No Safe Haven 155 Photograph 1: Abandoned inflatable dinghy used for clandestine sea border crossing on Lesbos. Photograph taken by the author in 200■. flatable boat at the moment of encountering the patrol boat of the coast guard.22 The Hellenic Coast Guard and the local press report many cases where arriving migrants puncture their rubber dinghy with a sharp knife or a box cutter after having entered Greek national waters. Cutting the air chambers of a rubber dinghy in the middle of the strait between Greece and Turkey means in practice that the boat starts to sink immediately. Passengers end up in the open sea and the lives of the weakest, women with babies in their arms, small children without appropriate life vests, minors who never learned to swim in the Afghan mountains, are in acute danger. Although the practice of puncturing ones own boat seems to be against common sense, a strategic element is involved in this dangerous action: by destroying their means of transport, the arriving boat migrants become ship-wrecked 22 See Bacas (2006:105) and Panagiotidis/Tsianos 2007 discussing the problematic practice of puncturing inflatable dinghies on the Greek-Turkish maritime border.