Islam Imploding
"I could only see heads, all around, amid the waves, everyone pushing down on everyone else to try and stay afloat."
"I dived under, ready to die to save my daughter."
Mohammed, Palestinian refugee
"They all went into the water, with only one life-jacket. So this life-jacket was with the father, who gave the life-jacket to his wife, because she didn't know how to swim."
"After that he saw that the baby was getting deep in the water [in danger of drowning]."
Juan Matias Gil, search and rescue operations field co-ordinator, Doctors Without Borders
This image taken from video provided by Medicines Sans Frontieres
shows rescuers making their way to the Medicines Sans Frontieres rescue
ship "Dignity" after rescuing victims from the Mediterranean Sea,
Wednesday, Aug. 5 2015. In the first hours after the accident in late
morning on Wednesday, 367 survivors were rescued and 25 bodies
recovered. Hundreds of migrants who survived the capsizing of a
smugglers' fishing boat were being brought to Italy Thursday.
(Medicines Sans Frontieres via AP)
Photo: AP
A video filmed on the rescue ship Dignity 1 was released by Doctors Without Borders, showing a Palestinian man, his wife and his one-year-old daughter, resting from their dreadful ordeal, and describing what they had gone through in a desperate attempt to survive their Mediterranean crossing when a capsizing boat stuffed with migrants were thrown into the sea, and the father was in possession of the one life-jacket to share among the three.
Another several days of harrowing passage for refugees fleeing conflict, poverty and oppression in the Middle East and North Africa, seeking haven in Europe. Their plight, attempting to escape dispossession and death and starvation, has landed many of them in a Europe incapable of absorbing them. Greece, whose economy has collapsed, is attempting to cope with 100,000 refugees requiring aid, but it hasn't the infrastructure, the funding or the will to render solace let alone aid.
This family was among 373 people on a fishing boat loaded with hundreds of migrants that overturned Another 381 people were saved by the Italian coast guard off the Libyan coast just before the boat they were on sank. Yet again in another rescue the Italian navy took up 101 people crowded on a rubber dinghy. A convoy of boats set off taking advantage of calm seas, carrying migrants and the smugglers whom they paid for passage.
On Thursday alone, one thousand migrants required rescue.The Irish navy vessel the Le Niamh was on the scene Wednesday to dock a day later in Palermo, Sicily with 367 survivors and 25 dead. The 367 people whom they rescued were among 600 on a fishing boat. Below deck were those unable to pay full fare, while above deck were those able to meet the smugglers' full price. As the overloaded ship began to list, water began to seep into the hold.
Migrants wait to disembark from the Irish Navy vessel Le Niamh, in
the harbor of Palermo, Sicily, Italy, Thursday, Aug. 6, 2015, after
they were rescued from the Mediterranean Sea when their boat capsized.
The Italian coast guard and Irish navy said at least 367 people were
saved, although 25 bodies also were found, as many other are feared to
have died during the capsizing of the fishing boat in the latest human
smuggling tragedy.
Photo: Alessandro Fucarini, AP
Those below deck began desperately attempting to make their way above, struggling to get through the hold, with the six young smugglers in charge lashing them with knives, whips and metal rods to force them to remain below. Refugees that were on deck were instructed to sit on the hold doors to keep those below from flooding the deck with their presence. When the ship went down, the imprisoned migrants drowned, roughly 200 people.
"Some of the people are torn by grief. They lost their children, they couldn't find them" in the water, said Giovanna Di Benedetto, a spokeswoman for Save the Children, of those above deck who were able to save themselves holding on to debris in the sea or swimming with flotation devices until they were finally rescued.
This human tragedy takes place while Islam is at war. With itself, and with its faithful. Muslims are fleeing from their homes, the countries of birth, from the threats that surround them, by a religious ideology that has driven extremists to turn their worlds into swamps of bloody excess, where bloodlust has replaced humanity as fanaticism triumphs over human dignity and degrades civilization.
Labels: Conflict, Europe, Human Rights, Islamism, Middle East, North Africa, Refugees
posted by Pieface @ Friday, August 07, 2015
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