic streak running through it at the moment, in each and every country there is a right-of-center party either ruling or gaining strength to the point that people are seriously worried they will be able to unite. Most of these campaign on fear-of-the-other and immigrants are obviously a very convenient scapegoat. Housing shortage, the social contract that has become unstable, school quality and so on, each and every problem is traced back to immigration, no matter how ridiculous the link. And it gets lapped up as gospel.

I'm all for getting to the bottom of this and bringing the Greek coastguard leadership as well as anybody that was on that boat to justice. But I cynically doubt that this will happen, and that even if it should happen that something fundamental will change.

> Europe has a strong xenophobic streak running through it at the moment, in each and every country there is a right-of-center party either ruling or gaining strength to the point that people are seriously worried they will be able to unite. Most of these campaign on fear-of-the-other and immigrants are obviously a very convenient scapegoat. Housing shortage, the social contract that has become unstable, school quality and so on, each and every problem is traced back to immigration, no matter how ridiculous the link.

Caught many people off guard, but this disease has also spread to Canada. They’re just a lot more subtle about it compared to most Western countries.

Maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise to us since one could argue that it likely spread from the US? However, on a whole we still don’t blame immigrants for housing shortages and job losses (yet).

For the US and Canada this is in a way even weirder: the vast majority of the population there can trace back their own roots to immigrants, I find it hard to imagine if you know your own history to that degree that you would object to other immigrants.

For Europe: not all that long ago many here were refugees, on the run for the Nazis or during other wars. Immigration and refugees are a sign that the world isn't working well, a symptom, not a cause and you can't cure symptoms.

Thank you for pointing that out. This political cartoon highlighting this hypocrisy is over a 100 years old.

https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn544901

When the EU replaced Italy's search & rescue-focussed Op Mare Nostrum in 2014 with it's border security-focussed Op Triton, deaths in the Mediterranean increased markedly, in some cases by as much as 1,600% between years.[0] This also led to a thriving coastal slave trade in Libya, to which Frontex happily return people if they are detected close enough that the Libyan Coast Guard can reach them first.

Whether this particular incident was intentional or accidental, and whether those responsible will be punished or not, the whole regime has been consciously constructed to produce exactly this kind of result.

To quote the book Necropolitics, by Achille Mbembe:

> In an increasingly Balkanized and isolated world, where are the most deadly migrant routes? It is Europe! Who claims the largest number of skeletons and the largest marine cemetery in this century? Again, it is Europe! The greatest number of deserts, territorial and international waters, channels, islands, straits, enclaves, canals, rivers, ports, and airports transformed into iron curtain technologies? Europe! And to top it all off, in these times of permanent escalation—the camps. The return of camps. A Europe of camps. Samos, Chios, Lesbos, Idomeni, Lampedusa, Vintimille, Sicily, Subotica—the list goes on.

[0]: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:UNHCR2.png#mw-jump...