GRAVEYARD OF THE HORROR HULKS, DEATHTRAPS FOR MIGRANTS
REVEALED: Gaping holes in migrant boats that somehow survived the crossing from Libya to Italy...
NOTHING portrays the depth of contempt the Mediterranean people-trafficking gangs hold for their human cargo as starkly as the boat graveyard on Lampedusa, the tiny island that is the closest part of Italy to North Africa.
The carcasses of wooden fishing boats, some peppered with gaping gashes in their hulls and rotting wooden planks peeling away from the superstructure, might as well bear flashing neon signs reading: ‘Your problem now, Europe.’
Desperate migrants are packed into these ailing craft which have little or no chance of making the voyage from Libya intact, in the clear expectation that the patrols from Italy – and soon the Royal Navy – will rescue them.
If they are not rescued, it’s hardly a problem for the shameful traffickers – after all, there are more customers and no shortage of unseaworthy death-traps to herd them into.
It’s impossible to comprehend the misery these tragic vessels witnessed, but at least some of their passengers made it. Plenty more boats lie at the bottom of the sea, along with the migrants who boarded them, sinking along with hopes and dreams of a new life in Europe.
Most of the Lampedusa wrecks were once part of fishing fleets off the Libyan coast.
As I walk through the boat graveyard, I find one vessel on which the deeply charred timbers around the engine area hint at the horrors its occupants experienced. Another is full of holes along the gunwales which may have been caused in a collision with another boat. The wood around the holes crumbles to dust between my fingers.
Last week, we saw again how lethal these death-traps are in the dangerous waters of the Mediterranean, with 80 bodies recovered from stricken vessels, and a further 100 migrants missing after a trawler capsized.
The Italian Coastguard said 10,000 migrants were rescued last week.
According to the latest figures, a million migrants arrived in Europe by sea last year.
The illegal migrant route through Libya, which involves a dangerous boat ride of more than 320 miles to Italy, has replaced the journey from eastern Turkey across the Aegean to the Greek isles, due to a heavy crackdown by European and Turkish authorities in that region.
It has been reported that 47 per cent of the 153,000 migrants who arrived in Italy last year did not claim asylum. Many absconded, making their way to more prosperous Britain, Germany or Sweden.
Two Senegalese migrants told me the story of their perilous journeys to Europe.
Babakar and Abdullah, who both claimed to be 17, met at the migrant centre, rather than in their home country. Both gave their reason for making the journey as ‘poverty’.
Babakar said he was kidnapped in Libya by ‘policemen’ who beat him every day and told him to tell his family in Senegal to send money. Eventually, he escaped and found a friend from Senegal who agreed to finance his trip.
Appallingly, there was no expectation that the inflatable boat would make it to Italy.
‘Before we set off, the trafficker gave us the phone number of a rescue service – I think in Italy, but I’m not sure. When we reached international waters, we called it.
‘We set off at 9pm and by 4am we had been picked up and were on our way to Italy.’
Abdullah said that after his mother, a divorced pharmacist, died last year, he – as the eldest of four children – sold two cows and some land to raise the $1,000 for the journey. In Tripoli he contacted people traffickers and set sail earlier this month.
‘There were 125 people squeezed into an inflatable plastic boat only 15m long,’ he said. ‘It had SOS written on the side. We knew we would never make it across to Italy, but we thought we would get picked up, so that’s why we set off at midday.
‘I would like to go to France if possible because of the language, but I would also consider England because I have heard it is a good country with lots of jobs.’
But however agonising the passage experienced by the thousands of migrants arriving each week in Lampedusa and other Italian ports, there is no doubt that those who did survive are now Europe’s problem, and the debate has begun in earnest about what should happen once the migrants have been rescued.
Even in the most unlikely places, you will find advocates for sending economic migrants – as opposed to refugees from war or famine – back to where they came from, or at least back across the sea.
Dr Pietro Bartolo, the most senior doctor in Lampedusa, has been honoured internationally for his humanitarian work, and blessed by Pope Francis, not once but twice. He hit the headlines again only last week when he vowed to adopt a little Nigerian girl called Favour, whose parents were killed in the crossing.
He preaches – and practises – nothing but human kindness for the migrants he has been examining and treating for years, passionately believing that Europe has a ‘moral duty’ to take them in. But he adds: ‘As for those who are coming here just for a better life, we should send them home.’
Dr Bartolo says the vast majority of those desperate enough to attempt the sea voyage are likely to be genuine refugees, and that ageing Europe needs new blood ‘to do the jobs Europeans won’t do’.
He even goes much further than most politicians and urged the European naval ships not to stop at merely rescuing the migrants, but actually weigh anchor in Libya and provide safe passage for them.
Manuel Esposito, 57, a fisherman at the Old Port in Lampedusa, said the boat graveyard had built up over several years.
‘Every so often, the coastguards bring another one to add to the collection,’ he said. ‘We look at some of them and wonder how they even floated, never mind getting across the sea. It is a very sad sight.’
But because of the callousness of the smugglers, there is no end in sight to the misery measured by the boats in this graveyard of horrors.
‘We knew we would never make it to Italy’