Europe’s Deadly Border
EUROPE’S DEADLY BORDER By David Bacon in the Boston Review tells the story of a migrant tragedy in a journey by sea from Africa to Eureope. On the night of October 3 a beat-up, unseaworthy freighter left a dock in Tripoli, on the Libyan coast, carrying a human cargo of 500 migrants. Almost all had made an arduous overland journey from Eritrea and Somalia, through North Africa. This trip across the Mediterranean Sea was the last leg that would bring them to Europe. The ship limped across the strait towards the southernmost piece of Italy, Lampedusa — a small island closer to Libya than to Sicily. It never made it. In sight of the islet of Conigli its engines quit and it began to take on water. Passengers panicked. One set a blanket on fire to signal for help from shore or a passing boat. But the flames spread to the engine’s spilt fuel, which exploded. People ran from the blaze, and their shifting weight capsized an already old unsteady vessel. They were thrown into the sea. Most couldn’t swim. They could see the lights of Lampedusa, but they couldn’t get to them. Only 155 were able to tread water long enough to be finally picked up. The other 359 people drowned, many of them children.
KJ