On the afternoon of June 15^th trade unions and mass organizations, workers and the youth, expressed their anger and indignation over the new crime in the Mediterranean, this time off the coast of Pylos, staging a protest outside the Greek parliament followed by a march to the EU offices in Athens.

This new shipwreck is part of the ongoing crime that has been taking place in the Mediterranean and the Aegean Sea over the past few years; a crime bearing the stamp of the imperialists and their governments, the EU and NATO, who make interventions, slaughter peoples, loot countries and create an army of uprooted people.

“The working class, our trade unions must condemn the policy that is responsible for the hundreds of deaths but also all the parties that voted, supported and implemented this anti-labour and anti-immigration policy”, stated Nikos Mavrokefalos, member of the Secretariat of the All Workers’ Militant Front (PAME), outside the EU offices, calling for an intensification of the struggle every day “to overthrow them”.

“The deadly shipwreck was not an accident but a crime that had been waiting to happen”, stressed Giannis Anagnostou, president of the Athens Builders’ Trade Union. “War, interventions of all kinds, the disintegration of countries by savage exploitation and looting, authoritarian regimes, the instigation of civil conflicts and the destruction of the environment cause the uprooting of those millions of people”, he stated, highlighting the causes of uprooting, refugees, shipwrecks and the unaccountable action of inhuman traffickers. “Let all those who have put their signature on the bloodshed of peoples —the officials of NATO, of the EU, of all Greek governments over the years— shed crocodile tears over the tragedy. (...) The involvement of the country in imperialist plans, interventions and war bears the signature of all governments. None of them disputes the commitments of the country to NATO; there are common in the agenda of New Democracy, SYRIZA and PASOK (...) Wars are fought for the profits of business groups, the control of the wealth producing resources, the energy transport routes, the spheres of influence. ‘It is either their profits or our lives’ is the dilemma that arises and permeates every aspect of developments. In conditions of capitalist barbarity, this slogan binds all workers and people together, regardless of colour, race, religion and ethnic origin”, he stressed, pointing to those responsible for the bloodshed of the peoples.

Similar mass protests of the trade unions took place in Thessaloniki and dozens of other cities all over Greece.

The GS of the CC of the KKE, D. Koutsoumbas, participated in the Athens rally and made the following statement to the media outlets:

“This new tragedy, i.e. the shipwreck in Pylos, bears the stamp of the EU and its policy, which has been implemented by all the governments and political parties to date. This policy leads to such tragic shipwrecks and the loss of human lives in the Mediterranean, in the Aegean. The least that needs to be done at the moment is to immediately abolish the Dublin Regulation as well as the EU–Turkey Joint Statement that bring about such tragedies. The Geneva Convention on refugees, immigration and asylum must be respected and not be transformed into this new despicable pact that the EU and its governments are preparing, which essentially abolishes the rights of refugees and the right to asylum.

These are just a few of the proposals that the KKE has put forward and the other parties refuse to implement. Only in this way will we be able to prevent tragedies, because all this whets the appetite of the criminal human trafficking networks resulting in the loss of human lives, of women and children, in the Aegean and the Mediterranean.”

16.06.2023