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| A local residents stands over the body of a dead baby in Petra village on the northeastern Greek island of Lesbos, Friday, Oct. 30, 2015. The deaths occurred amid a surge of crossings to Greek islands involving migrants and refugees from Syria, Afghanistan and other countries ahead of winter and as European governments weight taking tougher measures to try and limit the number of arrivals in Europe. |
LESBOS,
Greece (AP) -- Drowned babies and toddlers washed onto Greece's
famed Aegean Sea beaches, and a grim-faced diver pulled a drowned mother
and child from a half-sunk boat that was decrepit long before it
sailed. On shore, bereaved women wailed and stunned-looking fathers
cradled their children.
At least 27 people,
more than half of them children, died in waters off Greece Friday trying
to fulfill their dream of a better life in Europe. The tragedy came two
days after a boat crammed with 300 people sank off Lesbos in one of the
worst accidents of its kind, leaving 29 dead.
It won't be the last.
As
autumn storms threaten to make the crossing from Turkey even riskier
and conditions in Middle Eastern refugee camps deteriorate, ever more
refugees - mostly Syrians, Afghans and Iraqis - are joining the rush to
reach Europe.
More than 60 people, half of
them children, have died in the past three days alone, compared with
just over a hundred a few weeks earlier.
Highlighting
political friction in the 28-nation European Union, Greece's left-wing
prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, cited the horror of the new drownings to
accuse the block of ineptitude and hypocrisy in handling the crisis.
Hungary's
right-wing foreign minister, Peter Szijjarto, used the same word -
hypocrisy - about critics of his country's fencing off its southern
border to keep migrants out.
Szijjarto
described the influx as the biggest challenge the EU has ever faced.
While that may be an over-statement, the crisis has pitted countries
like Greece, with well over 500,000 arrivals so far, against eastern
Europeans who are unwilling to take in refugees - or, like Hungary,
insist that anyone leaving a relatively safe country, such as Turkey or
Greece, for a wealthy one like Germany is by definition an economic
migrant.
Speaking in Athens, Tsipras accused
Europe of an "inability to defend its (humanitarian) values" by
providing a safe alternative to the sea journeys.
"The
waves of the Aegean are not just washing up dead refugees, dead
children, but (also) the very civilization of Europe," he said,
dismissing Western shock at the children's deaths as "crocodile tears."
"What
about the tens of thousands of living children, who are cramming the
roads of migration?" he said. "I feel ashamed of Europe's inability to
effectively address this human drama, and of the level of debate ...
where everyone tries to shift responsibility to someone else."
Tsipras'
government has appealed for more assistance from its EU partners. It
argues that those trying to reach Europe should be registered in camps
in Turkey, then flown directly to host countries under the EU's
relocation program, to spare them the sea voyage. But it has resisted
calls to demolish its own border fence with Turkey, which would also
obviate the need to pay smugglers for a trip in a leaky boat.
"My
opinion is that at this stage - for purely practical reasons - ... the
opening of the border fence is not possible," Greek Migration Minister
Yiannis Mouzalas said.
"When talking about
receiving refugees, it's not under our control - they are coming," he
told state ERT TV.
"So it's a question of how we address this problem.
... We will not put them in jail or try to drown them.
They will have
all the rights that they are allowed under (international) agreements
and Greek law."
Greece's Merchant Marine
Ministry said 19 people died and 138 were rescued near the eastern
island of Kalymnos early Friday, when a battered wooden pleasure boat
capsized. Eleven of the victims were children, including three babies.
At
least three more people - a woman, a child and a baby - died when
another boat sank off the nearby island of Rhodes, while an adult
drowned off Lesbos.
On the Turkish side, four
children drowned and two were missing after two new accidents Friday
involving boats en route to the Greek islands of Lesbos and Samos,
Turkey's state-run news agency said.
Nearly
600 people were rescued by the Greek coast guard in the past 24 hours,
while thousands more made it safely from Turkey to Greece's eastern
islands.
Far to the west in Spain, rescuers
found the bodies of four people and were searching for 35 missing from a
boat that ran into trouble trying to reach Spain from Morocco.
Jean-Christophe
Dumont, head of the migration division at the Paris-based Organization
for Economic Cooperation and Development, said more than a million
people are expected to reach Europe this year.
"For
next year I think it's clear the migration pressure will remain," he
said. "It's not a tap that you can turn on and off. Even if the flow
would stop, it would actually not stop, because you will see family
reunification - the aftermath of the flow of refugees."
The
influx has overwhelmed authorities in financially struggling Greece.
The country is the main point of entry for people fleeing war and
poverty in the Middle East and Africa, after an alternative sea route
from Libya to Italy became too dangerous.
Most
go to Lesbos, a normally quiet island known as the olive-producing
birthplace of the ancient poet Sappho. As residents grappled with
Wednesday's latest tragedy, thousands of new arrivals crowded into the
main town of Mytilene and makeshift camps nearby, crowding around stalls
selling canned food, backpacks, blankets and other basics for their
long trek across Europe.
Many slept rough on the waterfront lined with yachts, rescue vessels and the remains of broken up dinghies.
At
one of the largest camps, muddy roads were strewn with garbage - shoes,
plastic bags, underpants, shreds of clothing - as thousands camped on a
hillside. Local residents used vans to sell tents, toiletries, and
sandwiches, as camp dwellers hung laundry on olive trees, taking
advantage of a break in the rain.
Mustafa Hosab sat with four cousins eating a kebab on the waterfront.
"We're
from Idlib, in northern Syria, near Turkey. We left because the
fighting was changing all the time and it's not safe," he said. "We'll
go wherever we can, maybe Germany or Sweden. We came from Turkey, and
the boat was OK. We were lucky."
