Save drowning refugees, get four years in jail?

Susan Sarandon helping refugees

This photo shows United States film actress Susan Sarandon, helping refugees with the charity Team Humanity, near Lesbos island in Greece in December 2015.

However, today sad news about Team Humanity.

From the Copenhagen Post in Denmark:

Two Danish aid workers charged with human trafficking in Greece

Co-founders of Team Humanity were arrested on the island of Lesbos after helping refugees from a sinking boat

January 15th, 2016 8:25 am| by Lucie Rychla

Two Danish aid workers from the non-profit organisation Team Humanity were on Wednesday arrested on human trafficking charges on the Greek island of Lesbos, reports Information.

This reminds me of someone in the Netherlands, who helped a sick refugee child and was arrested on spurious ‘human trafficking’ charges for that. Fortunately, these charges were dropped soon. One should hope this will happen soon now in Greece as well.

These outrageous arrests may be a result of the pressure of European Union governments on the Greek government to have harsher anti-refugee policies.

According to the organisation’s chairman Walle El Ghorba, the two men, aged 26 and 33, are now sitting in custody awaiting a trial that could possibly see them get four years in prison.

El Ghorba told Information the men were saving refugees from a sinking boat in the Aegean Sea.

Escorted by coast guard

Allegedly, they contacted the Greek coastguard, but when it did not show up, the Danes together with three Spanish volunteers began to help the refugees onto their own boat.

According to Dutch NOS TV, the three Spanish Team Humanity volunteers are now in jail as well. Their lifeboat is sponsored from the Netherlands.

Then they called the coastguard again, this time it responded by escorting them to the island.

Later that day, the volunteers were arrested and charged with human trafficking.

El Ghorba said the NGO had a good co-operation with the Greek authorities and the coastguard prior to this incident.

Team Humanity was established spontaneously in the autumn of 2015, when a group of young friends, mostly from Copenhagen, decided to travel to Lesbos to help save refugees from drowning.