The Board of Directors of the Hellenic League for Human Rights expresses its repulsion towards the Samos boat sinking, which claimed the lives of more than 20 people. This incident brings back into focus the lack of preventative measures in Greece, and how it handles them when they do occur. Compounding the problem, these accidents are considered by the dominant rationale as legitimate “collateral damage” of the zero-tolerance policy towards irregular migrants, thereby conditioning society to a “regularity” of mass deaths.

Exercising state sovereignty towards migration flows is not realized unconditionally and without limits: it is subjected to restrictions posed both by a country’s international obligations to the protection of asylum-seekers and the obligation of the state to protect the life of every human being, without any form of discrimination.

The current - and ineffective - practices will only lead to more tragedy.