http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/10851041/The-migrants-making-the-deadly-journey-to-freedom.html
The migrants making the deadly journey to freedomThe Telegraph joins an
Italian Coast Guard aircraft searching the Mediterranean for migrants
making the treacherous journey across the Mediterranean to Lampedusa
By Nick Squires, Lampedusa
9:04AM BST 23 May 2014
The Italian Coast Guard surveillance plane swung low over the glittering
Mediterranean, thundering above the waves at a height of just 300ft.
Officer Alessio Leocata trains his eyes on the deep blue waters picking out
a scattering of fishing boats innocently plying their way home.
Italian navy ship Vega during a rescue operation in open international
waters (Reuters)
But then he spots something altogether more sinister - a boat equipped with
two powerful outboard engines with not a soul on board.
Zooming in on the vessel with an infra-red camera, so powerful that it can
discern the name of a boat from several miles away, Leocata confirms that
it is empty.
"It looks like it's been abandoned by people smugglers," said Capt Bruno
Massimiliano, the pilot. "Sometimes they place a GPS device on it so that
they can come back and retrieve it, other times they just leave it in the
middle of the sea."
The whereabouts of its occupants - likely to have been dozens of migrants
hoping to reach the Italian island of Lampedusa, a few hours' sailing to
the north - was a mystery.
A short time later, a blip appears on the radar. This time it is a boat
with people on board, heading north from the coast of Libya.
Migrants from Sub-Saharian areas after being rescued in open international
waters in the Mediterranean between the Italian and the Libyan coasts
(Reuters)
When it is intercepted a few hours later by an Italian Coast Guard patrol
boat, it is found to contain 320 Eritrean migrants.
A severely dehydrated woman and her young child had to be taken by
helicopter to Lampedusa for urgent hospital treatment while the rest were
transferred to an Italy navy frigate and taken to the port of Pozzallo in
Sicily.
For Officer Leocata, the sightings are now no longer a surprise -they are
routine.
He is at the sharp end of an operation code-named by Italy "Mare Nostrum"
(Our Sea), designed to intercept and rescue the huge number of
hastily-constructed boats full of desperate refugees that almost daily ply
the dangerous route between the coast of North Africa and Italy's
southern-most shores.
Italy says it is being overwhelmed by the sheer number of migrants who are
crossing from the North African coast - mostly from Libya - in search of a
better life in Europe.
It is not uncommon for 1,000 or more to be picked up in a single day.
Migrants and members of the crew onboard the Italian frigate Grecale as
they arrive at a harbour in Sicily (Reuters)
So far this year, 36,000 migrants have reached Italy, compared with 43,000
in the whole of 2013 and just 13,000 in 2012.
Angelino Alfano, the interior minister, has said that unless Italy gets
more help from the rest of Europe, it will simply allow the refugees in its
reception centres cross its borders to neighbouring countries.
"The European Union has two options: either it comes to the Mediterranean
to put the EU flag on Mare Nostrum or we will let migrants with right of
asylum leave for other countries," he wrote on Twitter.
The authorities fear that by the end of this year the numbers will match
the previous record, 2011, the year of the Arab Spring, when more than
62,000 came.
The Italian government, citing information gleaned by its intelligence
services, believes that are up to 800,000 migrants languishing in grim
camps in Libya and other parts of northern Africa, waiting to make the
crossing to what they view as the promised land.
Captain Aldo Dolfini on the bridge of the San Giorgio (Reuters)
There are middle-class Syrians fleeing the murderous civil war in their
homeland, West Africans from Mali and Burkina Faso in search of jobs and
Eritreans and Somalis escaping the chaos in the Horn of Africa.
They pay smugglers on average $3,000 to $4,000 to get them to Europe,
officials told The Telegraph.
Before they even attempt the perilous sea voyage, many have already been
through hell - crossing the Sahara by truck or foot, beaten by gangs of
smugglers, sold by one trafficking group to another, the women routinely
raped.
"I performed surgery on a young African man who had machete wounds to his
hand, who said he had been attacked by smugglers in order to strike terror
into the rest of his group - and another man, an Egyptian, who had a
gunshot wound to his leg," said
Giada Bellanca, a doctor from the Order of Malta, a charity which deploys
teams of medics on Italian navy ships.
The pace of arrivals is expected to pick up dramatically as summer
approaches and sea conditions improve.
Lampedusa's overcrowded migrant reception centre was closed early this year
after controversy over its treatment of refugees, so new arrivals are now
taken instead to centres in Sicily.
Around 30,000 are currently languishing in these facilities, waiting to
have their asylum applications processed.
After a day or two, many others simply walk out of the main gates and
disappear - headed for the most part towards wealthier northern European
countries like Germany, France and the UK.
In order to evade the Dublin Regulation, which stipulates that migrants
must have their asylum applications processed in the country in which they
first arrive, some migrants paint their fingers with nail varnish or strong
glue so that they cannot be fingerprinted.
Having avoided identification, they are then able to leave Italy and lodge
their asylum applications in the country of their choice, officials say.
"The system is on the point of collapse," Giovanni Pinto, the director of
immigration at the interior ministry, told a parliamentary committee last
month.
"We no longer have enough places in which to accommodate them and local
people are tiring of the continual arrival of foreigners. On the coasts of
Libya there are at least 800,000 more ready to cross."
(Reuters)
Operation Mare Nostrum was initiated last October, after more than 350
migrants lost their lives when their boat capsized within sight of
Lampedusa, Italy's southern-most territory, in a tragedy that led to
soul-searching and prompted calls for something to be done to address the
migration crisis.
But it is now at the centre of an intense debate, with critics, many of
them politicians from the centre-Right, claiming that far from deterring
migrants, it has encouraged more of them to cross the Mediterranean.
The Italian navy and Coast Guard are acting as an unwitting "taxi service"
for the migrant boats, with smugglers sure that the boats will be
intercepted a day or two out from the North African coast, critics say.
As a result, they are able to supply the boats with less fuel than before
and the cost of making the crossing has reportedly dropped significantly,
making it affordable to even more asylum seekers.
"Mare Nostrum is helping the smugglers and encouraging the invasion of our
coasts and should be terminated immediately," said Matteo Salvini, the head
of the anti-immigrant, Right-wing Northern League.
It is hugely expensive, costing Italy EURO 9 million a month, according to Mr
Alfano, the interior minister.
Italy has repeatedly called for more money and resources to be provided by
the European Union to stem an exodus of almost biblical proportions.
"In the public perception, many people think migrants come in search of a
better life - for economic reasons," said Albrecht Boeselager, a senior
member of the Order of Malta who is responsible for its humanitarian
missions worldwide.
"But in fact there are many other factors driving this - some are
politically persecuted at home, others are lured by very powerful criminal
trafficking bands."
Meanwhile, the boats keep coming. Most of the migrants arrive with only the
clothes they are wearing, and many are barefoot.
"There are old people, pregnant women, tiny babies. Many of them are not
even wearing shoes," said Dr Bellanca, on board a Coast Guard launch as it
cruised over the exact spot where the migrant boat capsized last October,
off the coast of Lampedusa.
"But when they see the Italian flag, they cry with relief. That means
everything to them."
Received on Fri May 23 2014 - 08:16:43 EDT