Outrage over the drowning of a passenger who was pushed from the ramp of a Greek ferry has mounted after leaked recordings of radio conversations appeared to reveal racist attitudes among the crew. In one extract, the ship’s master is apparently heard saying that he thought the passenger, subsequently identified as a Greek, was a foreigner. “I thought he didn’t have a ticket,” he said. “I thought he was black, a Pakistani … He was sitting there outside, going round and round, but he didn’t show me any ticket. The only thing he told me was, ‘I am going to travel.’” In another snippet aired by the Greek TV channel ANT1, another crew member is heard telling his colleagues not to say what they have seen. “You should always have one thing in mind: we never say what we hear and what we see,” he says. It was unclear how the conversations were released, although they are believed to have been automatically recorded on board. The drowning of Antonis Karyotis on 5 September has sent shockwaves through the seafaring nation. Footage shows Karyotis running on to the gangplank just as the Crete-bound vessel is about to leave the country’s main port of Pireaus. Crew members can be seen trying to stop him, before one shoves the 36-year-old three times and he slips, dangles momentarily from the ships’ ramp, and falls into the sea. It later emerged that Karyotis had bought a ticket. Criminal charges have been brought again the ferry’s captain and three members of his crew. The Greek prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, expressed his “disgust and horror” over Karyotis’s death. In a social media post, the politician deplored what he called the “combination of irresponsible behaviour and cynicism, contempt and indifference” that led to the man’s drowning. “Yesterday’s shameful incident is not indicative of the kind of country we want,” he added. The merchant marine minister, Miltiadis Varvitsiotis, was forced to resign over comments in which he appeared to express sympathy for the accused crew members as well as Karyotis. Greek media reports described Karyotis as hailing from a poor family on Crete, where he had long been under psychiatric supervision and eked out a living doing odd jobs. His psychiatrist told the Kathimerini newspaper that Karyotis frequently travelled to Athens from the island because he found solace in constantly being on the move. On Wednesday the PNO sailors’ union staged a 24-hour solidarity strike grounding ferries across Greece. In a statement the union said it was protesting against “the terrible events that happened on board the Blue Horizon, which led to the tragic death of passenger Antonis Karyotis”. But while saying Greek sailors could not “identify in the least with the monstrous things that happened in the port of Piraeus”, the union claimed that maritime safety was often compromised by poor labour conditions and “the tragic deficiencies” of local harbours at a time when sea traffic had never been so high. “Sadly, once again, it has been ascertained that the improper enforcement of laws and regulations regarding shipping and port security can, and do, lead to disastrous results,” said the union, urging authorities to take “all the necessary measures” to protect human life at sea.