Captains ignored warnings hours before dozens died in Aegean Sea

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - A surviving migrant of one of last week's the Aegean Sea tragedies told Rudaw on Tuesday that hours before the boat he was in broke down killing dozens, the captains of the struggling vessel had claimed that the problems were minor, and refused to sail to a nearby island which may have saved crucial lives, despite several calls from the migrants on board.
 
A group of over 60 people, both Kurds and Arabs, boarded a boat in the Turkish city of Bodrum at 7pm on December 22, hoping to reach Greece or possibly Italy in the pursuit of what they saw as a better life. Like thousands of other people from the Kurdistan Region, they had taken increasingly desperate risks through illegal routes to reach western Europe.
 
After sailing for around 16 hours, those on board were finally close to their destination just across the horizon, as they sailed past the island of Santorini. However at around 12pm on December 23, a problem with the steering wheel quickly shifted their goal from reaching Europe to surviving the deadly waves of the Aegean Sea.
 
Related: Aegean Sea: a charnel house for Kurdish families, children
 
Fryad Ali, who along with his wife is among the 13 migrants who survived the tragedy last week recalled the events that led to the death of dozens, including his two children, to Rudaw on Tuesday.
 
Ali told Alla Shally that the boat’s steering wheel had been malfunctioning for a few hours before the fatal incident, during which time the migrants had increasingly urgently called on the captains to take them somewhere close, even if it was not their initial destination.
 
“We told the captains to sail to a nearby island or suggested that we could even call the police and turn ourselves in, but they said that the problem was minor and it was going to be fixed soon,” Ali said, although events would prove this statement woefully inaccurate.
 
“At around 6pm, the captains were in the wheelhouse trying to solve the problem and we heard a sound from the engines,” he said. “We called them and went to look at the engines and we saw that half of the engines were underwater.”
 
According to Ali, only 13 people survived the tragedy that night with everyone else on board drowning, including his three-year-old son Baran and six year old daughter Sevda.

Related: Kurdish children among migrants drowned in Greek waters
 
Ali claimed that the waves that night were suitable for sailing, but not for swimming or even the small emergency dinghy they had, adding that those onboard did not have life jackets, and some of them were not allowed to carry their bags as they were told it would take extra space.
As people attempted to board the dinghy, Ali explained, it lost balance.

“I do not think anyone else survived,” he said. “There were no islands, no boats, the police did not come soon enough to rescue people and when they did, it was only a copter and a boat and it was only us 13 on the boat.”
 
The vessel Ali was on was one of three that sank in Greek waters between December 21 and 24, leaving behind dozens dead as they scrambled to board dinghies and survive the choppy waters.
 
According to Summit (Lutka) Foundation for Refugee and Displaced Affairs, 23 migrants from the Kurdistan Region are missing from the December 21 shipwreck, with just seven rescued. On December 23, nine bodies later identified as citizens from the Region were found and 16 further bodies were found on December 24, none identified as being from the Region or Iraq.
 
The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said on Tuesday that at least 31 have died in three separate incidents between December 21 and 24, with dozens remaining 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.
 
Three people have been charged with murder in Greece following the death of 16 migrants when their vessel 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 attempts 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, with high unemployment, corruption, political instability, and an economic downturn during the coronavirus pandemic driving many of its people to migrate in recent months.
 
The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has acknowledged the existence of systemic problems and financial hardships and says it is working to address these issues, although it has also on several occasions claimed that the large waves of migration is mainly due to people being taken advantage of by smugglers.
 
Thousands of other Kurds have traveled to Belarus in recent months with the help of Kurdish smugglers, hoping to reach western Europe where they have suffered deaths, beatings, hunger and sickness by border guards between the three countries of Lithuania, Latvia and Poland.

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