By Eze Eluchie,
Exactly 10
years ago today, early in the mornings of October 3rd 2013, the
world woke to the gut wrenching news that a ship with over 500 migrants aboard,
which had taken off from the Libyan coast city of Misrata, headed for Italian
port city of Lampedusa, had capsized, with majority of the passengers feared
drowned. As dawn broke and the day got brighter, the magnitude of the disaster became
evident to the ships that had hearkened to the distress calls, and soon enough
the shock waves went global.
The migrant
ship had totally sunk, 155 survivors had been rescued, and hundreds of corpses
who had been ‘passengers’ on the now wrecked migrant ship, littered the Mediterranean
(the Med). As the search and rescue operation gradually became a corpse
recovery operation, it was discovered that hundreds of victims who had been in
the hull of the ship, had gone down with the vessel. The total death count was
officially stated to be ‘over 360’.
Barely eight
days later, on the 11th of October 2013, whilst the world was
reeling from the shock of the 3rd October 2013 shipwreck, yet
another mass causality shipwreck occurred in the Med, within the territorial
waters of Malta, leading to the death of over 130 migrants.
More in response
to public concern at the horrific images of mass deaths that the media was
projecting sequel to the twin sinking’s in the Med, the European Union adopted
what can be described as a knee-jerk response, which was focused at preventing
and discouraging migrants from embarking on the journey to Europe. The EU
hurriedly raised budgets with which it supported the Navies and Coast Guards in
the main take-off points of the migrants in their journey to Europe with speed
boats and weapons (Tunisia and Libya) – essentially, facilities to forcefully
stop emigration and or kill the intending migrants. The EU approach also
included advocacy visits to the home countries from whence the migrants
commenced their fatalistic journey’s to Europe, mainly in Sub-Sahara Africa and
parts of the Asian subcontinent. In addition, the EU looked the other way
whilst EU member States bordering the Med enacted vile and despicable laws
which criminalized search and rescue efforts and assisting persons in distress
at sea! Not even amongst animals who, as humans, we consider beneath our
status, have such beastly evil as punishing saving lives been criminalized.
Having equipped
the border security officials in the North African countries of Libya and Tunisia,
who are ordinarily vicious, intolerant and uncouth towards migrants, it was
only expected that with such ‘greenlight’ and cooperation from supposedly democratic
EU countries, an open cheque for mass atrocities had been issued, with an
unspoken guarantee that the normal ‘human rights scrutiny’ expected from the
major organizations who are ordinarily vociferous on matters of infringement on
human rights.
Ever since,
virtually no fortnight has passed without reports of the sinking, wreckage or
disappearance of a migrant ship in the Mediterranean. In one dizzying spell of 5 days in the first week of August 2023, there was an astonishing officially
recorded four migrant boat wrecks in the Med, on the Tunisia to Italy route,
with 131 lives lost! Official figures in the range of 3,000 to 5,000 deaths on
the Med per annum are touted only by those who, like the ostrich, opt to bury
their heads in the sands. Estimated figures of fatalities are in the tens of
thousands per annum. The idyllic Mediterranean which for centuries spawned
countless visions of amity, trade and prosperity, has for many migrants and the
families they left behind, turned into a graveyard of dreams for generations.
Questions began
to be raised as to what could be responsible for the increase in fatalities
whilst crossing the Med. Some blamed it on the greed of the human traffickers
who were willing to take greater risks for more profits, others attributed it
to more turbulence in the Med due to climate change, yet others suggested that
perhaps there now existed a new ‘Bermuda Triangle’ in the Med which was sucking
in migrant boats. Plausible, but were those the reason? Are the waves in the
Med now more violent than waves elsewhere? Did human traffickers suddenly
become suicidal and no longer interested in raking in profits? Or were the EU
efforts at preventing the arrival of migrants on mainland Europe now becoming
more successful by virtue preventing and discouraging the arrivals of such
migrants on EU soil – even if it meant torpedoing their vessels at sea and
killing migrants in their thousands whilst also feigning to rescue them?
As more dead
bodies of migrants begun to wash up on the shores of Libya, Tunisia and the
southern shorelines of Europe, and reports of delayed or aborted rescue efforts
of passengers aboard sinking vessels became normalized, it was clear that it
would only be a matter of time before hard irrefutable evidence of some of the untoward
practices in the Med would come to light.
Despite its
repeated feeble, unsubstantiated denials, the role the Greek Coast Guard played
in the sinking of the trawler which was transporting several hundred migrants (mostly
of Pakistani extraction), from Libya to Italy proved to be a smoking gun
episode. When the lies and denials by the Greeks couldn’t stand the science,
evidence and testimonies of the survivors, silence enveloped prior efforts at
denial. With just 104 survivors from this 14th June 2023 shipwreck and
over 500 migrants missing, the Greek Coast Guards had been caught pants down as
main culprits in a mass atrocity that dwarfed the Lampedusa tragedy.
The Prosecutor
of the International Criminal Court, the various mechanisms for addressing mass
atrocities in Europe and even the Security Council of the United Nations, have
acted as though the mass murder of 14th June 2023 off the coast of
Greece never occurred.
If any was
in doubt as to State complicity in deaths in the Med, the migrant boat wreck off
the coast of Libya sometime in the last week of September, 2023, cleared any such
doubts. The video released by Sea-Watch International which showed Libyan Coast
Guard vessel in a most brazen manner and despite warnings and being aware that
observers were watching, crash into and torpedoed a migrant boat with several
migrants on board. Soon thereafter, as can be seen on the video, another Libyan
coast guard patrol vehicle, hypocritically, showed up and threw life vests at the
migrants who could swim. Were it not for the heroic and expository video by Sea-Watch
International, this despicable attempt at mass murder (using equipment supplied
and staff trained by the EU), would have been passed off as a ‘heroic rescue of
migrants’ by equipment supplied by the EU. Could this be how the other several
instance of rescues by Navies and Coast Guards have played out?
How many of
these mass murders have taken place in the past one week, or one month or over
the years? How many migrants were killed when their boats were wrecked by
navies or coast guards who were striving to uphold the EU policy to prevent and
suppress migrants from getting to the coast of Europe, in keeping with EU
policies? One cannot but help if a similar crime was what transpired on the
coast of Lampedusa in 2013, and several other such episodes.
Has the
world kept silent in the face of mass atrocities of genocidal proportions?
Are the
crimes of mass murders of identifiable segments of populations not within the
purview of the International Criminal Court to prosecute under the Rome
Statues?
Is the
Prosecutor of the ICC unaware of the crimes against humanity being perpetuated
in the Mediterranean?
Should the
EU not take responsibility for the consequences of some of her actions which
has directly led to the commission of mass atrocities?
Are there
better ways to address the migrant crisis?
….the
answers to the above questions will be addressed here shortly.
Picture: The coffins of victims of the Lampedusa migrant
ship disaster, 2013.
