By Daniel Gordon, BBC News, Pozzallo, Sicily, 1 June 2015
Since the start of the year, about 75,000 people have crossed the Mediterranean to get to Europe, usually in overcrowded boats that aren’t seaworthy. Often the boats are impounded to stop people smugglers using them again.
I found the spot where some of the migrant boats are laid to rest. Their graveyard is a patch of bare concrete tucked inside the port of Pozzallo.
The decrepit fishing vessels used to ferry the migrants from the other side of the Mediterranean lie at awkward angles on the ground. Their names are daubed on their sides in bright colours, the Arabic lettering peeling off, their cabin roofs rounded like giant children’s bath toys, their hulls painted in tasteful shades of light blue and red.
I get talking to a man called Giuseppe who runs a cargo company at the port. “You see those boats at the back?” he says, pointing towards the perimeter fence. “Which would you say is cleaner?” The one on the left must have been out of the water for months, if not years. But nobody had ever called lost property about the belongings its final load of passengers had left behind.
On the deck I can see a black rucksack, a man’s padded jacket, fraying at the seams, and a child’s shoe on which you can just about make out some brownish embroidered love hearts.
Dozens of grubby, faded orange life jackets have spilled over the side on to the ground. My mind whirrs with the possibilities–did that mean there had been a false alarm, and that help had arrived before the life jackets were needed? Or that the craft had foundered before there had been time to put them on?
In comparison, the boat next to it looks almost fit to return to sea. The migrants’ luggage has been tidied into three enormous white sacks, of the type so huge that only a hydraulic lift can move them. Giuseppe tells me that he and his staff cleaned that boat up out of respect.
After it had been brought to shore it, was discovered there had been 46 young people locked below deck. “They’d had no air down there,” says Giuseppe. “By the time we found them, they’d been dead for four days. We worked all through the night without a break to bring the bodies out. We cut holes in the deck to let the stench out. That smell will stay with me for the rest of my life,” he says, his eyes welling up with tears.
“Do you know why it’s so rare to find bodies when one of these boats sinks?” he asks. “It’s because many of the migrants can’t swim, so when they realise the ship’s going down, they cling onto the side for dear life. Then rigor mortis sets in, and they’re joined to the boat on the bottom of the sea forever more. A friend of mine is a diver in Lampedusa. He saw it for himself.”
Time and again, we hear that the migrants’ real aim is to reach northern Europe. Italy is just a transit point, as it offers the closest and most accessible European shore. They have no intention of staying here. Indeed, some are even reported to have booked and paid for taxis to meet them at their intended landing points so they can be taken straight to Italy’s borders with its richer, northern neighbours.
The Italian authorities are said to be quite happy to turn a blind eye. But when the ships break down or when the coastguard intervenes, the media arrive and the bureaucratic machine has to process them. Then the migrants’ choice is to try to stay here or be repatriated.
Before visiting the ships’ graveyard I’d been to a foster home in the nearby town of Noto, where a group of Egyptian teenagers had been living for two years. The seven youngsters I met were obviously well cared for, and integrated into their community. They had learned to speak not exactly Italian, but the Sicilian dialect, and had all adopted names like Ciccio and Roberto rather than use the Arabic names they’d arrived with.
Now so many people come from North Africa it’s clear that Italy can’t possibly offer that sort of hospitality to all of them. “It’s not that we don’t want the migrants here,” Giuseppe tells me, “we’ve taken their natural resources, so we do owe them.”
He points again at the group of rotting and rusting hulks at the water’s edge. More than 150 of them have come into this harbour alone, he says. And every port in Sicily now has its own collection of migrant boats. “How can Italy possibly deal with all of these people by itself?” he asks adding: “You’re a journalist, please tell the world, we need help.”
Since the start of the year, about 75,000 people have crossed the Mediterranean to get to Europe, usually in overcrowded boats that aren’t seaworthy. Often the boats are impounded to stop people smugglers using them again.
I found the spot where some of the migrant boats are laid to rest. Their graveyard is a patch of bare concrete tucked inside the port of Pozzallo.
The decrepit fishing vessels used to ferry the migrants from the other side of the Mediterranean lie at awkward angles on the ground. Their names are daubed on their sides in bright colours, the Arabic lettering peeling off, their cabin roofs rounded like giant children’s bath toys, their hulls painted in tasteful shades of light blue and red.
I get talking to a man called Giuseppe who runs a cargo company at the port. “You see those boats at the back?” he says, pointing towards the perimeter fence. “Which would you say is cleaner?” The one on the left must have been out of the water for months, if not years. But nobody had ever called lost property about the belongings its final load of passengers had left behind.
On the deck I can see a black rucksack, a man’s padded jacket, fraying at the seams, and a child’s shoe on which you can just about make out some brownish embroidered love hearts.
Dozens of grubby, faded orange life jackets have spilled over the side on to the ground. My mind whirrs with the possibilities–did that mean there had been a false alarm, and that help had arrived before the life jackets were needed? Or that the craft had foundered before there had been time to put them on?
In comparison, the boat next to it looks almost fit to return to sea. The migrants’ luggage has been tidied into three enormous white sacks, of the type so huge that only a hydraulic lift can move them. Giuseppe tells me that he and his staff cleaned that boat up out of respect.
After it had been brought to shore it, was discovered there had been 46 young people locked below deck. “They’d had no air down there,” says Giuseppe. “By the time we found them, they’d been dead for four days. We worked all through the night without a break to bring the bodies out. We cut holes in the deck to let the stench out. That smell will stay with me for the rest of my life,” he says, his eyes welling up with tears.
“Do you know why it’s so rare to find bodies when one of these boats sinks?” he asks. “It’s because many of the migrants can’t swim, so when they realise the ship’s going down, they cling onto the side for dear life. Then rigor mortis sets in, and they’re joined to the boat on the bottom of the sea forever more. A friend of mine is a diver in Lampedusa. He saw it for himself.”
Time and again, we hear that the migrants’ real aim is to reach northern Europe. Italy is just a transit point, as it offers the closest and most accessible European shore. They have no intention of staying here. Indeed, some are even reported to have booked and paid for taxis to meet them at their intended landing points so they can be taken straight to Italy’s borders with its richer, northern neighbours.
The Italian authorities are said to be quite happy to turn a blind eye. But when the ships break down or when the coastguard intervenes, the media arrive and the bureaucratic machine has to process them. Then the migrants’ choice is to try to stay here or be repatriated.
Before visiting the ships’ graveyard I’d been to a foster home in the nearby town of Noto, where a group of Egyptian teenagers had been living for two years. The seven youngsters I met were obviously well cared for, and integrated into their community. They had learned to speak not exactly Italian, but the Sicilian dialect, and had all adopted names like Ciccio and Roberto rather than use the Arabic names they’d arrived with.
Now so many people come from North Africa it’s clear that Italy can’t possibly offer that sort of hospitality to all of them. “It’s not that we don’t want the migrants here,” Giuseppe tells me, “we’ve taken their natural resources, so we do owe them.”
He points again at the group of rotting and rusting hulks at the water’s edge. More than 150 of them have come into this harbour alone, he says. And every port in Sicily now has its own collection of migrant boats. “How can Italy possibly deal with all of these people by itself?” he asks adding: “You’re a journalist, please tell the world, we need help.”
