The EU’s de facto policy is to let migrants drown to stop others coming. How many more deaths can we stomach?
A dinghy packed with migrants off the Libyan coast

A dinghy packed with migrants off the Libyan coast. ‘Five hundred people have already died this year; the figure for the equivalent period in 2014 was 15.' Photograph: Darrin Zammit Lupi/Reuters

These are the people we are allowing to die in the Mediterranean. The EU’s de facto policy is to let migrants drown to stop others coming. Last year nearly four thousand bodies were recovered from the Med. Those are just the ones we found. The total number of arrivals in Italy in 2014 went up over 300% from the year before, to more than 170,000. And the EU’s response, driven by the cruellest British government in living memory, was to cut the main rescue operation, Mare Nostrum.

The inevitable result is that 500 people have already died this year. The figure for the equivalent period in 2014 was 15. There are half a million people in Libya waiting to make the crossing. How many more deaths can we stomach?

Migration illustrates one of the signal features of modern life, which is malice by proxy. Like drones and derivatives, migration policy allows the powerful to inflict horrors on the powerless without getting their hands dirty. James Brokenshire, the minister who defended cutting Mare Nostrum on the nauseatingly hypocritical grounds that it encouraged migration, never has to let the deaths his decision helped to cause spoil his expensive lunch with lobbyists. It doesn’t affect him.

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But it does affect us. Right now we are a diminished and reduced society, bristling with suspicion and distrust of others even as we perversely struggle with loneliness and alienation. We breathe the toxic smog of hatred towards immigrants pumped out by Nigel Farage and Katie Hopkins, and it makes us lesser people.

Forget the fact that this society wouldn’t work without migrants, that nobody else will pick your vegetables and make your latte and get up at 4am to clean your office. Forget the massive tax contribution made by migrants to the Treasury. This is not about economics. Far too often, even the positive takes on migration are driven by numbers and finance, by “What can they do for us?”. This is about two things: compassion and responsibility.

Lampedusa, my play currently running at the Soho Theatre, focuses on two people at the sharp end of austerity Europe. Stefano is a coastguard whose job is to fish dead migrants out of the sea. Denise is a collector for a payday loan company. They’re not liberals. They don’t like the people they deal with. They can’t afford to. As Stefano says: “You try to keep them at arm’s length. There’s too many of them. And it makes you think, about the randomness of I get to walk these streets, and he doesn’t. The ground becomes ocean under your feet.”

Migration illustrates one of the signal features of modern life: malice by proxy

But eventually, the human impact of what they do breaks through. And in their consequent struggles, both Stefano and Denise are aided by a friendship, reluctant and questioning, with someone they formerly thought of as a burden. This is compassion not as a lofty feeling for someone beneath you, but as the raw reciprocal necessity of human beings who have nothing but each other. This is where we are in the utterly corrupted, co-opted politics of the early 21st century. The powerful don’t give a shit. All we have is us.

But equally important is responsibility. In all the rage about migration, one thing is never discussed: what we do to cause it. A report published this week by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists reveals that the World Bank displaced a staggering 3.4 million people in the last five years. By funding privatisations, land grabs and dams, by backing companies and governments accused of rape, murder and torture, and by putting $50bn into projects graded highest risk for “irreversible and unprecedented” social impacts, the World Bank has massively contributed to the flow of impoverished people across the globe. The single biggest thing we could do to stop migration is to abolish the development mafia: the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, European Investment Bank and European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

A very close second is to stop bombing the Middle East. The west destroyed the infrastructure of Libya without any clue as to what would replace it. What has is a vacuum state run by warlords that is now the centre of Mediterranean people-smuggling. We’re right behind the Sisi regime in Egypt that is eradicating the Arab spring, cracking down on Muslims and privatising infrastructure at a rate of knots, all of which pushes huge numbers of people on to the boats. Our past work in Somalia, Syria and Iraq means those nationalities are top of the migrant list.

Not all migration is caused by the west, of course. But let’s have a real conversation about the part that is. Let’s have a real conversation about our ageing demographic and the massive skills shortage here, what it means for overstretched public services if we let migrants in (we’d need to raise money to meet increased demand, and the clearest and fairest way is a rise in taxes on the rich), the ethics of taking the cream of the crop from poor countries. Migration is a complex subject. But let’s not be cowards and pretend the migrants will stop coming. Because they won’t. This will never stop.

Source=http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/17/refugees-eu-policy-migrants-how-many-deaths?CMP=share_btn_tw

Two Eritrean men smuggled across the Med from Africa to Europe said they knew the risks but had no choice but to make the journey.

19:31, UK, Tuesday 21 April 2015

 

Two Eritrean asylum seekers have told how they relived their own nightmare of journeying across the Mediterranean when they heard how hundreds of people died in a single boat tragedy.

Habtom Hadish, 31, and Essay Fitiwi, 36, both took smuggler boats across the Mediterranean last year and had to be rescued by the Italian coastguard when their vessels broke down.

Speaking about the disaster off Libya at the weekend, Mr Hadish told Sky News: "I very sad that so many men and women died."

Mr Fitwi added: "I'm hurt, I'm sad and I'm crying. The situation is so dangerous."

Although they travelled separately, they both told how their boats broke down at sea - leaving them fearing they were going to drown.

 
 
 
Video: Migrant Ship Captain Facing Charges

Mr Hadish said: "The journey from Libya to Italy was very dangerous. It was in a small boat, about 350 people, in the middle of the sea. Unfortunately the pumping of water stopped and I felt like we were going to die, all of us."

He said two people on board suffocated below deck before the coast guard arrived.

Mr Fitwi said of the desperate conditions: "Inside there is heightened pressure and intensification. There is no air.

"Travelling without food, without water for 26 hours and the captain didn't know the direction for the GPS."

 
 
 
Video: How Can UK Tackle Migrant Crisis?

He said the boat ran out of fuel and it ended up drifting.

He added they were so desperate that they drank their own urine and said: "I thought we were going to die". The coastguard then arrived after 10 hours.

Both men were fleeing instability in Eritrea. Mr Fitwi travelled to Libya via Sudan in a truck, and Mr Hadish went via Ethiopia.

They both paid people smugglers $2,000 each but say they knew the risks they were taking.

 
 
 
Video: Where Are The Migrants Coming From?

Having arrived in Italy they then made it to France where they paid more people smugglers to get them to Britain in a lorry.

After claiming asylum, the Home Office sent them to Glasgow while their applications are being processed.

Mr Hadish said: "I had no choice. I had to take the risk. Eritrea is very corrupt. There is no freedom of speech or movement. Life is very dangerous. I chose to flee."

His colleague said his cousin paid the money to smugglers, adding: "Eritrea is a political dictatorship. There is only one party. No right to speak. No freedom of movement.

Speaking about living in Glasgow, Mr Fitwi, who gets £5 a day in benefits, said: "It's nice. You can learn and speak whatever you like. It is free. I'm going to college, learning English and working with a charity."

The men both think that more should be done to stop the smugglers.

But they believe the focus should be on improving the countries from where people flee.

Source=http://news.sky.com/story/1469591/boat-migrants-we-thought-we-would-die

| 22 APRIL 2015


The massive number of migrants and refugees that continue to lose their lives in the Mediterranean Sea is shocking and highlights the deadly consequences of the lack of appropriate action from those who have the capacity and obligation to respond, not only from the realm of the institutions but from that of humanity.

In the last two weeks alone, over a thousand people, vulnerable men, women and children, fleeing war, terror and poverty, victims of unscrupulous people-traffickers, have fallen, drowned in the Mediterranean, a sea that today, instead of bringing people and cultures together, is becoming a grave and a divide between dreams and indifference.

Europe needs to act, if only to save itself, because no progress, economic wellbeing or a land of plenty can exist alongside want, fear or death.

Our International, built upon values of justice and solidarity, and which has worked consistently for a world where everyone’s existence matters and where everyone is at the center of the priorities for government and politics, calls on all those with responsibility in Europe to act immediately and effectively to stop this bleeding in the Mediterranean. Our movement will do all it can to contribute to this end.

St. Paul's Bay (Malta), April 22nd, 2015. Stop the boats carrying refugees before they set sail. Bomb the boats so that they cannot leave the African coast and sail for the European Union. Prevent those fleeing war and persecution leaving their homelands. The proposals suggested by the highest political offices of the Italian state and - incredibly - accepted by the EU as possible solutions to the tragedies migrants are being subjected to, are authentic projects of genocide, brutal crimes against humanity. I'm proud to be on the other side of the fence, on the side of the victims and persecuted by those in power. If one day they hold Nuremberg trials against these crimes, I want to be on the witness stand.

In the picture, "The Nuremberg Trials", painting by Laura Knight

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Thanks to a lack of joined-up policy on refugees, the Mediterranean has become the world's most dangerous migrant destination.Author

  1. Sarah Wolff

    Lecturer, School of Politics and International Relations at Queen Mary University of London

 

Migrants arriving in Salerno. EPA/Ciro Fusco

Europe is today the deadliest migration destination in the world and the Mediterranean is becoming an open-air cemetery. In spite of worldwide condemnations – from civil society to global institutions such as UNHCR – the EU’s approach has been hopeless. While deploring deaths at sea, it has been unable, over the past three years, to act as the responsible political authority it ought to be – preferring to leave Italy to tackle the problem alone.

The tragedy unfolding in the Mediterranean is a severe blow for the European common migration and asylum policy. Thought of initially as an accompanying measure to the achievement of the EU single market by easing the freedom of movement of people internally, it has drifted towards a Fortress Europe for most outsiders.

In 2004, between 700 and 1,000 died each year as they tried to cross into Europe from Africa depending on whose numbers you consulted. This number almost tripled in 2011 and included migrants dying in the Mediterranean, off the coast of Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, Malta, Italy, Spain, Algeria, Greece, but also people shot dead on the Moroccan-Spanish border in Ceuta and Melilla or drowned in the Evros river on the Greek-Turkish border.

Migrants have long tried to escape both poverty and violent conflict by crossing into Europe, but the consensus is that the building of a restrictive common EU migration policy – which allows fewer legal ways of coming to Europe – and more sophisticated surveillance to enforce this policy have contributed to this stark increase in the number of deaths.

So, one of the most popular migrant routes in 2004, the West African route – which involved taking sea passage from West African countries, mainly Senegal and Mauritania, into the Canary Islands – has become largely disused. Compared to the 31,600 illegal migrants detected by Frontex in 2008, only 275 migrants took this route in 2014.

Cooperation between Spain, Mauritania and Senegal involving more sophisticated surveillance – as well as repatriation agreements with West African countries which have returned thousands to their countries of origin – have prompted migrants to take different routes, mainly the central Mediterranean route that goes through Libya. The Gilbraltar strait is now well controlled by the Spanish Integrated System of External Vigilance which has forced migrants to divert via longer and more dangerous routes.

Since the fall of Gaddafi the absence of a stable government in Libya has caused a considerable disruption of border controls in and out of the country which has led human traffickers concentrate their efforts there. And it has also been reported that restrictive border controls in Israel and the Gulf – Saudi Arabia has built a 1,800km fence on its border with Yemen – has prompted many migrants, notably from East Africa, to head for Europe instead. After Syrians fleeing the civil war, Eritreans are the most common nationals found attempting the central Mediterranean route.

Mare Nostrum and Triton

Faced with the indecisiveness of its European partners over the migratory flows the Italian government unilaterally established its Mare Nostrum operation, which ran from October 2013 to October 2014 and patrolled 70,000km in the Sicily Straits at a cost of Euros 9m per month (US$9.6). This involved more than 900 Italian staff, 32 naval units and two submarines taking shifts amounting to more than 45,000 hours of active operations. The Italian navy reports that during the Mare Nostrum operation it engaged in 421 operations and saved 150.810 migrants, seizing 5 ships and bringing to justice 330 alleged smugglers.

But by the end of 2014 the burdens of running Mare Nostrum alone were becoming too much for Italy, which was keen to involve its European partners. The Triton programme, coordinated by the EU border agency Frontex and under the command of the Italian ministry of Interior, was duly established, on a much smaller scale than Mare Nostrum – Triton deploys two ocean patrol vessels, two coastal patrol vessels, two coastal patrol boats, two aircraft and a single helicopter.

It also has no mandate for rescue-at-sea operations since its job is to control EU’s external maritime and land borders. Before last week’s tragedy, 24,400 irregular migrants have been rescued since November 2014, mostly by Italy. Some 7,860 migrants were saved by assets co-financed by Frontex.

Italy has been left to bear the brunt of rescue missions. EPA/Marco Costantino

Click to enlarge

The horror at the rocketing numbers of deaths in the Mediterranean in recent weeks has at last prompted the EU to call for concerted action by its member states – and the ten-point action plan endorsed by European foreign and interior ministers on April 20 calls for an strengthening of Frontex Triton and Poseidon’s operations.

But the question of Frontex mandate on rescue at sea has not been addressed and nor has its inadequate budget, which is around Euro 2.9m monthly – just one-third of Mare Nostrum’s. Instead, increased cooperation between Europol, Eurojust, the European Asylum Support Office and Frontex and the deployment of immigration liaison officers to “gather intelligence on smugglers” are very vague action points which appear to merely repackage existing measures.

Needed: a joined-up policy

It is actually quite clear what the EU should be aiming for. First, a much larger rescue-at-sea operation should immediately be put in place. Since Italy halted Mare Nostrum, deaths at sea have increased rapidly. Its inadequate replacement, Triton, provides a convenient scapegoat for politicians who should never have mandated Frontex – the EU Border agency – for the task of rescue at sea in the first place. What is needed from the EU is to agree a collective system of rescue at sea – rather than relying on the efforts of individual EU member states.

Second, there must be safer, legal, avenues for asylum in Europe. Migrants are not just fleeing poverty, they are fleeing violence, danger and repression. At present most of them end up in Libya, which is in itself a very dangerous place; the hope of reaching safety in Europe prompts these refugees to risk highly perilous – and expensive – escape routes. Many are dying at sea.

This is not likely to go away anytime soon and building legal, virtual or real fences won’t help. For some of those migrants, Europe could offer humanitarian visas and others could take advantage of family reunion with relatives already in Europe. Employment programmes could identify jobs to fill key shortages in the European economy. Offering more and easier legal means would necessarily lead to a fall in irregular migration.

We also need to establish a joined-up policy involving not just destination countries, but places of origin and transit countries. For many years the EU has been relying on non-members to police its borders. This is a flawed approach – rather than simply offering financial compensation, the EU needs to revise its incentives and provide what these origin and transit countries want: visa facilitation and trade and access to the EU single market. It’s time to work out an effective cooperation, not merely trying to impose a top-down security agenda, which is doomed to fail. Also doomed to fail is the traditional approach which has relied on southern European states and their neighbours dealing with the surge of refugees.

Meanwhile, in Libya. EPA/STR

Click to enlarge

The Dublin convention, which was established in 1990 to regulate the assignment of asylum applications processing, is surely no longer viable. A system that reassigns applications of asylum-seekers to the country they first entered puts southern Europe under excessive strain – especially as countries such as Greece lacks the capacity to host and process applications while observing their human rights obligations. The 2015 Tarakhel vs. Switzerland is the latest of a series of cases which highlight the inefficiency of that system. It is high time to review the notion of “burden-sharing” within the EU.

Not needed: the Australian solution

Tony Abbott’s suggestion that Europe should follow Australia’s example and simply turn boats back, or ship all rescued refugees and migrants to off-shore processing centres is certainly not a serious proposal. By diverting migrants to Papua New Guinea islands of Manus and Naura, Australia has been found to violate its international law obligations. Meanwhile, to Australia’s shame, Amnesty International has documented numerous human rights abuses in these processing centres.

Australia’s refugee policy is not only inhumane, but apparently rather expensive: AU$342.2m ($256.5) was spent by Australian Customs and Border Protection Service for its Civil Maritime Surveillance and Response programme – which involves policing illegal maritime arrivals.

Following Australia’s example is unrealistic as it relies so heavily on siting its offshore facilities in its neighbouring countries. Given the long-standing reluctance of north African and Middle Eastern countries to play that role – and given their own limited capacities, this is never going to work. The migratory flows are much larger, for a start.

Adopting Australian’s offshore processing of boat people would not only contravene EU and international law but would also probably reveal that the EU is going adrift and that, next to a governance crisis, it is undergoing a deep moral and ethical crisis.

Source=http://theconversation.com/deaths-at-sea-scant-hope-for-the-future-from-europes-history-of-failure-on-migrants-40596?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest+from+The+Conversation+for+23+April+2015+-+2669&utm_content=Latest+from+The+Conversation+for+23+April+2015+-+2669+CID_9c0f136a6facc3c2a06b0fa56fcf27cc&utm_source=campaign_monitor&utm_term=Deaths%20at%20sea%20scant%20hope%20for%20the%20future%20from%20Europes%20history%20of%20failure%20on%20migrants

Eritrea: Africa's land of exodus

Wednesday, 22 April 2015 14:44 Written by

Eritrea is the world's most censored country according to a new list released by the Committee to Protect Journalists. Thousands of Eritreans flee to Europe to escape torture and arbitrary arrests.

Mohammed Idris speaks softly as he vividly recalls his journey a year ago. It took him from Eritrea to Europe. "In Libya, it was very hard. I even had to spend a month in prison," says the Eritrean. Then he ventured the crossing to Europe. "We boarded a boat and went across the Mediterranean to Italy."

Unlike many others, Mohammed Idris made it to Germany. Each year, thousands of Eritreans flee the Horn of Africa nation. According to the UN refugee agency UNHCR, over 300,000 Eritreans fled the nation of 6.5 million inhabitants last year.

It's not just the men, but also many women and their children who risk everything to take the perilous journey across the desert and into the Mediterranean. "The majority of them are very young," Mussie Zerai, a Catholic priest who fled to Italy from Eritrea more than 20 years ago, told DW in an interview.

Eritrean Catholic priest Mussie Zerai founder of humanitarian organization Habeshia.

Eritrean born Catholic priest Mussie Zerai has dedicated his life to helping stranded refugees

Nowadays, he is involved in helping refugees who are in distress. "Last week, I received distress calls from the Mediterranean sea. I collected the information and passed it on to the Italian and Maltese coast guard and asked them to help these people."

Country without perspective

The human rights organization Amnesty International describes Eritrea as one of the most repressive regimes in the world. President Isaias Afewerki has been in power for 22 years. Afewerki is in effect the union head of state, head of government, commander in chief of the armed forces, parliament speaker and leader of the only authorized party, the PFDJ.

"Since 1993 when Eritrea gained independence, it has had only one president, only one party. And no opposition is allowed," says Clara Braungart, Eritrea researcher at Amnesty International.

African refugees protesting at a camp at Egypt's border with Israel.

Some of the Eritrean refugees end up in Israel after crossing Egypt

All forms of civil society are prohibited. Media is not independent as there is only one state-run TV and radio outlet. "Against this background, no freedom is possible," says Braungart.

Mekonnen Mesghena, an Eritrean and expert on migration at the Heinrich Böll Foundation, agrees. He says a climate of fear reigns and people lack any political or economic perspective. "Many people feel trapped in a permanent conflict situation."

In 1998, a simmering border dispute broke out with neighboring adversary Ethiopia. Since then, the government justifies any repression with the argument of a "threat to national security," Mesghena says. Each spark of protest is punished with arbitrary detention and torture.

Torture as a tool for oppression

"We have received many reports of people being tortured. For example, they are tied up, hung by their feet or are exposed to excessive heat," says Clara Braungart of Amnesty International.

Issaias Afewerki, President of Eritrea.

President Issaias Afewerki has lead Eritrea with an iron fist since 1993

For these reasons, the people would not even dare to speak out against the government.

There is only sporadic opposition to Eritrea's government policies. In 2012, the entire Eritrean national football team asked for asylum in Uganda after taking part in a regional tournament. In 2013, dissident military officers occupied the Ministry of Information demanding political reforms. 187 of them were immediately arrested. Last year, four Roman Catholic bishops criticized the political situation in the country in an open letter.

Another reason why many young Eritreans flee the country is military conscription, says Braungart. All men and women from the age of 18 must serve in the armed service for 16 months.

Even students are asked to complete their final year in a military camp. "People often have to serve the military for many years with very little pay," Braungart says.

A pharmacist stands inside a chemist in Eritrea's capital Asmara.

Eritrea has a rich Italian colonial legacy such as this pharmacy in the capital Asmara

If they refuse, they face imprisonment and arbitrary military service could be extended indefinitely.

Human rights violations have also been condemned by the international community. In 2012, the United Nations named Sheila Keetharuth as Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Eritrea. Since then she has sought to travel to Eritrea with no success.

Source= http://www.dw.de/eritrea-africas-land-of-exodus/a-18396200

UNCHR says 350 Eritreans in boat

Wednesday, 22 April 2015 14:39 Written by

(ANSA) - Geneva, April 21 - Some 350 Eritreans were among the 850 people who perished in the migrant boat that sank off the coast of Libya on Saturday night, a United Nations spokesperson said on Tuesday.
    U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees spokesperson Adrian Edwards said, "according to survivors heard by UNHCR, the boat left Tripoli, Libya on Saturday with approximately 850 people and many children. Among the people on board, there were 350 Eritreans, and (others) from Syria, Somalia, Sierra Leone, Mali, Senegal, Gambia, Ivory Coast and Ethiopia".
    The European Union is in the process of deciding a course of action targeting human traffickers in the Mediterranean in the wake of migrant-boat disaster.
    On Monday, the European Commission presented a 10-point plan including destroying smugglers' boats on the Libyan coast.
    Italy unveiled a five-point plan on Tuesday which includes a similar approach to destroying smuggler boats and the possible use of drones. Proposals will be examined by a special EU summit Thursday.
   

Source= http://www.ansa.it/english/news/politics/2015/04/21/unchr-says-350-eritreans-in-boat_1b4ce8ca-2c81-408c-91f2-e0eacceaac64.html

700 Migrants Feared Dead in Mediterranean Shipwreck
 
700 Migrants Feared Dead in Mediterranean Shipwreck
 
 
 
Close to Power, Finnish Populists Tone Down Anti-Athens Policies
By Antonio Denti

PALERMO, Italy (Reuters) - As many as 700 migrants were feared dead on Sunday after their boat capsized in the Mediterranean, raising pressure on Europe to face down anti-immigrant bias and find money for support as turmoil in Libya and the Middle East worsens the crisis.

If the death toll is confirmed, it will bring to 1,500 the total number of people who died this year seeking to reach Europe - a swelling exodus that prompted Europe to downsize its seek and rescue border protection program in a bid to deter them. International aid groups strongly criticized the decision.

After news of Sunday's disaster several government leaders called for emergency talks and EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said foreign ministers would discuss the immigration crisis at a meeting in Luxembourg on Monday. European Council President Donald Tusk said he was considering calling a special meeting of EU leaders, a summit that Renzi had called for earlier.

Meanwhile Italian and foreign ships and helicopters worked into the night to find possible survivors. So far 28 people have been rescued and 24 bodies recovered, Italian authorities said.

The 20 meter-long vessel sank 70 miles from the Libyan coast, south of the southern Italian island of Lampedusa, as a large merchant ship approached it. A survivor told the United Nations' refugee agency UNHCR that 700 people on board, hopeful the ship would save them, moved to one side, toppling the boat.

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said details were still "nebulous" and that he couldn't estimate the total death count.

French President Francois Hollande said the EU had to do more, telling Canal+ television that rescue and disaster prevention efforts needed "more boats, more over flights and a much more intense battle against people trafficking."

"More EU countries must take responsibility for the refugee situation," said Sweden's Minister for Justice and migration Morgan Johansson. He called for an expansion of the EU's Triton border protection program, the scheme that recently replaced a broader search and rescue mission run by Italy.

The Italian "Mare Nostrum" was canceled last year because of the cost and because some politicians said it encouraged migrants to depart by raising their hopes of being rescued.

"It was an illusion to think that cutting off Mare Nostrum would prevent people from attempting this dangerous voyage," said the German government's representative for migration, refugees and integration, Aydan Ozoguz.

Yet Renzi warned that resolving the crisis was not only a matter of search and rescue at sea. He said a concerted international effort was needed to locate and stop people traffickers, many of whom have flourished during the chaos among warring clans in Libya.

"We mustn't leave the migrants at the mercy of criminals who traffic human beings," Renzi told the news conference. "We are asking not to be left alone."

"LOOKING FOR A BETTER LIFE"

Carlotta Sami, a UNHCR spokeswoman, said initial information about the capsized boat came from one of the survivors who spoke English.

This survivor "said that at least 700 people, if not more, were on board. The boat capsized because people moved to one side when another vessel that they hoped would rescue them approached," Sami said.

She later added that "several sources confirm the death of at least 700 people."

Renzi said Italian and foreign navy and coast guard vessels, patrol boats and merchant ships, as well as helicopters, were involved in the search-and-rescue operation, which was being coordinated by the Italian coast guard in Rome.

Maltese Home Affairs Minister Carmelo Abela said the survivors and the corpses were on an Italian naval vessel coming to Malta, from where the survivors would continue on to Italy.

Pope Francis, who has spoken out repeatedly on the migrant crisis, repeated his call for quick and decisive action from the international community.

"They are men and women like us, our brothers seeking a better life, starving, persecuted, wounded, exploited, victims of war. They were looking for a better life, they were looking for happiness," he told tens of thousands of people in St. Peter's Square for his Sunday noon address.

Aid groups have called for the opening of a "humanitarian corridor" to ensure the safety of the migrants but in Italy there were also calls to stop the boats from leaving and even to destroy them.

The leader of the anti-immigrant Northern League party, Matteo Salvini, called for an immediate naval blockade of the coast of Libya while Daniela Santanche, a prominent member of Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia party said Italy's navy must "sink all the boats."

Libya's lawless state, following the toppling of former leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, has left criminal gangs of migrant smugglers free to send a stream of boats carrying desperate migrants from Africa and the Middle East.

Around 20,000 migrants have reached the Italian coast this year, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) estimates. That is fewer than in the first four months of last year, but the number of deaths has risen almost nine-fold.

Last week, around 400 migrants were reported to have died attempting to reach Italy from Libya when their boat capsized.

"A tragedy is unfolding in the Mediterranean, and if the EU and the world continue to close their eyes, it will be judged in the harshest terms as it was judged in the past when it closed its eyes to genocides when the comfortable did nothing," Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said.

(Additional reporting by Philip Pullella, Paolo Biondi and Gavin Jones in Rome, Robin Emmott in Brussels, Chris Scicluna in Malta, Noah Barkin in Berlin, Laurence Frost in Paris,; writing by James Mackenzie and Gavin Jones; editing by Alessandra Galloni and Sophie Walker)

Source= http://news.yahoo.com/700-feared-dead-migrant-boat-sinks-off-libya-075204807.html

 

 

Europe can’t afford to sit back and do nothing when thousands of migrants are dying every week in search of a new life in Italy and Greece

Immigration, leader

A fishing boat carrying 300 illegal migrants in the Mediterranean. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

A vast human tragedy is unfolding along the shores of the Mediterranean, its horrors largely ignored by Britain’s inward-looking, election-fixated politicians and an insouciant, slow-to-react European Union. Dozens of orphaned and malnourished children daily cry out for help; injured victims are thrown to sharks or forced overboard by religious fanatics; and hundreds die needlessly in this ruthless, expanding traffic in human suffering.

These grisly events are not occurring on the tourist beaches of Spain’s Costa del Sol, the French Riviera or the sheltered resorts of southern Turkey so beloved of well-to-do European holidaymakers. If they were, there would be more of a fuss. This tragedy has its origins, instead, in impoverished Chad, Darfur and Sierra Leone, in Eritrea and Somalia, in Syria and other war-ravaged countries of the Arab spring. And it reaches its usually unseen, often fatal denouement in the waters off northern Libya, as a growing number of refugees, asylum seekers and economic migrants desperately bids to reach Italy and Greece by sea.

The numbers involved are hard to gauge accurately. But it is clear the exodus, principally from Libya, is accelerating rapidly. Italian ships picked up about 11,000 migrants in the past week alone. Around 950 have drowned or been murdered so far this year, including about 450 in two shipwrecks last week. Although the overall total reaching Europe safely is similar, so far, to the same period last year, according to the International Organisation for Migration, the death toll is 10 times higher. As we report today, many are children who have been abandoned or sent on ahead by their parents in the hope of a better life.

Explanations for this developing tragedy are numerous. Libya, a failed state in all but name, is now embroiled in a multi-factional civil war. In the absence of effective governance, Islamist militias, including jihadis from Isis, hold increasing sway.

In these conditions, people-trafficking and smuggling gangs operate with impunity and readily resort to violence. Only last week the Italian navy was forced to storm a trawler that had been seized by armed men off Libya. The Vatican, meanwhile, condemned the alleged murder of 12 Christian migrants by 15 Muslims who were sharing their boat.

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Migrants and refugees, the majority young men, are coming to Libya, the closest point to the Italian coast, and other staging points, from all over the Middle East and north and west Africa, driven by a range of factors. These include all-out war, Islamist insurgencies and climate change-related drought and famine. Rapid population growth, exacerbating a chronic lack of jobs and economic opportunity, is another powerful spur. The result has been called the biggest human upheaval since the Second World War. Mostly, these legions of the displaced are heading for Europe.

So what is Europe doing about it? The answer, so far, is dismayingly little. Instead of rallying around Italy’s admirable Mare Nostrum search and rescue programme, which plucked 100,000 people from the sea in 2014, the EU replaced it with a more limited border security operation run by its Frontex agency. So far this year, Frontex, by comparison, has rescued only 5,000 people. Monthly funding for its Triton programme is less than a third of the Mare Nostrum budget.

As the crisis deepens, Brussels’s dithering grows lethal. The European commission is due to publish a policy document next month, entitled Agenda on Migration. As its name and timing suggest, they are not in a hurry. Member states will consider a more collectivised approach to asylum and legal migration and the contentious idea of migrant processing centres in north Africa. Given the political sensitivity of the immigration issue in EU countries, and the eurozone pleas of poverty, the prospect of quick, effective action is remote.

Both Italy and Greece appealed urgently for increased financial help and practical assistance last week, as did Save the Children and Human Rights Watch. Jan Egeland, a former UN emergency relief co-ordinator, warned that the Mediterranean has become the world’s most dangerous border between countries not at war. He lambasted European governments for their inaction.

Meeting Barack Obama in Washington, Matteo Renzi, Italy’s prime minister, said the Mediterranean was a sea, not a cemetery. Obama promised to help, but his focus is on fighting Isis terrorism and stabilising Libya. From an American point of view, this seems understandable. This crisis on its doorstep is primarily a challenge for relatively wealthy Europe and its professed human rights values. If the EU cannot act collectively to counter such a threat to its shared security, borders and interests, then what, truly, is the EU for? But it seems few in Europe are listening. Europe’s politicians and the EU’s insulated, insular functionaries are shamed by their silence.

Before British Eurosceptics, Ukip included, use this failure to further write off the EU, they should reflect on Britain’s own inexcusably irresponsible response to the emergency. The government refused last autumn to support Mare Nostrum or Frontex’s replacement operation. Its argument, that search and rescue programmes only encouraged increased migration, has been totally discredited by this spring’s surge. Yet far from acknowledging their mistake, the Conservatives persist in ignoring what is happening beyond Dover. They will not or cannot see the bigger picture.

Their election manifesto makes no mention of the migration crisis in the Middle East and Africa or the link to non-EU immigration into Britain. Does home secretary Theresa May really believe the young men jumping lorries at Calais have materialised from nowhere, like shadow figures emerging from a hidden underworld? Does Nigel Farage really think Britain is alone in facing these difficulties, and that it alone can resolve them? And what does Ed Miliband, whose immigration policy focus has also been disappointingly domestic, propose to do about the wider issues? It is time such matters were included in the wider election debate.

The challenge is enormous. The fundamental causes of this crisis will take years to address. An urgent first step is to reinstitute EU-underwritten search and rescue operations. At the same time, as the UN has urged, a top priority must be to create safe, legal options so that would-be migrants do not need to turn to people smugglers or put their lives at risk at sea. More should be done, too, to broker peace in Libya. Britain and other EU governments have a joint responsibility, to victims and voters, to act swiftly to halt the mayhem in the Mediterranean.

© UNHCR/F.Malavolta
A UNHCR staff member watches as people rescued from the Mediterranean disembark from an Italian Coastguard vessel at Palermo, Sicily, this morning.

GENEVA, April 14 (UNHCR)The UN refugee agency on Tuesday renewed its call for stepped up rescue operations in the Mediterranean after the Italian Coastguard saved some 8,500 migrants and refugees trying to cross the high seas by irregular routes to Europe from North Africa.

Those rescued since last Friday included an estimated 3,000 people in four boats and 16 dinghies rescued on Monday. At the same time, at least nine people are known to have drowned. These figures are provisional and could rise, as not all the boats have disembarked yet and some are still on their way towards various ports in southern Italy.

The coastguard often requests merchant ships to take part in search-and-rescue operations if all other vessels are being used. On Monday, seven ships travelling towards Libya were asked to help boats in distress and to take those rescued to Sicily. UNHCR has also called for a compensation scheme to alleviate the costs of rescue operations for commercial vessels.

Among those arriving at Palermo early Tuesday was 30-year-old Gebre from Eritrea, who said his boat left Tripoli three days earlier carrying about 400 people. "It was dark and so crowded I could not even move," he said. "After the first night of travel, the boat started taking on water; I have never been so scared. I felt helpless and terrified. Luckily, the Italian Coastguard came shortly after and rescued us all."

Aali, a 21-year-old Libyan from Sirte, said he fled after his brother was killed and his food shop torched by militants. The war changed everything," he said, adding: "Was there really an alternative to this dangerous sea journey?"

UNHCR praised the commitment shown by the Italian authorities in rescuing people in need on the high seas, before renewing an appeal for stepped up rescue efforts and the urgent establishment of a robust European search-and-rescue operation.

This year's toll of dead and missing in the Mediterranean Sea is now well over 500, a number which is 30 times higher than the same period of 2014. These figures show that not enough resources are being used to address the population flows and that, without proper search, rescue and monitoring operations at sea, many more people will die trying to reach safety in Europe.

UNHCR is also calling for legal, safe alternatives for those fleeing conflict and persecution, so that they are not forced to attempt the crossing to Europe by sea.

In the Gulf of Yemen, meanwhile, refugees continue to arrive in Djibouti and Somalia from Yemen, with a total of 1,260 people arriving by boat to both countries over the past two weeks.

All those arriving in Djibouti were Yemeni nationals, aside from three Syrians. The latest new arrivals have fled the intense violence in Aden, whereas earlier waves came mostly from Bab el-Mandeb.

In Djibouti, refugees are registered and receive medical checks and vaccinations before being transferred to a new camp under construction at Markazi, which has 70 tents in place so far.

A total of 915 people, including 156 Yemenis, have arrived across the Gulf of Aden, in Somaliland and Puntland. Recent arrivals to Bossaso port in Puntland have departed from Al Mukalla port in Yemen, and included women and children who arrived extremely thirsty and asking for water.

One woman was heavily pregnant and taken to the Bossaso health centre to deliver her baby. Recent arrivals to Berbera port in Somaliland left Mukha port in Yemen, with other ports closed. The refugees said they paid US$50 per person and that many more people were waiting to depart.

UNHCR and its partners are making contingency plans to receive up to 30,000 refugees in Djibouti and 100,000 in Somalia over the next six months

Inside Yemen, the humanitarian situation continues to deteriorate as conflict spreads. Eighteen out of 22 governorates are now affected by conflict. "Many of the 250,000 mainly Somali refugees in Yemen are also affected by the conflict and we continue to see an increase in people moving from urban areas around Aden to the Kharaz refugee camp, hosting 18,000 people," a spokesperson said.

Meanwhile boats also continue to arrive on the Yemen coast. Last Sunday, 251 people (mainly Ethiopians, but also Somalis) arrived at Mayfa'a. UNHCR partners and staff are registering new arrivals.

 

Source= http://www.unhcr.org/552d26569.html