Day of tears: Will Italy boat sinking change European migration policies?

As Pope Francis called for a 'day of tears' for the scores of African migrants who died in a boat sinking off Italy, officials said it was wake-up call for all of Europe.

|
Italian Coast Guard/Courtesy via Reuters
A still image taken from video released on October 4, 2013 by the Italian Coastguard shows migrants rescued from the water off the southern Italian island of Lampedusa on Thursday October 3, 2013.

At the airport on the tiny, windswept Mediterranean island of Lampedusa, a hangar has been turned into a makeshift morgue. Officials on the Italian territory don’t have enough room to store the bodies of African migrants who drowned when their boat sank in one of the worst European maritime disasters in years.

By Friday, the confirmed death toll had reached 155, according to the UN refugee agency,  and fears grew that twice that number still may be trapped in the sunk boat wreckage. It’s a tragedy that has riveted and disgusted Italians, and Europeans far from the island, and moved Pope Francis to call for a "day of tears."

"This is not an Italian tragedy, this is a European tragedy," Interior Minister Angelino Alfano said Thursday. "Lampedusa has to be considered the frontier of Europe, not the frontier of Italy."

The UN High Commission on Refugees said Friday that the 65-ft. boat left from the Libyan port of Misrata with about 500 men, women, and children – mainly from Eritrea and Somalia— on or about Sept. 20.

The agency cited survivors as saying that the boat’s engines failed not far from Lampedusa sometime overnight Thursday, and that the passengers lighted blankets and clothing on fire to attract attention from passing boats.  News reports said the boat capsized during a stampede from passengers, possibly sparked by the fire. Other reports said boat passengers started the fire after the boat started to sink.

“Those who died presumably either could not swim or were trapped in the boat's crammed lower deck,” UNHCR spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said in a press statement.

The Italian government announced a day of mourning Friday, and a minute of silence was to be held in the country’s schools to remember the victims.

The incident occurred just days after another boat disaster killed 13 migrants off the coast of Sicily.

Migrants typically each pay around $1,600 to be taken from the coasts of Libya and Tunisia to Lampedusa or Malta, the closest pieces of European territory to North Africa. Lampedusa is closer to North Africa than the Italian mainland,

Sky News said migrants who arrive in Lampedusa are typically processed in migration centers, screened for asylum, and often sent back home.

The BBC cited Alfano as saying that the boat’s captain, a 35-year-old Tunisian, was arrested. The man had been deported from Italy in April.

"There is something fundamentally wrong in a world where people in need of protection have to resort to these perilous journeys. This tragedy should serve as a wake-up call,” the UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres said.

The tragedy stoked angry accusations among Italy’s boisterous political parties. The anti-immigrant Northern League called for the resignation of Integration Minister Cecile Kyenge, Italy's first black minister, charging that her support for greater integration of immigrants encourages such perilous ventures.

"These are refugees. We have a duty to take them in. They must be respected," Lampedusa’s mayor, Giusi Nicolini, was quoted by Reuters as saying. 

The UNHCR has said that more than 1,500 people drowned or went missing while attempting to cross the Mediterranean to reach Europe in 2011, making it the worst year since the agency began collecting data in 2006 and making the waters between North Africa and Italy "the most deadly stretch of water for refugees and migrants". The number of those arriving by sea to Italy this year to date number 30,100, according to the UN.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Day of tears: Will Italy boat sinking change European migration policies?
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/2013/1004/Day-of-tears-Will-Italy-boat-sinking-change-European-migration-policies
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe