Refugee crisis this year ‘is deadliest yet’
Politicians are accused of ignoring problem
LONDON: More refugees are dying in desperate attempts to reach safety in Europe than ever before as political leaders are accused of turning their backs on the continuing crisis.
At least 3,000 migrants have died in treacherous journeys across the Mediterranean Sea so far this year, drowning or being suffocated in the bottom of overcrowded smugglers’ boats.
The tragic benchmark was not reached until October 2015, which was the deadliest year on record and made the channel between Libya and Italy the most dangerous crossing in the world.
Rescue workers said that although fewer asylum seekers have been risking the journey to Greece since the EU-Turkey deal, the situation in the central Mediterranean is getting worse as the number of refugees shows no sign of slowing.
At least 1,500 people were expected to arrive in Sicily alone on Saturday and 1,000 yesterday, bringing the total to at least 3,000 since Friday.
Dr Erna Rijnierse, a doctor on the MV Aquarius rescue ship run by Doctors Without Borders (MSF) and SOS Mediterranee, said the humanitarian situation was becoming ever more horrific.
In her months treating refugees for injuries sustained from torture, beatings, rape and sexual abuse she has seen several tragedies.
On July 20 she boarded a boat drifting off the coast of Libya to find the bodies of 22 refugees on board, mostly women crammed between the wooden floor and rubber hull.
“I went on board to make sure there was no one we could save and there was a very strong smell of petrol,” Dr Rijnierse said. “The boat had cracked and the fuel was mixed in with the water. They died an agonising death. You could see it on their faces. Some of them had suffocated. Some of them had drowned in 30cm of water. It was something I hope never to see again.”
She and her colleagues photographed the bodies and handed details over to the Italian authorities in the hope they can be identified, while the surviving passengers were taken to safety.
Dr Rijnierse said she believes the situation is worsening in the Mediterranean as smugglers switch from larger wooden fishing vessels to small rubber boats.
“They are meant to carry between 12 and 20 people but each one has more than 100 on board,” she added. “These boats are just not seaworthy. They are dangerously overcrowded and the people driving them have no idea what they are doing.”
The rise in deaths so far in 2016 — more than 2,606 of which have been recorded between Libya and Italy — is believed to partly be down to this change of tactics by increasingly ruthless smugglers, who were previously known to sail large boats into international waters before abandoning ship and returning to shore.
On the shorter crossing over the Aegean Sea between Turkey and the Greek islands, refugees are normally loaded into dinghies and picked up by patrol boats from the EU’s border agency to be taken to shore.
Since t he i mplementation of t he EU-Turkey deal in March, any refugees arriving clandestinely via the route are detained until their asylum applications are accepted, or sent back to Turkey when they fail.
Christine Nikolaidou, from the IOM in Greece, said the threats of imprisonment and deportation were having a dramatic effect. She said: “Flows have decreased not just because of the agreement but because of the closure of the borders ... Now we have between zero and 100 people arriving in a day. Before it was between 1,000 and 10,000.”
Syrians make up almost half of refugees arriving in Greece, followed by Afghans, Iraqis, Pakistanis and Iranians.
But the picture in Italy is markedly different, with most asylum seekers travelling from Nigeria, Eritrea, Gambia, Sudan, Somalia and other African nations.
Many are forced to cross the Sahara with lawless gangs of smugglers, who are known to rape, torture and starve refugees, throwing bodies of those who die off lorries to rot in the desert. They then board boats from Libya, where the fragile government is struggling to stop warring factions battling for control and prevent the spread of the IS.
Valentina Bollenback, from Save the Children, said the number of unaccompanied children travelling on the dangerous route had doubled in the past year. She said teenagers are especially vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. She described meeting a girl on Thursday who had been raped in Libya and was pregnant with her abuser’s child.
“The situation isn’t getting any better. It’s probably worse and the reception centres are completely full,” she added.
“They go through hell and they’re not even safe when they get here.”
More than 10,500 unaccompanied children reached Italy by sea from January to June this year, including young women being forced into prostitution and hard labour as payment for their “debt” incurred in crossing the Mediterranean.
Many refugees pay hundreds or even thousands of US dollars for the crossings — often more than the cost of plane tickets they are unable to buy because they cannot obtain a visa to migrate legally. Dr Rijnierse said that as well as taking asylum seekers’ life savings, smugglers often take all their belongings, leaving them without food and water on sea crossings that could take days.
Dr Kim Clausen, the project coordinator on MSF’s Bourbon Argos search and rescue boat, said: “It seems like a lot of people in the EU think everyone coming over is a terrorist and that we should leave them to die ... I think we are living in a really shameful chapter for European history. We can’t even treat people like human beings.