ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Over 30 people from the Kurdistan Region have been reported either dead or missing in three different shipwrecks in the Aegean Sea last week, a Kurdish refugee agency announced on Tuesday.
“Unfortunately in a number of different catastrophic incidents and the sinking of migrant yachts near the Greek coast, a large number of Kurdish migrants have died and many more are still missing,” The Summit Foundation (Lutka in Kurdish) for refugee affairs said in a Facebook post on Tuesday.
Three boats carrying migrants have drowned in Greek waters between December 21 and 24, leaving at least 30 people dead, including Kurds, with dozens missing.
According to Lutka, 23 migrants from the Kurdistan Region are missing from the December 21 shipwreck, with just seven were rescued. On December 23, nine bodies later identified to be citizens from the Region were found, and 16 further bodies were found on December 24, none of them identified to be from the Region or Iraq.
UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) on Tuesday said that at least 31 have died in three separate incidents between December 21 and 24, and dozens remain missing.
“It is heart-rending that, out of despair and in the absence of safe pathways, refugees and migrants feel compelled to entrust their lives to ruthless smugglers,” Maria-Clara Martin, UNHCR Representative in Greece was quoted as saying.
“More resolute action is needed to curb people smuggling and stop those who exploit human misery and despair. It is disheartening to see preventable tragedies like these repeating themselves. We should not get used to seeing bodies being recovered from the sea,” she added.
Three people have been charged with murder in Greece following the death of 16 migrants when the vessel carrying migrants from Turkey to Italy overturned near the Greek island of Paros on December 24. The suspects were among 63 people rescued following the tragedy.
According to data published by UNHCR last week, over 2,500 people have died or gone missing at sea - through the Mediterranean and the northwestern African maritime route - from January until the end of November this year in their attempt to reach Europe.
Kurdish migrants have suffered a catastrophic fate this year. A boat carrying 33 migrants, most of them Kurds, capsized in the English Channel on November 24, in what the International Organization for Migration (IOM) has called the "worst disaster on record" in the Channel.
There are only two known survivors of the disaster, including a Kurd from the Region. Bodies of the sixteen identified Iraqi Kurds were returned to Erbil on Sunday.
The Kurdistan Region, mostly known as a safe haven within Iraq, is facing crises of its own - high unemployment, corruption, political instability, and an economic downturn during the coronavirus pandemic have driven its people to migrate.
The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has acknowledged the existence of systemic problems and financial hardships but says it is working to address these issues.
Thousands of other Kurds have also traveled to Belarus in recent months with the help of Kurdish smugglers, hoping to reach western Europe where they suffered deaths, beatings, hunger and sickness by border guards between the three countries of Lithuania, Latvia and Poland.
