The fatal encounter off the coast of Chios on February 3 2026 in which at least fifteen people died and dozens more -including pregnant women and children- were injured when a small vessel carrying people on the move collided with a Greek coast guard patrol boat has been rapidly reframed in official rhetoric as yet another tragic consequence of “smugglers” killing their own passengers. As the European Commission reiterated in Brussels, “every life lost at sea is a tragedy caused by traffickers” and thus enforcement must continue in partnership with third-country actors. (Eunews) Nevertheless, this framing obscures a far more troubling political logic where the construction of anti-smuggling enforcement functions as a liability shield and depoliticizes state violence while strategically criminalising survivors in order to launder responsibility. In the immediate aftermath of the Chios shipwreck, Greek authorities arrested a surviving Moroccan national on suspicion of migrant smuggling, despite that the vast majority of passengers were Afghan nationals and – according to surviving testimony, any evidence to identify any individual as a “smuggler” was absent. (Reuters) This mirrors a pattern of judicial and administrative responses that substitute criminalization for investigation, seeking a plausible culprit rather than an account of institutional responsibility.
States that invest in deterrence logics frequently deploy enforcement to displace culpability onto non-state “perpetrators.” By constructing smuggling as the proximate cause of fatalities, in this way the state shields its own operational protocols from scrutiny.
But the Chios incident can only be understood as a part of a broader assemblage of border enforcement practices in the Mediterranean that blur the line between search and rescue and deterrence-oriented interception. Critics have observed that the Coast Guard’s engagement was framed as an “interception operation” instead of one principally aimed at protecting life at sea which constitues a distinction with significant implications under both maritime and human-rights law. (EUobserver) This is not the first time that enforcement has eclipsed accountability. The 2023 Pylos shipwreck – one of the deadliest loss-of-life events in the Mediterranean – resulted in the capsizing and sinking of a vessel carrying hundreds of people. Numerous survivors were criminalized on smuggling charges, even as evidence emerged that the Hellenic Coast Guard’s handling of the encounter may have contributed materially to the disaster. Subsequent independent advocacy and prosecutorial activity, including felonies brought against senior coast guard officers, points to the latent tension between legal duties to rescue and enforcement imperatives. States that invest in deterrence logics frequently deploy enforcement to displace culpability onto non-state “perpetrators.” By constructing smuggling as the proximate cause of fatalities, in this way the state shields its own operational protocols from scrutiny. Likewise, accountability is more dangerous politically than shipwrecks themselves as it destabilizes dominant narratives about “orderly borders” and exposes the structural violence inherent in deterrence-driven migration governance.
Furthermore, there is a gendered and racialized dimension to this strategic criminalization with the very much selective identification of a single Moroccan individual – whose nationality “differs” from the majority Afghan population – as a suspect, while offering a streamlined narrative of culpability, resonates with long-standing patterns of racialized suspicion that mark migration enforcement across the EU, showing how differential identification practices serve to other more readily than others, even absent substantive evidence and its result means that the survivors are both witnesses to state violence and subjects of state accusation. The framing here matters as it is encountered as the inevitable outcome of smuggling networks preying on vulnerable populations, instead of the product of structural policy choices. This reframing absolves institutions from accountability precisely when independent inquiry is most critical. Additionally, according to international and maritime law, accountability mechanisms should include independent investigations into state conduct and transparent maritime search-and-rescue processes which are indispensable to uphold both domestic and international legal obligations. Consequently, when enforcement paradigms prioritize deterrence over protection, they facilitate a state logic wherein violence is normalized and responsibility is outsourced. The criminalization of survivors after Chios rewrites the record of state action in a manner that protects institutional actors from scrutiny and reconstitutes survivors as criminals in need of containment.
Consequently, when enforcement paradigms prioritise deterrence over protection, they facilitate a state logic wherein violence is normalized and responsibility is outsourced.
If European legal orders are to mean anything beyond abstract commitments to human rights, they must grapple honestly with these dynamics. This begins with disentangling enforcement from evasive criminalization, insisting that survivors should not be transformed into suspects by default and that independent investigations must precede any prosecutorial framing. Failing this, tragedies like Chios will continue to be recast as smuggler-induced accidents and enforcement itself will remain the most efficacious mechanism for evading the very accountability it rhetorically affirms.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.