The Skeleton In The Closet
"Continuing to think that allowing them to depart and then chasing after them means putting at risk human lives."
"We are facing an organized criminal activity that is making lots of money, but above all ruining many lives."
Italian Premier Matteo Renzi
"A few hundred were forced into the hold and they were locked in and prevented from coming out."
Italian prosecutor Giovanni Salvi
Italian sailors rescued more
than 100 refugees from Africa in the sea between Italy and Libya on Oct.
4, 2014. The migrants said they had left Tripoli, Libya, the night
before.
Lynsey Addario for The New York Times
The Italian coast guard and navy, and citizens are desperately attempting to grapple with the reality of what appears increasingly like suicide missions crossing the Mediterranean from North Africa to Europe. Tens of thousands of migrants from countries as disparate yet aligned in their dysfunction, as Somalia, Eritrea, Syria, Palestinian Territories, Libya and more have fled their countries of origin in the hope that life elsewhere -- almost anywhere else -- will grant them a renewed chance at life.
Some have relatives living in northern Europe, and hope to be able to make a perilous overland, then sea voyage to reach Europe. Many of them will never realize their dream of haven. Yet despite the certain knowledge that others before them have undertaken such journeys with catastrophic results, hope springs eternal that their fate will be different, for what they leave behind is so inimical to life, liberty and hope that any risks appear worthwhile.
It seems logical enough that news of the death of perhaps 700 people from drowning, dispatched in one single vessel, would be sufficient to give people pause for thought. But it seems only to make them more desperate to depart their lives of agonizing fear and deprivation to gamble their chance for a future will be rewarded where others' attempts had resulted in chaos at best, a grisly death in the worst scenario, that has become all too predictably common.
Conscienceless people smugglers locking hundreds of migrants below decks so that when the ship sinks they have no opportunity whatever to even attempt to save themselves. Ships so unseaworthy that when people rush to one side of the vessel, it capsizes and sinks, taking hundreds of lives to the bottom of the ocean deep. Search and rescue efforts, when successful, have the effect of persuading those contemplating making such voyages toward safety, that they must risk the effort.
In Palermo, Italy, a human trafficking ring was rounded up, accused of criss-crossing Europe making hundreds of thousands of euros. The man behind this ring has been identified as an Ethiopian, Ermias Ghermay, implicated in the October 2013 shipwreck off Lampedusa that left 366 people dead. An arrest warrant has been issued for this man, believed to be in Libya, as well as another 24 people, involved in the trafficking ring, one of many; hardly making a dent in the predatory cabal.
Captain Gian Luigi Bove described his experience when his vessel, 80 kilometres distance from the weekend shipwreck, responded when the distress call came in, only to discover a mere two survivors, and the gruesome scene of bodies floating in the sea. While the world speaks in hushed tones of disbelief over the deaths of thousands of people, the migratory perils of up to a further half-million may yet be in the near future.
And all of this, the desperate movement of people away from privation and domination by predatory governments, of conflicts caused by tribal and sectarian hatred and violence, occurs within Muslim populations where suspicion and misery, accusations and violence festers and inspires one group to violate the human rights of another, each side claiming that theirs is the true face of Islam, as mass rape and slaughter becomes the disorder of the wider geography.
Labels: Catastrophe, Conflict, Europe, Islamism, Italy, Middle East, Migrants, North Africa, Threats, Violence
posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, April 22, 2015
<< Home