Hubris & A Greek Tragedy

I'm not certain, but this viral social media graphic is likely done by France-based PEZ.
Handles: @PEZdessinateur on twitter and also on fb.

The incongruous image of the devastated survivors disembarking the Mayan Queen on a port in Kalamata last week underlined what has become the strange reality of the modern Mediterranean, where the superyachts of the superrich, equipped with swimming pools, Jacuzzis, helipads and other trappings of luxury, share the seas with the most destitute on smuggler-operated boats perilously crossing from northern Africa to Europe. The world’s waterways have become a reflection of global inequalities in recent days. In the North Atlantic, a billionaire, his son and other businessmen set out to explore the wreck of the Titanic on a luxury tourist submersible that has gone missing, touching off an international search and rescue operation.

~ 'A Superyacht Gave a Lifeline to 100 Migrants Thrown Into the Sea' by Jason Horowitz and Matina Stevis-Gridneff in The New York Times, published on June 21 2023.

All eyes were only two ocean tragedies this June. The actions of the Greek Coast Guard towards the overcrowded fishing trawler Adriana and the refugees on the night of June 14th versus the enormous resources poured in by the US Coast Guard, the Canadian government and their allies to search for the Titan that lost communications within an 1 hour and 45 minutes of its descent to the Titanic on June 18th. 

Out of an estimated 750 refugees on the Adriana bound for Italy, only 104 were retrieved from the waters, almost all saved by the crew of superyacht 'The Mayan Queen'. The rest presumably drowned. The ship was smuggling refugees from Libya to Italy. When international laws and E.U. rules hold sway in the waters, it's totally murky as to what sort of strategies to adopt, even when saving drowning humans. European border agencies have been forced into a game of migrants being trafficked into the waters of other nations. 

The sinking of the Adriana comes in the context of a rise in sentiment against refugees. More than a million refugees arrived in Greece between 2015 and March, 2016, when the Syrian crisis provoked a mass movement to Europe, and they have been followed by hundreds of thousands in the years since. That influx has been a profound shift for Greece, a relatively traditional country whose economy was devastated by a financial crisis that many felt was imposed on it from the outside. Athens had to enforce capital controls, and people were prohibited from withdrawing more than sixty euros (about sixty-five dollars) from A.T.M.s per day.

Singapore has neither asylum or refugee procedures. We have a total closed-door policy towards refugees. And I'm quite sure our electorate support this policy. We stop refugee ships at coastlines. While we provide them with food and water and fuel, we send them away. While on the one hand I get how we can't accept refugees because of the strain on our infrastructure, it's presumptuous to assume that they'll drain our resources because we don't know how to offer them avenues and channels to be contributing members of society. There's a perception that refugees would live off subsidies and benefits for the year in Singapore when everyone is pulled tight and taught that 'nothing is for free' in this city, and contribute to our crime rates. Our attitudes are highly telling in how we treat our migrant workers, and well, our tiny Gurkha population. 

I don't know what I feel about the imploded Titan submersible. It's sad, of course, but that's a teeny bit of me that went, 'wow, all of you chased your dreams'. Is it unexpected, given all information that we now know before and after the accident? I don't know if these wealthy experience-chasers have a death wish, or are they so blinded by the thrill that they forgot about safety protocols and could no longer independently verify if OceanGate has been thorough in certifying that Titan is deep-sea worthy, or rather, Titanic-depths worthy for each dive. Did Stockton Rush III's companions/paying patrons think they might die? There's passion, a sense of adventure, impatience and also, perhaps, recklessness. All of which took the human race to where we are today. With a touch of 'let's just do it', and a faith in his vision, OceanGate's CEO and founder, and now deceased pilot of the Titan did what he had always wanted to do. I'm just sorry that he convinced and took others (who might be equally impassioned and convinced) along with him on this quest. 

On a very human aspect, I can't help feeling more sorry for the Pakistani, Syrian, Palestinian and Egyptian refugees who drowned in the Mediterranean waters. Those waters are a mass graveyard to so many refugees in search of a better life that isn't war-torn or deeply impoverished. Whose fault is it then that they're 'forced' to leave their homes of their birth? 

With both tragedies occurring at sea in the same month, we're reminded of this ceaseless struggle of life and living. There's this commitment to science and technology, and space exploration which will always result in deaths. There's the determination to make a better life for ourselves in spite of our circumstances, a desire that over-rides all regulations to get on a smugglers' unsafe and overcrowded trawler to the open seas, to hedge against nature and one's fate to remake a destiny elsewhere.