In two days, last week, Italian coastguard officials intercepted 42 boats carrying a total of 6,500 migrants who were desperately seeking a new life in Europe. Those 6,500 were detained and placed into crowded camps for processing. They are the lucky ones. Another 400 migrants are believed to have died when their overcrowded vessel capsized and sank. The few rescued later said that the boat was so overloaded that it flipped when those on one side moved to the other to see a naval ship that was supposed to be their would-be rescuers. So far, this spring season alone, more than 900 are estimated to have perished in the waters of the Mediterranean Sea, fleeing political strife and violence in Syria and Libya or seeking a better life than in places all across sub-Saharan Africa.
What is disturbing is that there seems to be no turning back this tide of the desperate and desolate who are willing to take the risk with life and death and setting sail. There are criminal organisations across Europe and North Africa, where crime barons amass fortunes, taking the last hard cash from refugees before crowding them on unseaworthy vessels and casting them to the seas with ill-trained crew.
What makes the matter worse is that the Italians, who have borne the brunt of this unceasing tide of human flotsam, have had to cut back on the number of maritime vessels and operations, increasing the risks for those on the vessels.
Frontex, the agency that coordinates European border issues, is also stretched to the limit in trying to maximise resources, cover as large sea areas as possible and rescue as many migrants as they can. But in Brussels, there is little appetite to inject funds into the sea-rescue missions. Brutally put — migrants do not vote and the wave of recent years has led to an increase in anti-migrant policies and politics. Until such a time as European politicians see a benefit in changing politics, migrants will continue to drown like rats on the high seas.
