Yet Another Migrant Tragedy

"Many people were on an overcrowded rubber dinghy that was deflating, and they were threatened by armed men, who fired shots.''

"They lived the horror of being separated from their wives and daughters, who were taken away." 

Maria Eliana Tunno, psychologist, Doctors Without Borders

"MSF team witnessed another tragedy this morning while arriving to rescue people in distress on a deflating rubber boat, with armed men on a fast boat in their close vicinity."

"Survivors reported that 29 women and children had been intercepted at gunpoint before our arrival."

"Survivors are anxious and deeply concerned about the fate of their female and underage relatives, who were beaten and taken at gunpoint and will once more face the cycle of violence, detention, abuse and extortion."

MSF social media post

Photo: MSF

 

Over 62,000 migrants so far this year have arrived by sea to Italy. Large as that number appears, it is a large drop from the over 152,000 migrants who made the perilous journey over the same period in 2023.

Despite the hardships and the danger, let alone the news that trickles back to them of the disastrous outcomes that many migrants like themselves have experienced, the migrants seem determined to take their chances and they continue leaving their places of origin on the chance their futures will be assured.

 

So far this  year, 2,124 migrants have died in the attempt they committed to,  in making the crossing this year over the Central Mediterranean, according to reports from the United Nations. One such group recently, engaged in their effort to make a new life for themselves elsewhere than Eritrea, Yemen and Ethiopia were exposed to and became victims of armed marauders. Armed men in two speedboats abducted women and children and no one has any idea what has become of them. 

They were with their families when their overloaded rubber dinghy with a total of 112 migrants began deflating just off the Libyan coast, their debarkation point. Although their passage through Libya comes with the very real danger of abuse and violence, and even death, a kind of mass social psychosis appears to convince  would-be migrants that their efforts will be rewarded, that they will be immune from the dreadful experiences of others before them. 

 

They feel compelled to make the effort, and only they know why; or perhaps they really don't. In this instance dozens of men and boys who were aboard the dingy as it deflated leaped into the sea, according to Doctors Without Borders. The Geo Barents, the MSF ship, arrived on scene in international waters where they rescued 83 men and unaccompanied minors, 70 of whom were plucked to safety from the sea.

The people with Medicines sans Frontieres noted two speedboats, both of which claimed to belong to the Libyan Coast Guard, nearby. Some of the rescued men later informed MSF personnel that shots had been fired from the speedboats, although no one had been shot or injured. One of the speedboats had taken 24 women and four children aboard, informing those with the Geo Barents their intention to hand them over following the rescue of the men.

That speedboat, however sped away, according to MSF spokesman Maurizio Debbane. It had not been established who the armed men actually were, and what happened to the abducted women and children has not been established. An appeal went out from MSF to local authorities and organizations to help in the urgency to reunite the families, in the knowledge that Libya is not a safe environment for them, noting that the episode they had witnessed placed people "in danger, the lives of many people, and separated entire families".

According to Ms.Tunno, the rescued men and boys were "very tired, desperate and under shock". Many of them had experienced abuse and inhumane treatment while in Libya.

Photo: MSF

Forbid Them and They Will Come

"These tragedies are the result of the tragic collateral damages of Italian and European policies, protecting borders and reducing safe and regular passage to Europe."

Maco Bertotto, director of programs, MSF (Medicines sans Frontiers)

"Desperation can never justify travelling in conditions that endanger the lives of their children."

Italian InteriorMinister Matteo Plantedosi   

 

"It is inhumane to exchange the lives of men, women and children for the price of the 'ticket' they paid in the false perspective of a safe journey,"

"The government is committed to preventing departures, and with them the unfolding of these tragedies, and will continue to do so."

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni 

Dozens of people managed to survive the boat's sinking   EPA

The latest migrant tragedy, a colossal loss of lives that may eventually tally well over a hundred in number of those who drowned is once again in the news. These are people gambling with their lives who assure themselves that the chances of their dying along with their family members are slight, reasoning that hundreds of thousands have made similar trips in the last decade and lived to flourish finding new lives in Europe. These are migrants from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran and Syria, Muslims attempting to escape the smothering poverty, violence and political-sectarian tribal antipathies of their culture and fellow Muslims.

People ardent in their religious conviction, quick to repeat that Islam is a religion of peace, one that enjoins its faithful to brotherly reception of other Muslims. Yet in these theocracies, dictatorships, tyrannies  and oil Sheikdoms Islam is practised as a governing control over peoples' lives, offering little in compensation for their constricted lives of bondage to governing bodies that make use of Islam as a torture chamber of the mind and body..

Those who prefer to escape the confines of their native lands and strike out for distant lands offering a future for themselves and their families as free and equal citizens envision a kinder world of opportunities attainable through the expedient of a dangerous undertaking, dependent on the professional paid assistance of human traffickers, seasoned in the enterprise of teaching migrants how to evade authorities and how to manipulate the public feelings of compassion to their advantage.

Bodies of the drowned are being recovered from the Mediterranean a day after a wood sailboat with a maximum of 50 spaces, where 200 people were on board taxing the craft to the limit in an unruly, storm-tossed sea. When the wooden ship hit shoals it collapsed and broke apart and passengers, inclusive of children, had little chance of survival. According to Pakistan's Prime Minister Sharif, over two dozen aboard were his citizens.

 

Rescuers recover a body at a beach near Cutro, southern Italy, after a migrant boat broke apart in rough seas, Sunday, Feb. 26, 2023. Rescue officials say dozens of migrants have died after their boat broke apart off southern Italy. Giuseppe Pipita/AP

Bodies were washed ashore adjacent to where their vessel sank near a seaside resort on the eastern coast of Calabria as the storm that destroyed the boat began to calm. In the nearby town of Crotone dozens of coffins were spaced in a sports hall prior to a funeral, with local people leaving flowers and candles, showing their respect for the dead. According to local authorities 80 survived the disaster of the 180 to 200 people who boarded the vessel as it left from Turkey.

Italy's current government is one where the elected leader campaigned on a promise to put a stop to he work of migrant rescue groups. Italy has been besieged over the years by hundreds of thousands of migrants reaching its islands and mainland shorelines in flight from conflict and endemic poverty. Central Americans, Haitians and Africans along with Arabs from the Middle East have flooded in similar numbers overland to reach Mexico, planning to cross into the United States where a similar ingress flow of migrants is occurring.

Since 2014 over 20,000 deaths have been registered by the United Nations Missing Migrants Project, in the central Mediterranean. 220 of those migrants died making the crossing in 2023 alone. Most of the boats setting out for Europe crowded with migrants who have paid handsomely for the privilege to flirt with death in their determination to reach Europe, depart from North Africa, but Turkey has seen an increasing number of departures in the past number of years; 15,000 in 2022.

The Calabria boat wreckage after departure from the Turkish port of Izmir occurred following an initial effort to reach the vessel before bad weather intervened. But the rescue effort failed and what is left is retrieval of all the missing, presumed to have drowned, the sea gradually giving up their bodies. Italian authorities have arrested three men, suspects of human smuggling who survived the collapsed boat.

The wreckage of a ship that was carrying migrants is seen on the beach as search and rescue operations continue in Crotone, Italy February 27, 2023. Valeria Ferraro/Anadolu Agency/Getty