generalspeaking

Desperately Seeking Haven

"They do know that they are risking their lives, but it is a rational decision. Because they know for a fact they will be facing death or persecution at home -- whatever remains of their home, or assuming there is a home in the first place.
"What drives them is the hope that they'll have a better life in Europe for themselves and their children. It's either perish or go somewhere."
Maurizio Albahari, University of Notre Dame

Human traffickers generally charge roughly $1,355 for each individual they can cram onto boats heading for Europe from troublespots in North Africa and the Middle East. For them it's a profitable business, for the desperate migrants it's a choice between misery and anguish, flirting with death; whether they stay where they are, or whether they embark on a perilous sea journey where they may die en route in a watery grave.

Italy remains the destination of choice simply because its Island of Lampedusa is the closest point of entry. Fortress Europe, an Italian observatory tracking migrants, claims that about 6,450 migrants died in the Canal of Sicily between 1994 and 2012. Those thousands of men, women and children no longer have to be concerned about whether or not they will survive the misery and pain that life has burdened them with.

The European Union is desperately attempting to come up with a solution because, said Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, "We cannot allow the Mediterranean to become a cemetery". Cemeteries, after all, are places on terra firma where graves are dug and the deceased are interred. So while it's fine for Syria or Libya or Somalia to become a huge cemetery, the Mediterranean really should be spared.

The EU is thinking of ways that the southern Mediterranean could be patrolled in a bid to prevent the tragic deaths of desperate sea-faring migrants hoping against hope that some compassionate country will take them in and offer them a new chance on life. And Lampedusa is the place they aim for.

And where an errant capsize of an overstuffed ship led to the death of over three hundred people on October 3. Followed closely by another and another.

The deaths are staggering in their numbers and the tragedy they represent of grim circumstances that asylum-seekers stagger away from with their families in the pathetic hope that better lies ahead for them. If release from fear and hunger, pain and misery is better, then death has given them the release they sought. Divers off Lampedusa are still recovering bodies.

But there are survivors, of course. And those survivors cannot be assured of haven. They can be assured that they will be returned hence they came to repeat their agony. The dead, on the other hand, have been granted post-mortem citizenship in Italy.

Labels: Catastrophe, Human Rights, Immigration, Refugees

posted by Pieface @ Saturday, October 19, 2013