Surviving Greece's migrant boat disaster
The Documentary Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 5 September 2023
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
n the early hours of 14th June, a heavily overcrowded, rusty fishing trawler carrying as many as 750 migrants capsized off the coast of Greece. The passengers - men, women and children from countries including Pakistan, Egypt and Syria - were fleeing conflict and poverty, hoping to start safer and more prosperous lives in Europe.
After its engine broke down, the boat drifted for several hours while desperate passengers made distress calls and waited for rescue. Only 104 people survived the sinking. More than 600 may have drowned, making this one of the deadliest disasters in Europe’s ongoing migration crisis.
For Assignment, Nick Beake travels to Greece to meet survivors of the sinking, who are now living in a refugee camp outside Athens. He hears how they endured a four-day voyage, during which several passengers died due to a lack of food, water and ventilation on board. Brutal smugglers forced them to board the dangerous boat, and confiscated water bottles and life jackets to make room for extra passengers.
Many of the survivors have accused the Greek coastguard of causing the sinking by attempting to tow the heavily overloaded vessel. Greek authorities have denied these claims. Nick meets a Greek activist who volunteers for an emergency hotline that received distress calls from passengers on the ship. She explains that the June 14th disaster is not the first time the Greek coastguard has come under scrutiny, and it has previously been accused of using aggressive and illegal tactics to deter migration.
Presented by Nick Beake Producer: Viv Jones Studio mix: Graham Puddifoot Series Editor: Penny Murphy
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Unexpected elements is the podcast shining a light on the science lurking behind the news. |
| 0:06.0 | We know lots of scientists and we're not afraid to call them up. |
| 0:09.0 | Unexpected elements from the BBC World Service, find it wherever you get your BBC podcasts. |
| 0:17.0 | After we set sail, we realised a number of passengers was higher than we had been told. |
| 0:31.0 | It was too late to go back. |
| 0:34.0 | I was not at all scared. I put all my faith in God. |
| 0:39.0 | There were two simple scenarios. We either make it or not. |
| 0:45.0 | In the early hours of the 14th of June, a rusty fishing trawler carrying up to 750 migrants sank off the coast of Greece in one of the deepest parts of the Mediterranean Sea. |
| 0:57.0 | It's feared more than 600 people lost their lives, making this the deadliest tragedy for a decade in Europe's ongoing migration crisis. |
| 1:07.0 | The overloaded boat had quickly got into difficulty, but there was no rapid rescue. |
| 1:13.0 | Some of the 104 survivors even accused the Greek coast guard of causing their boat to cap size. |
| 1:20.0 | I arrived in Greece in the hours after the disaster to report on this story and have been investigating ever since. |
| 1:28.0 | I'm Nick Beak, welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service. |
| 1:33.0 | And for this week's assignment, I'm travelling back to Greece to try to understand more about what went wrong, to talk to survivors as well as an activist from a helpline that tried to assist the rescue effort. |
| 1:46.0 | You're going to hear their stories in detail. |
| 1:49.0 | And what they have to say reveals so much about why people risked their lives on these journeys, the operations of the smuggling networks who traffic them, and how European authorities stand accused of contributing to the ever-expanding graveyard that is the Mediterranean Sea. |
| 2:19.0 | This is the Malakasa migrant camp just north of Athens. |
| 2:24.0 | As you can hear, it's just off the main road and it's been home for many of the survivors since the shipwreck. |
| 2:31.0 | It's basically a gravel compound enclosed by barbed wire and it's surrounded by lush and dense green forest. |
| 2:39.0 | We're not allowed in, survivors of the shipwreck are free to come and go while their asylum claim is being considered. |
| 2:49.0 | But we found that many people are really reluctant to speak out about what happened back in June. |
| 2:57.0 | In the end, we find three men who will talk to us if we change their names to protect their identities. |
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