DOUBLE STANDARD

On June 18, "Titan," a submersible operated by the tourism and expeditions company OceanGate, imploded. The mini sub was on an expedition to view the wreck of the Titanic in the North Atlantic Ocean, about 380 miles off the coast of Newfoundland. On board were four paying passengers who each contributed $250,000 for the experience. Two of these were billionaire businessmen: a British subject Hamish Harding, a Pakistani Shahzada Dawood, Dawood's son Suleman, a French deap sea explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet, and OceanGate's CEO Stockton Rush. For several days after the expedition's surface crew lost contact with the submersible the entire world appeared to be on pins and needles, holding its collective breath. All media outlets continued to feature every step of the rescue effort. The search and rescue operation was all encompassing. It included the U.S. Coast Guard, the Canadian Coast Guard, the Royal Canadian Air Force, the U.S. Air National Guard, a Royal Canadian navy ship, several commercial and research vessels and a number of underwater drones - ROVs - one coming from as far away as from France. After the Titan had been missing for four days its oxygen supply would have predictably been exhausted. Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy reported that it had detected a sonar signature early on. Ultimately the rescue team concluded that the submersible had imploded during its descent, killing all five passengers instantly. Four days before the world became obsessed by round-the-clock media coverage of the effort to save these five billionaire tourists, off the coast of Greece, the Adriana, an overloaded fishing trawler with 750 migrants on board sank, killing more than 600. Most of its passengers were from South Asia and the Middle East, fleeing poverty and violence in search of new lives. Total revenue received by the ruthless smugglers who crammed these migrants onto shoddy vessels, sending them on their way to uncertain shores across the Mediterranean, might well have exceeded the revenue received by the Titan's parent company. However, while the billionaire passengers expected to enjoy their adventure and return to their comfortable lives, most migrants on the Adriana paid for their passage with all they owned, and expected to start their lives all over from scratch after completing their journey. Yet, this humanitarian disaster off the coast of Greece received little more than scant media attention across the world. Reports indicate that officials, using radar, telephone and radio, watched and listened for 13 hours as the migrant ship lost power and floated aimlessly off the Greek coast. Satellite imagery and tracking data obtained by the New York Times apparently showed definitively that the Adriana was drifting in a loop during its final six and a half hours. With dozens of officials and Coast Guard crews monitoring the ship as it drifted, one might legitimately assume that rescue ships would be employed to save its passengers. However, when the Adriana capsized, it sank in the presence of a single Greek Coast Guard ship. Of the 350 Pakistani on board, all of which were crammed onto the bottom deck, only 12 survived. The women and young children, which occupied the middle deck, went down with the ship. The top deck was reserved for Syrians, Palestinians and Egyptians, many of which survived. So, why did we see such dramatically less intense rescue and media coverage for this much greater calamity? According to some authorities, the lax response to this preventable maritime disaster in the Mediterranean is not because some people are indifferent. It is in the degree of familiarity. The United Nations International Organization for Migration (I.O.M.) estimates that the number of migrants who have died trying to reach Europe has so far this year already exceeded 2,000. Arrivals by sea to Mediterranean Europe has this year already surpassed 82,000 - against 49,000 last year. Many countries formulate their approach to the influx of unwelcome migration in terms of law enforcement, not rescue. Individuals attempting to facilitate this migrant movement are often criminally prosecuted out of fear that their actions could encourage future migrant movement. Judith Sunderland, Acting Deputy Director for Europe at the group Human Rights Watch, during an interview while comparing the two rescue operations, remarked: "We saw how some lives are valued and some are not. We cannot avoid talking about racism and xenophobia." Years and countless boat calamities later, the deaths are no less appalling, but attract much less attention. Aid workers call it "compassion fatigue." Theo Wierdsma