- AFP
- From: The Australian
- October 05, 2013
FRANCE has called for a European summit to seek a proper solution for asylum-seekers after Italy’s Lampedusa tragedy in which about 300 African boat people are feared to have died, and as rescuers planned to raise the corpse-filled wreck.
Local fishermen laid a wreath at sea for the victims, many believed from troubled Somalia and Eritrea.
Italy has asked the European Union for greater assistance in stemming the influx of refugees, with 30,000 reported to have landed so far in 2013 – more than four times the number for all of 2012. The tragedy has exposed Europe’s flawed migration and asylum policy, which places an unfair burden on the countries in southern Europe where asylum-seekers first arrive.
French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault called at the weekend for a meeting of European countries on border management after the tragic shipwreck several days ago.
“European political officials must talk, and soon,” Mr Ayrault said, adding: “It is up to them to meet to find a proper solution; compassion is not enough.
“Who is not affected? I was deeply touched, emotional at the images I saw [of the tragedy],” Mr Ayrault said.
Italy’s Prime Minister Enrico Letta said the victims would be awarded Italian nationality posthumously.
In Italy, there have been growing calls for an overhaul of legislation against people accused of facilitating irregular immigration, a provision that critics say could penalise potential rescuers.
Rough seas have suspended the search for more bodies, and controversy has erupted over apparent delays in the rescue and unsanitary conditions for child survivors in a badly overcrowded refugee centre.
“We have a legal but also a moral responsibility to recover all the bodies,” said Leonardo Ricci, a spokesman for rescuers on the island of Lampedusa.
“There are hundreds of families that are waiting for news,” he said, adding that there was a “preliminary plan” to raise the wreck.
Divers spoke of “dozens, maybe hundreds” of bodies trapped in the wreck, which lies on the seabed at a depth of about 40 metres within sight of the shore of Italy’s southernmost point.
Officials said more bodies may have been lost forever due to strong currents around the island.
Emergency workers have recovered 111 bodies so far and plucked 155 survivors from the sea.
It is feared the final death toll could rise to close to 300, which would make this the worst ever Mediterranean refugee tragedy after a previous one in 1996, also off Italian shores, claimed 283 lives.
Fishermen from the island, which has a population of just 6000 and is closer to north Africa than to Italy, took their boats out to sea on Saturday in a commemoration for the drowned.
“The dead cannot be forgotten, they have to be commemorated because they are people who tried to come and work, to live a better life,” local fisherman Salvatore Martello said as he cast a wreath.
Italy’s Coast Guard has also been forced to defend itself after accusations from the sailors who were first at the scene that bureaucratic delays in launching the official rescue had cost lives.
One survivor is the boat’s 35-year-old Tunisian skipper, who has been detained as prosecutors weigh charges against him.
Local prosecutor Ignazio Fonzo said the inquiry was proving “difficult” because survivors being heard as witnesses officially had to be considered suspects under the illegal immigration law and therefore had to be provided with defence lawyers as well as interpreters.
The Tunisian was already held in April over a previous landing and deported back to Tunisia in a case that observers said pointed to the role played by ruthless people-smuggling rings.
The boat left Libya with an estimated 450 to 500 on board, mostly Eritreans and Somalis.
Survivors said they set fire to a blanket to alert the Coast Guard when the boat began taking on water just a few hundred metres from Italy’s coast.
The fire quickly spread, causing panic, and the boat capsized and eventually sank as its terrified passengers ran to one side and jumped into the sea.
Witnesses – mainly fishermen and tourists – spoke of hundreds of people with outstretched arms in the water, which was thick with the fuel oil that spilled from the boat.
Forty unaccompanied minors aged 11 to 17 who were among the survivors are being housed in a 250-bed refugee centre that has already taken in more than 1000 people, with many being forced to sleep outside.
After touring the centre with a parliamentary group at the weekend, Khalid Chaouki, a Moroccan-born Italian MP, said: “We found shameful conditions, which are not worthy of a civilised society. This is absolutely unacceptable.”
Somalia and Eritrea have offered condolences for the hundreds of their citizens feared drowned in the sinking.
Many of the victims are believed to be from Somalia – riven by over two decades of war, as well as recent famine and drought – as well as from Eritrea, where thousands flee a repressive government and seek jobs abroad.
Somali Prime Minister Abdi Farah Shirdon thanked Italy’s Coast Guard, saying there was “no doubt their swift response helped prevent further loss of lives”.
“I would like to extend my sincere condolences to those who lost loved ones and friends in this tragic accident,” Mr Shirdon said in a statement.
“As a government we must continue to build on the achievements already made to make Somalia a secure, stable and attractive place to live, so that those young people who are fleeing their country will stay and take part in rebuilding their country.”
Eritrea’s state-run media made no mention of the tragedy, but Foreign Minister Osman Saleh Mohammed, in a speech to a United Nations meeting on migration in New York, offered his “condolences to the families of the victims” of the “tragic and sad incident”.
The United Nations refugee agency estimates as many as 3000 Eritreans flood into Sudan and Ethiopia every month from Eritrea, a country of about five million people and about the size of England.
Many are running from open-ended military conscription imposed by the autocratic and isolated government of the Red Sea state.
Impoverished Somalia spiralled into repeated rounds of bloody civil war beginning in 1991, allowing piracy, militia armies and extremist rebels to flourish.
Last year an internationally-backed government took power in Mogadishu, defended by a 17,700-strong African Union force which is battling al-Qa’ida-linked Islamist insurgents, but its control beyond the capital remains fragile at best.
More than a million Somalis are refugees in neighbouring nations.
Many settle in refugee camps in neighbouring nations, but others risk the dangerous road onwards towards Europe.
– See more at: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/france-calls-for-a-refugee-summit-with-300-feared-dead-in-italys-lampedusa-disaster/story-e6frg6so-1226733555421#sthash.EIRaG7ef.0PUxF6vk.dpuf
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