Last Tuesday, 3 February, headlines began to appear about yet another shipwreck, this time near Chios. We immediately started searching for information, making phone calls, checking every source we could think of. Although shipwrecks have tragically become routine after all these years, they always hit hard.
The first reports were devastating. Initially, we heard of seven people dead and many missing. When we hear numbers like that, we know to brace ourselves for worse. Soon, information from Chios hospital confirmed fourteen deaths and several people in critical condition. The final count, so far, is fifteen dead: eleven men and four women, some of them minors. Two of the women who survived later miscarried their babies.
What happened this time? How can routes that are supposed to lead to safety end in death? Why must mothers bury their children? Why must anyone bury their loved ones in a land they have never even seen before?
Soon it became clear that the boat did not sink on its own. As it approached the coast of Chios, a Hellenic Coast Guard patrol vessel rammed it without warning. Most of those who died were killed instantly by the impact. Others were thrown into the sea. We can only imagine the panic that followed.
How can this be happening? Why would anyone do this?
This is the direct result of border regimes that have been built and hardened for years across Europe and, as we have recently seen, in the United States as well. Deterrence has been prioritised and legitimised over rescue and protection. A militarised narrative frames borders as war zones, People On The Move as invaders, and Coast Guards and border officers as frontline soldiers. By this logic, death is acceptable. Migrants who die are treated as collateral damage. No one grieves them publicly. And those who speak out, those who defend life, are targeted, criminalised, and portrayed as enemies from within.
We must put an end to this.
We cannot allow more people to die like this.
We cannot allow our friends and colleagues to be persecuted for defending life.
We cannot allow borders to divide us.
We must build on the plurality of this world, on solidarity and mutual respect, on what connects us rather than what separates us, on the shared beauty of a world that belongs to all of us.
Then no state, no Coast Guard, no ICE will be able to take anyone away from us.
Then we will be able to live in peace and dignity.
