Source:
NY times
Quote:
Boat Carrying African Immigrants Reaches Italy With 13 Dead
By ALAN COWELL
(The official body count, as of 21 October on Italian news sources is 70)
Published: October 21, 2003
OME, Oct. 20 — Italian authorities reported Monday that at least 13 people died in a small wooden boat adrift in the Mediterranean trying to reach this country from North Africa. A rescuer described the 40-foot vessel carrying the dead and 15 survivors as resembling "a scene from Dante's Inferno."
One of the survivors, an unidentified woman, was so weak that she was initially taken for dead after the crew of an Italian fishing boat spotted the stricken vessel on Sunday. Italian authorities quoted survivors as saying the vessel had been at sea for more than two weeks but had run out of fuel, food and water.
Survivors, thought to be Somalis who had traveled from Libya, said they had thrown many bodies overboard before they became too weak to manage even that, Italian authorities said. The final death toll could therefore climb much higher. Survivors were quoted as saying the bodies dumped at sea included those of 15 women and 7 children.
This newest grisly episode on the high seas between North Africa and the Italian island of Lampedusa — which is closer to the coast of Tunisia than to the Italian mainland — served to underscore the huge challenges confronting European authorities seeking to control traffickers of immigrants and fugitives ready to risk death for a chance of a new life in Europe.
"This tragedy weighs heavily on the conscience of Europe, but it also puts the spotlight on African governments doing nothing to control this exodus," said the Italian interior minister, Giuseppe Pisanu.
He was speaking after a meeting with his French, British, German and Spanish counterparts in La Baule, in western France, that produced agreement on a range of measures, including a crackdown on people-smuggling gangs and stronger visa controls to prevent a flow of illegal migrants, particularly from Eastern Europe, China and Africa.
With its long, unguarded coastline, Italy has long been a target for illegal immigrants. Once they reach Italy, the absence of cross-border controls between many European Union countries makes it easy for them to disappear into a growing underground of unauthorized residents.
Italy partly sealed off the flow when it struck an agreement in 1998 with Albania to prevent the use of Albanian ports for illegal sailings. But Rome has been unable to do the same with Tunisia and Libya.
Michele Niosi, the commander of the harbor master's office in Lampedusa, quoted survivors as saying around 85 people had been on the small boat when it sailed from North Africa. Initial accounts by survivors said the vessel departed Oct. 3 but soon ran out of fuel and began to drift. Some survivors said they had had nothing to eat or drink for 10 days before their rescue, according to Italian news reports.
Stefano Valfre, 34, the skipper of the fishing boat, the Sant' Anna, said he and his crew spotted the stricken boat about 50 nautical miles off Lampedusa on Sunday.
"The bodies were piled up one on top of the other," he said in an interview by radio with Italy's ANSA news agency. "You couldn't tell the living from the dead. All we could see was the arms of some of them stretching out to us to ask for help."
Daniela Pugliese, a spokeswoman for the Italian Interior Ministry, said illegal immigrants were usually sent back to their country of origin. "But in special circumstances like this, when the situation is really desperate, they may be given permission to stay for humanitarian reasons. But it is too early at this stage to tell what will happen to these people."
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Tonight another 20 people reportedly drowned after attempting to leave Libya on an old fishing boat which subsequently sunk some 10 miles off the coast. Only two survived.
Such tragedies aren't new: hundreds of illegal migrants have died during "hope-travels" towards Italy, although it has seldom made international news.
Until about 2001 the main stream of desperates came to Italy through the Otranto channel, the narrowest part of the Adriatic Sea, leaving from the ports of Albania. In the year 2001 a deal was struck between Italy and Albania, which allows Italy to police Albanian territorial waters, together with the military forces of that country. These measures have allowed both governments to effectively stop people smuggling.
After a period of truce, the flow of desperates has started again, this time coming from the coasts of Libya and Tunisia towards the island of Lampedusa, south of Sicily. Deals with Tunisia to prevent people smuggling are under way, but such deals are impossible with the Libyan government.
The said government claims to be unable to effectively patrol their coasts due to the lack of military equipment such as patrol boats. Such equipment cannot be sold to them because of a UN embargo. Yet Libya doesn't want to allow Italian navy to patrol Libyan territorial waters, or italian army to support land based operations to secure the maritime Libyan border. It is quite clear that the Libyan government is trying to use this flow of desperates as a form of pressure towards Europe, in order to get the UN sanctions lifted.
In the meanwhile desperate people pay 3000 - 5000 € to criminal organizations in order to be shipped, like cattle, on boats insanely crowded and unable to float in your bathtub. And many of them either drow, or die by thirst and starvation in the high seas.
My question is, where are EU and UN when they are needed? They could either lift the sanctions on Libya and allow them to get limited coastal patroling equipment, or compel Libya to accept EU/UN vessels patroling their coasts. Yet, Europe seems not to bother to get a coherent immigration policy, and the UN simply doesn't care.