The vast resources and world attention devoted to the sinking of the superyacht "Baesian" points to a double standard for shipwrecks in the Mediterranean Sea, several NGOs dedicated to helping asylum seekers said, citing the obstacles they regularly face as they try to save lives in those waters.
The groups, whose representatives spoke to the journalists of the London newspaper "The Guardian", expressed regret over the death of seven people on a luxury ship during a storm off the coast of Italy.
The German humanitarian organization "Sea-Eye", which recently saved 262 people in the Mediterranean Sea in a mission, said that the response in the case of "Baesian" showed a "terrible contrast" because "unfortunately, the attitude of the media, society and politics depends on who is drowning".
"The coverage of the tragedies or our rescue operations in the Mediterranean Sea is not nearly as extensive as in the case of the shipwreck of the sailboat off Sicily," the organization said.
"Baesian" sank off Portichelai, since it turned out that the British technology magnate Mike Lynch was on that ship, the media around the world intensified the coverage, following every detail of the development of the event.
While the "Baesian" received help within minutes of alerting authorities that it was sinking, calls for help were ignored days later for the dinghy sinking in the central Mediterranean Sea with 43 people on board, another German NGO said on social media. organization, "Sea-Watch".
Presumably in an attempt to reduce the boat's load and protect the four children on board, 12 migrants jumped into the sea and struggled to stay afloat.
"For the Italian and European authorities, there are shipwrecks written in capital letters and written in small letters - in the case of the former it is saved immediately, the latter is left to its fate," says "Sea-Watch".
After the authorities left those on the dinghy waiting for more than 24 hours, an NGO rescue boat arrived and managed to rescue them. "The authorities took no action to rescue," says "Sea-Watch". "It's no accident, it's an EU double standard".
"It is not wrong to intervene to save wealthy individuals on yachts or tourists, but it is not right to be inconsistent in applying the same strategy to save migrants in distress," said Luka Kazarini, one of the founders of the non-governmental organization "Mediterranean Saving Humans".
Sea-Eye says those who wanted to save the lives of asylum seekers were struggling with strikingly different conditions: "European governments like Italy are criminalizing us and preventing us from rescuing, for example by deploying us to extremely remote ports or our detained ships".
The non-governmental organizations' position appeared to be supported by Pope Francis, who on Wednesday strongly condemned the treatment of people crossing the Mediterranean Sea to enter Europe, describing the denial of aid to vessels as a "grave sin".
"There are those who work systematically and by all means to repel migrants," the pope said during Sunday's general audience in St. Peter's Square. "And when those who have responsibility (authority) do it knowingly, it is a grave sin," he emphasized.
A recent report calculated that Italy's regular deployment of humanitarian rescue ships to remote ports caused them to lose 374 days at sea last year, creating additional costs and actively preventing them from saving more lives.
The organization "Sea-Watch" says that it is "outraged by the political hypocrisy" and indicates that more than 30.000 people have lost their lives in the Mediterranean Sea in the last decade, and "every day we see the active failure to provide assistance to people fleeing from somewhere, even though saving lives should not depend than the color of one's skin or the size of one's wallet".
Oskar Kamps from the non-governmental organization "Open Arms" said that the sinking of the sailboat off Sicily is reminiscent of the multimillion-dollar rescue efforts of five people from the submarine "Titan" who dived to the wreck of the "Titanic" in the north of the Atlantic Ocean in 2023.
"The resources that are invested in the search for a luxury ship or a yacht are not at all the same" as in the case of a migrant boat sinking, he said.
As an example, he cited the removal of migrants' bodies from the sea: "The authorities do not want to remove them because it is a lot of work for them: they have to identify them, take DNA samples, bury them", and many migrants who drowned remain in the sea.
Because of this and the administrative and political obstacles for the rescue ships, he said that he was "ashamed to belong to this society" and "that we are part of the European Union which has lost the principles and values on which it is based", "The Guardian" concludes.
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