As Wars Heat Up, Rickety Flotillas Carry Asylum-Seekers to Their Graves

By Lisa Vives Reprint | | Print |

NEW YORK, Feb 19 2015 (IPS) - (GIN) – In the Bible it was known as the “Great Sea”. The Romans called it “Mare Nostrum (Our Sea). Of late, the Mediterranean has been called nothing more than a migrants’ graveyard.

Some 3,000 asylum seekers are believed to have gone down to their deaths last year, swallowed up in the rough seas between Africa and Europe’s southern shores. On small rubber dinghies or on rickety wooden boats, refugees fleeing Syria, Libya and Yemen have joined many from Africa casting out upon treacherous waters hoping to reach the southernmost Italian island of Lampedusa and a possible route out of harm’s way.

Among the travelers are women, young children, the elderly. Traffickers are supplying the boats and then threatening rescuers who attempt to bring them ashore.

According to the Missing Migrants project of the International Organization for Migration, fatalities numbered 5,017 in 2014, up from 600 in 2013.

Law enforcement is only half the battle, warned IOM director William Lacy Swing. “We also need to create safe channels for desperate migrants seeking sanctuary,” he said, “for the asylum seekers fleeing Islamic fundamentalist terror, political oppression or vulnerable migrants being trafficked or otherwise abused.”

Last week, twenty-nine migrants died of hypothermia on the exposed decks of a small Italian naval vessel which had rescued them in rough seas from a boat adrift near Libya.

A full-scale search and rescue mission, known as Mare Nostrom, was shut down by the EU last year citing funding issues, to the dismay of humanitarian groups. Another initiative with a third of the funding called Triton was called “woefully inadequate” by the U.N.’s refugee agency which urged Europe to take a new approach.

The new director of the EU border cooperation agency, Frontex, comes from a law and order background. He fought against “illegal immigration,” implementing forced return decisions, combatting the employment of undocumented migrants, planning and running detention centers for returnees.

The crisis, which is rarely ‘trending’ on social media, made an impact on the new Pope who visited recently arrived migrants on Lampedusa during his first visit outside Rome.

He lambasted the rich world for its lack of concern for their suffering and inveighed against a “globalisation of indifference”. “We have become used to the suffering of others. It doesn’t affect us. It doesn’t interest us. It’s not our business,” he said.

The Pope celebrated mass within sight of the so-called graveyard of wrecks, where fishing boats carrying migrants and asylum seekers end up after they drift ashore, their engines often having broken down at sea.

He asked for pardon “for those who are complacent and closed amid comforts which have deadened their hearts and forgiveness for those who by their decisions at the global level have created situations that lead to these tragedies”.

If his message went unheard by European leaders, it prompted a response from Amnesty International which collected testimonies from the survivors of a convoy that left from Libya. Most of them were young men from West Africa.

“[At around 7pm on Feb. 8] the boat started to lose air and fill with water,” recalled a 24 year old man from Mali. “People began to fall into the sea. At each wave, two or three were taken away. The front part of the boat rose, so people on the back fell in the sea. At that point, only about 30 people remained on the boat. One side of the boat … stayed afloat …and [we clung to a rope as we had] water up to our belly.

“[Eventually] only four of us remained. We kept holding on, together, all night. It was raining. At sunrise, two slipped away. During the morning we saw a helicopter. There was a red shirt in the water; I shook it so they would see me. They threw a small inflatable boat, but I didn’t have the energy to reach it. So we stayed, holding on. Half an hour later, a cargo boat arrived. It threw a rope to get us onboard. It was about 3 in the afternoon [on Feb. 9].”

Lamin, also from Mali, was on board the other dinghy approached by a merchant vessel:

“We were 107. In the high seas, the waves were taking the boat up and down. Everyone was afraid. I saw three people falling in the water. No one could help. They tried to catch the boat but couldn’t. Then many others died, maybe for lack of food or water. I can’t count how many died. When a big, commercial boat came to rescue us, only seven of us were [left]. The rescuers threw a rope and got us onboard. During the rescue, [our] boat folded in two and went down, taking down all the bodies.”

According to survivor accounts, more than 300 people perished in that journey, Amnesty said. The migrants, many of whom were lightly clothed, were exposed to near-freezing temperatures, rain and even hail for up to two days as their boats were tossed about on waves of up to 10 feet in height.

Mayor Giusi Nicolini told Amnesty International: “When the dead arrive, one feels defeated. One wonders why nothing ever changes. Europe is completely absent – one does not need to be an expert in politics to understand that.”

Many of those rescued after last week’s tragedy are from Côte d’Ivoire (41 – including two children) followed by Mali (23, including a child), Senegal (nine), Guinea (seven), Gambia (two) and Niger (two). Ivorians also reportedly account for more than half of the confirmed fatalities among those rescued – 15 out of the 29, along with seven men from Mali, five Senegalese and one each from Guinea and Mauritania.

The Budapest meeting is one of eight regional gatherings to prepare for 2016 World Humanitarian Summit, which will take place in Istanbul. It will bring together European and other delegates, including those from Mediterranean states such as Malta, Italy, Greece, Turkey and Spain, where a rise in people-smuggling from the Middle East and North Africa has resulted in the deaths of close to 5,000 migrants since 2013, according IOM’s Missing Migrants Project.

“There is before us an urgent need. We know what to do,” Director General Swing said. “We simply must have the political courage to do it.”

“The migrants fleeing for safer lives are not criminals and deserve the same protections as everyone else,” said Swing. He called on partners and IOM member states to change the lens through which irregular migration – and the deaths that result from it – are seen.

“We need a global coalition of the willing to put an end to these deaths,” said Swing. “This will involve supporting migrants by offering alternatives, bringing closure to the numerous families who have lost loved ones and do not know where or how they died, and helping to stamp out the smugglers’ exploitation of some of the most vulnerable people you will find.”