While circumstances and numbers regarding the migrant boat sinking slowly become clearer, a British newspaper has claimed that Pakistanis were left in the most dangerous place on the ship.

A report by The Guardian has claimed that Pakistani migrants were put on the lower deck which made it difficult for them to survive. The report said that people of other nationalities were allowed on the top of the ship, where it was safer.

The report also said that Pakistanis were ‘maltreated’ by the ship’s crew if they tried to leave the lower deck or asked for fresh water.

The Guardian story also sheds light on the plight of women and children on the ship adding that they had been put into the ship’s hold, or cargo section, for ‘protection’ by the men and had been locked inside.

It also said that the conditions on the ship were so bad that it ran out of fresh water, leading to the deaths of six people.

The story also quoted survivors saying that the ship’s engine had failed about three days after it went to sea, meaning it had been floating without help for days before it eventually sank.

Did a towing rope lead to the accident?

The search for survivors from the ship carrying migrant workers that capsized near Greece is still continuing, but the version of whether an action by the Greek authorities caused or hastened the incident is still not clear.

With almost 750 people on board the ship, initial versions of the story suggested that the accident had occurred because the ship was filled way beyond its capacity.

However, as survivor accounts began emerging it became clear that there could be a rope involved.

The Greek coastguard was initially quoted in a BBC story saying that they had kept a ‘discreet’ distance.

Guard spokesperson Nikos Alexiou even told the state run channel that towing the ship or attempting to move people off of it would be ‘too dangerous’.

“Υou will have a disturbance, and the people will surge — which, unfortunately, is what happened in the end,” Alexiou said. “You will have caused the accident.”

He even added that the ship had rejected a rope from a merchant vessel that offered help because the people on board were afraid they would be taken to Greece instead of Italy.

However, the Greek newspaper Kathimerini then said that there had been a rope involved. It quoted a source saying that coast guards had tied the rope to try and make an approach. Government spokesperson Ilias Siakantaris confirmed to BBC that the rope had indeed been used to try an approach.

However, like the coast guard spokesperson, the government representative also said that the people on the boat had thrown away the rope fearing they would be towed to Greece instead of Italy.

However, Siakantaris said that there was no mooring or towing rope or its intention.

The Greek Ministry of Migration later told Channel 4 news that not only had a rope been tied to the ship but a negotiation had been attempted. Migration Ministry’s Manos Logothetis said that the coast guard had managed to speak face to face to the captain of the ship as well as others aboard it. This happened around two hours after the incident.

But then BBC quoted two survivors confirming that the ship was being towed by the coast guard.

“The coastguard then threw a rope but because they didn’t know how to pull the rope, the vessel started dangling right and left,” one survivor said.

The other also said that when the rope started tugging the ship along, it suddenly veered to the right and sank.

Activist Nawal Soufi told Aljazeera that the migrants on the ship tried to catch water bottles from another ship trying to help. Soufi also said that ropes had been tied to the ship but did not say whether these came from the coast guard or the helping ship.

However, the ship was destabilised, Soufi said, ultimately causing panic and leading it to sink.

Incompetence, negligence or strategy?

With information coming in that Greek coastguard had been following the boat since Tuesday (the boat sank on Saturday), questions are being raised about the country’s attitude towards rescue operations for migrant ships.

Maurice Stierl, of the Institute for Migration Research and Intercultural Studies at Osnabrück University in Germany, told the Guardian that authorities have built ways to ‘actively hide’ from rescue operations and have built ways to delay operations.

“They’re actively sort of hiding, in fact, from migrant boats, so that they are not drawn into rescue operations,” he said.

The UN’s migration and refugee agencies have given a statement calling timely maritime search and rescue “a legal and humanitarian imperative, Associated Press reported.

Amnesty International’s Adriana Tidona also said that the tragedy was ‘entirely preventable’.

“The Greek government had specific responsibilities toward every passenger on the vessel, which was clearly in distress,” she told AP.