Just last year, in 2014, about 3,500 people died attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea, from North Africa to Europe. Shipwrecked.
When you cram small boats that are barely sea-worthy, with hundreds of migrants who have sold their everything for an illegal one-way ticket to Europe, what else can you get?
If the number of deaths is not shocking, listen to this other big number.
A staggering 200,000 people were rescued from here in 2014 alone, by various coastguard agencies, according to UN refugee agency UNHCR.
These huge fleeing masses are from North African countries, leaving their homes and families, and risking their belongings and lives, for a faint glimmer of hope; that Europe will give them a better life.
Driven by abject poverty and political turbulence, most of these hapless hopefuls are converging onto the coast of Libya.
It is easier to go to Italy and the rest of Europe from here, they say. After all, they know, there is virtually no real, united, government control in Libya since Gaddafi’s death.
The mafia of people traffickers with a few boats and dinghies are profiting from the desperation of the migrants who firmly believe jobs and money are aplenty on the European side.
On Sunday, 15 February, Italian coast guard rescued about 2,000 migrants between the Libyan coast and the Italian island of Lampedusa.
The gravity of the mafia menace can be understood from the fact that the Italian coastguard was actually threatened by Kalashnikov-wielding men - when the coastguard attempted to rescue people from those dilapidated dinghies in rough sea.
Two days earlier too, on Friday 13 February too, 600 migrants, on board just six small dinghies, were rescued by the Italian coastguard. And kept in detention centres.
Right now, as you read this, the migrant reception centre on the tiny island of Lampedusa - where many migrants were taken - is reaching desperate limits.
Over 1,000 men, women and children are said to be housed at the place made for barely 200 people!
What should Italy and Europe do now?
Should these thousands of rescued Africans, now in fenced migrant detention centres in different places, be taken back to their home countries?
Or like some European countries are helping EU asylum seekers, should they be given asylum?
So, even as EU confronts its own political and financial turbulences, it now has this added issue of rescued illegal migrants and asylum seekers.
EU had set-up long ago, a border agency Frontex that now coordinates a small multinational fleet that patrols the Mediterranean, regularly intercepting and rescuing thousands of refugees who try to smuggle themselves by hiding in ship’s holds.
I found a report by BBC’s Emma Jane Kirby, who was on an Icelandic coastguard vessel in the Mediterranean, as a part of a Frontex mission, very interesting.
She quotes what the coastguard vessel crew member Andri Johnson, said to her after one of his rescue missions.
"When I boarded the ship and saw the dirt, the lack of hygiene and the women and children so dehydrated who'd had no food and water for days... it was just so terrible and so moving. You know I have such a good life and to see those people struggling..."
"These people need our help," is what he said to her.
Help from the international community either by enabling local African governments to become economically self-reliant or by making European countries' public policies to accept migrants in a phased manner, is possible.
But it is easier said than done.
No comments:
Post a Comment