“The engine stopped. The ship sank within minutes. The deck was full of people. Likewise below it. The latter had no chance of getting out,” reports one survivor of this afternoon’s dramatic events.

The information reaching us is appalling. A boat with nearly 700 Libyan refugees, which had set sail from Tobruk and set course for the Italian coast, sank this afternoon near mainland Greece.

104 survivors were rescued from the water. The number of bodies recovered from the sea at the time of writing this text has reached 79. It is sure to rise by the morning, as the conditions in which they crowded onto the ship made any reaction to its sudden breakdown and rapid water intake impossible. The smugglers put far more people on board than there should have been.

Smugglers are taking more and more risks to avoid patrols. By circumventing the rules of seafaring and common sense, they attempt to bravado their way to Italy, avoiding the heavily guarded and notorious pushbacks of the Greek coast. They put the lives of hundreds of people who believe someone is helping them at stake. An estimated 72,000 people have already drowned in the Mediterranean.

Greece has long been one of the main routes for people fleeing war, persecution and poverty in the Middle East, Asia and Africa. In recent weeks, the authorities’ decisions have resembled deliberate persecution. Cutting off some of the camp’s inhabitants from food rations in order to force them to leave by hunger and pushbacks at sea show the dark face of the Old Continent.

Let us show that we are not their enemy. The Good Factory feeds the most vulnerable residents of a camp on the Greek island of Lesbos. One hot meal is not an extra luxury for them, but the bare minimum. It is a display of the dignity they have lost because the world tries to make them believe that they have no place in it.

Let us do something for them today! Let us not let ourselves be told that we have no influence over anything. Let us not let our humanity sink!