“I heard calls from desperate people, I could not but help them” fisherman Panagiotis Karavetis tells media. Karavetis was sailing with his fishing boat 11 nautical miles off the city of Alexandroupolis when he met an inflatable boat fully loaded with 60 refugees, among them 20 infants and children.
Shocked by the picture he saw in the middle of the open sea, the fisherman helped the people get on board of his own boat. He took them safely to the port of Alexandroupolis, in the company of a coast guard vessel that rushed to his aid after he had informed the port authorities.
The social service of municipality offered the people food and clothes. They are about to be registered and transferred to a place where they can stay until their get documents to continue their journey to Europe.
Alexandroupolis is some 15 km away from Turkey. It is not very common that refugee boats seek the Greek mainland and thus in the North to enter the European Union due to the rough sea in the area.
PS Tell me that smugglers now seek new routes from North-West Turkey to North- East Greece, after the NATO has been allegedly deployed between the Greek islands and the Turkish coast further in the south…
Bravo, guess he’ll get free Raki in all tabernas the whole weekend long
Not only is this a personal and moral imperative, it is also the Law of the Sea. That is why the NATO ships are obliged to rescue migrants, and the pretence that they are doing anything else is just laughable.