‘Migrant season’ now year-round flow
More than 900 people have died this year as surge of migrants flee Africa and Mideast, writes Mitch Potter
As rescued survivors spilled onto the docks of southern Italy on Wednesday after a heartbreaking capsize tragedy off the coast of Libya, Europe found itself staring at a new reality — “migrant season” isn’t seasonal anymore, but a continuous year-round flow from Africa and the Middle East.
United Nations refugee officials said they were “deeply shocked” that the 2015 Mediterranean death toll now exceeds 900, compared with just 17 at this time last year.
The grim details of Monday’s capsize only added to the tragedy as survivors told aid workers the sight of approaching rescuers led to the tipping of the overloaded smuggler’s boat, 130 kms off the Libyan coast. “When the men on deck became restless and started moving about because a rescue boat was approaching, the boat capsized and water flooded the hull,” Joel Millman, an International Organization for Migration spokesman, said. "Women and children died immediately.”
Save the Children estimated that more than 400 migrants drowned in the chaotic minutes that followed — one-third of them women and children believed to have been sheltering below deck — making Monday’s disaster one of the deadliest migrant tragedies in the Mediterranean.
Rescuers pulled 144 people to safety. As Italy’s overburdened Coast Guard and Red Cross volunteers worked to help the survivors, critics unleashed fury at European “negligence and inaction.”
Amnesty International U.K. said the “shocking number of people who have drowned” in 2015 leaves EU leaders with no choice but to “throw their full weight behind" a concerted humanitarian operation.
Monday’s capsize tragedy coincided with a spike in migrant rescues, the Italian Coast Guard saying it had rescued nearly 10,000 people in 42 separate watercraft since Saturday. Italian crews mobilized with help from passing merchant ships and the EU’s Triton border-control program.
The EU has promised to deliver a “comprehensive migration agenda” in May aimed at providing life-saving answers to the deepening crisis.
But many groups worry the plan will emphasize interdiction on the African shores of the Mediterranean, with asylum seekers left to the indefinite mercy of fragile regimes.
“There is real cause for concern that the EU will implement abusive policies cloaked in humanitarian garb,” Human Rights Watch officials Judith Sunderland and Bill Frelick warned.