LESBOS, Greece — Drowned babies and toddlers washed onto Greece’s Aegean Sea beaches, and a grim-faced diver pulled a drowned mother and child from a half-sunk boat that was decrepit long before it sailed. On shore, bereaved women wailed, and stunned-looking fathers cradled their children.
At least 27 people, more than half of them children, died Friday in waters off Greece trying to fulfill their dream of a better life in Europe. The tragedy came two days after a boat crammed with 300 people sank off Lesbos in one of the worst accidents of its kind, leaving 29 dead.
It won’t be the last.
As autumn storms threaten to make the crossing from Turkey riskier and conditions in Middle Eastern refugee camps deteriorate, more refugees — mostly Syrians, Afghans and Iraqis — are joining the rush to reach Europe.
More than 60 people, half of them children, have died in the past three days, compared with just over a hundred a few weeks earlier.
Highlighting political friction in the 28-nation European Union, Greece’s left-wing prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, cited the horror of the new drownings to accuse the block of ineptitude and hypocrisy in handling the crisis.
Hungary’s right-wing foreign minister, Peter Szijjarto, used the same word — hypocrisy — about critics of his country’s fencing off its southern border to keep migrants out.
The crisis has pitted countries such as Greece, with well over 500,000 arrivals so far, against eastern Europeans who are unwilling to take in refugees.
Speaking in Athens, Tsipras accused Europe of an “inability to defend its (humanitarian) values” by providing a safe alternative to the sea journeys.
“I feel ashamed of Europe’s inability to effectively address this human drama, and of the level of debate … where everyone tries to shift responsibility to someone else,” he said.
Tsipras’ government has appealed for more assistance from its EU partners. It argues that those trying to reach Europe should be registered in camps in Turkey, then flown directly to host countries under the EU’s relocation program, to spare them the sea voyage. But it has resisted calls to demolish its own border fence with Turkey, which would also obviate the need to pay smugglers for a boat trip.
“My opinion is that at this stage — for purely practical reasons — … the opening of the border fence is not possible,” Greek Migration Minister Yiannis Mouzalas said.
Jean-Christophe Dumont, head of the migration division at the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, said more than a million people are expected to reach Europe this year.
“For next year I think it’s clear the migration pressure will remain,” he said. “It’s not a tap that you can turn on and off.”
The influx has overwhelmed authorities in financially struggling Greece. The country is the main point of entry for people fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and Africa, after an alternative sea route from Libya to Italy became too dangerous.
