In summary: They were deliberately ignored by Greece because they weren't rich enough to care about, requiring private charity to step in and with its limited capacity only rescue a fraction while the rest remained ignored by Greece, and drowned.
I can be grateful for the charity while still disgusted at the lack of action when compared to the outpouring of support for 5 nitwit billionaires in a deathtrap.
No one helped because it would have put the onus on dealing the refugees on them. Europe is just as shit as the US is when dealing with undocumented migration.
Proposed: The UN establishes a sort of Selective Service that automatically enrolls every billionaire. When their card is pulled, they have to present themselves to be the search & rescue mascot of a migrant vessel.
Can't read the article because of paywall, but I'm not surprised by the title. The other worldwide pandemic we've been suffering from for much longer than a few years is apathy.
The article paints it as Greece saying they would handle it, then sending a small coast guard boat with a four man special operations team with weapons.
Basically everyone assumed Greece would handle it in a humanitarian way, instead they let the boat sink and arrested some of the survivors.
Basically everyone assumed Greece would handle it in a humanitarian way
That may be more the way the article presents it - Frontex infamously replaced a more humanitarian approach under the guise of "cost savings" and then over the years grew their budget beyond what was spent on border crossings before they came into the picture, and now is under increasing scrutiny over how they just watch migrants die or even push them back - the Mediterranean border crossing is said to be the deadliest in the world.
If you're using Firefox you can click the reader view button and the article is readable again so it seems to be a soft paywall, otherwise archive.is works