The MediterraneanA sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean. It has the shores of Europe on one and the shores of north Africa on the other, as well as shoreline in Asia. sea has always been a dangerous place. Thousands of sailors have met their end there.

Now, another group of people is dying in the sea: migrantsPeople who are living in a different country to the one they were born in. - mostly from Africa and the Middle EastThe lands around the east of the Mediterranean Sea and Arabia. , trying to reach Europe.

A BBCThe British Broadcasting Corporation is the UK's national broadcaster. investigation claims that for the last three years the Greek coastguardAn organisation that monitors coastal waters to help ships in danger and prevent smuggling. has caused the deaths of more than 40 people. Nine of them were thrown into the sea and drowned.

In the past, human rightsThe basic rights and freedoms that belong to every person in the world, from birth until death. They apply regardless of where you are from, what you believe or how you choose to live your life. Some have called for animals and even natural phenomena like rivers to have some form of human rights. groups have accused European countries of forcing migrants back into the sea.

So how can human beings commit such inhuman acts against each other?

Thinkers have long disagreed over whether human beings are naturally cruelCausing pain or suffering. Even though dolphins play together in the wild, animal rights supporters argue that it is unfair to train them to play when we make them do things..

Sigmund FreudAn Austrian psychoanalyst who was one of the world's foremost authorities on psychology in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. Although his ideas have been discredited in the scientific community, he remains influential for literary scholars. argued we all have instinctsThe way people or animals naturally react to something, without thinking about it. that make us want to kill and harm each other.

The thinker Hannah ArendtA Jewish German political philosopher who escaped a concentration camp and fled to America. She wrote extensively about Nazism. thought it is society itself that makes people cruel to each other, based on the example of the HolocaustThe murder of six million Jewish people in Europe by Nazi Germany. Members of other minority groups were also killed. . 

NaziA German political party of the twentieth century, led by Adolf Hitler. The Nazis controlled Germany from the early 1930s until the end of World War II. Adolf EichmannThe senior Nazi in charge of organising the deportation of Jews to extermination camps during World War Two. He was convicted of crimes against humanity and hanged in 1961. she argued, was just doing his job by murdering millions of people. She called this the "banalitySomething that is boring or unexciting. of evil".

Can we ever stop inhuman acts?

Yes! Inhumanity is something that people learn over their lifetime. People are not born evil. If we change the way our systems work, inhuman acts will stop.

No! Unfortunately, human beings will often naturally be cruel when given power over other people. There is nothing we can do to stop this.