We mentioned the second Mediterranean boat-sinking in just over a week, here. Now there are allegations that the boat was fired-on by Libyans.
Survivors (looks like mostly young men) arrive in Valletta on Maltese patrol boat. Photo: (AFP/Matthew Mirabelli)
The UN is asking for an explanation and at least Malta’s Prime Minister is trying to get some negotiations underway with Libyan Prime Minister, Ali Zidan.
But, this is what I don’t get, why doesn’t the world community, with the UN leading the way, demand that the Libyan government stop these boat launchings on their side of the Mediterranean in the first place?
The UN could then use its state-of-the-art refugee camp in Jordan, Al Azraq, by safely transporting these would-be mariners to it.
From the Minneapolis Star Tribune (emphasis mine):
VALLETTA, Malta — Syrian survivors of the latest shipwreck involving migrants in the Mediterranean Sea claim Libya’s coast guard fired on their boat after reaching it a couple of hours out of port, the U.N. refugee agency said Monday.
The survivors of last Friday’s shipwreck have told UNHCR that the Libyans opened fire after ordering the boat to stop, damaging the hull and wounding four people, the U.N. agency’s spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said from Geneva.
“The boat took on water, and people started coming up from below, which could have contributed to the capsizing, according to witness testimony,” Fleming said. She added that the four wounded were treated by doctors among the refugees on board.
UNHCR has asked Libya for an explanation based on the survivor accounts and the fact that people with bullet wounds have been among the more than 200 people rescued and taken to Malta and Italy.
The bodies of 34 people have been recovered, but survivors have told the U.N. that 400 to 500 people were on board, meaning more than 200 could still be missing.
Libyan Prime Minister Ali Zidan denied the allegations in a press conference Sunday during a visit by Malta Prime Minister Joseph Muscat to discuss the wave of refugees arriving by boat from Libya in Malta and Italy. He pledged an investigation.
UNHCR has expressed concern that Syrians escaping civil war are facing a perilous sea journey to reach safety in Europe.
In a related story, Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah expressed his sorrow at the large number of Palestinians who were also on the doomed ship.
For new readers, the Rohingya are Muslims, some of whom have lived in Burma, others in Bangladesh. They are often called “stateless” by the human rights industrial complex which has made them a cause celebre in a public relations campaign we have followed for over five years. We have a category specifically for Rohingya posts, here(156 previous posts!)
Chris Lewa of the Arakan Project, second from right, is quoted often in support of Rohingya.
Australians, fed up with the thousands of mostly Muslim illegal migrants coming to their shores in recent years, has elected a government which is sending signals that it won’t be a push-over as some recent governments have been on the subject of illegal immigration.
Here is an article in The Irrawaddywhich reports that Rohingya people (already in their own “cultural zones” of Indonesia, Malaysia, and Bangladesh) are now having second thoughts about trying to reach Australia. Emphasis below is mine.
KUALA LUMPUR — Australia’s clampdown on refugees and migrants trying to reach the country’s shores by boat has prompted uncertainty among Rohingya who, facing state oppression and attacks by Arakanese Buddhists, have fled Burma in the tens of thousands in recent years.
Since Australia’s now-ousted Labor government decided in July to prevent refugees traveling by sea from landing in Australia—saying that would-be arrivals would be taken to processing centers in neighboring Nauru and Papua New Guinea (PNG)—some Rohingya who had hopes of making it to Australia are now in a bind.
“We are disappointed, we feel like we are stuck,” said Zafar Ahmad Abdul Ghani, president of the Myanmar Ethnic Rohingya Human Rights Organization Malaysia (MERHOM). “Many of us do not have papers here [in Malaysia] and we have no status in Burma. It is a difficult situation for anyone who hoped to travel to Australia,” Ahmad told The Irrawaddy. [To “travel” or make an illegal run for Australian shores!—ed]
Thousands of Rohingya refugees undertake a treacherous maritime journey from western Burma to Thailand or Malaysia. From there some in turn hope to reach Australia, usually attempting another dangerous maritime crossing through the Indian Ocean.
[…..]
Rohingya arrivals to Australia are difficult to quantify, as those who do make it are listed as “stateless” by Australia, while some others who arrived in Australia over recent years claimed to be Rohingya but were assessed by Australia to be either Bangladeshi nationals or Burmese Muslims, according to Chris Lewa. [I suspect that those Rohingya getting into the US through refugee resettlement are being referred to as Burmese Muslims as well, since the word ‘Rohingya’ is associated with some pretty rough types.—ed]
Australian government statistics—covering the years from 1998 to 2012—list 2,204 stateless maritime arrivals to Australia, a cohort that includes Kurds, Palestinians and Rohingya.
The boat people issue became a major election issue as immigration restrictionist Tony Abbott was elected as the new Prime Minister last month.
A voter backlash against the arrival of over 40,000 asylum seekers since 2007, when policy was relaxed for a time, prompted both of Australia’s main parties to suggest tighter controls.
I found this bit of the story of interest too:
Indonesia is a common transit point for refugees trying to reach Australia, Rohingya included. At least 28 Middle Eastern migrants drowned when a boat, which was aiming to reach Christmas Island, an Australian territory in the Indian Ocean, sank off Indonesia in late September.
Note they are simply referred to generically as ‘Middle Eastern’ migrants with no mention that they were Lebanese pretending to be Syrian refugees as our commenter ‘pungentpeppers’ reported here.
The photo is from this story about a UNHCR meeting in June. In a cursory search I can’t find a specific website for Lewa’s Arakan Project, lots of references to Lewa and the status of the Project as an NGO, but no website. if any industrious readers find one, let us know!
Map is a little outdated, but still gives you an idea of where the migrants are coming from in Africa, and roughly how many.
There has been a second fatal boat sinking in the Mediterranean as “asylum seekers” attempt to escape the lawlessness and economic decay of North Africa (and Syria!).
Just 8 days ago, hundreds perished off Lampedusa, here.
Update October 13th: Another boat sank on Friday carrying mostly Palestinians, here.
It is my observation that the number of boats carrying hundreds of migrants has increased dramatically since the highly touted Arab Spring got underway. And, one wonders why European and American powers (who cheered-on the Arab Spring and helped overthrow Gaddafi in Libya) can’t get at the source of the problem (the crime!) in Africa.
Most news accounts of the quandary faced by European countries on the receiving-end of the migrant tide, directs the responsibility to find a solution on to European citizens to “welcome” the largely economic migrants instead of getting at the root problem in Africa and stopping the boats from launching there.
It almost makes me wonder if there aren’t ‘powers that be’ in the West who want the immigrant tide to continue.
I have never seen a single word in the press I follow on the Mediterranean boat people crisis that suggests attacking the problem in Africa, except of course that the West must help financially fix Africa.
Here is the latest news. This boat carrying 250 sank in waters patrolled by Malta. No nationalities of the deceased have been mentioned yet.
A boat packed with an estimated 250 refugees and migrants has capsized in the middle of the Mediterranean, just a week after a similar accident off the Italian island of Lampedusa left more than 300 people dead.
At least 200 people were reported to have been thrown into the sea after the boat tipped over yesterday and corpses were reportedly floating in the water.
According to Italian media reports, at least 12 people died in the incident and 50 are still missing, among them children, but up to 200 people have been rescued.
[….]
The capsizing happened around 60 miles south of Lampedusa, in waters where Malta has search and rescue responsibilities.
Malta immediately requested Italian assistance in going to the aid of the migrants.
[….]
According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 32,000 have arrived in southern Italy and Malta this year alone, around two thirds of whom have filed requests for asylum.
In a dark mood? Read the 40-year-old prescient fictional work ‘The Camp of the Saints’by French author Jean Raspail. Raspail got one thing wrong—the continent—his third world invaders were coming from the Indian sub-continent so their voyage was longer.
Life is harsh for Italians on Lampedusa and it has been made even more challenging with the arrival (or the sinking) of each new boat filled with African and Middle Eastern migrants that ends up on its shores.
Here is an article (from AFP), spawned by the mass drowning, well worth reading (hat tip: pungentpeppers) about the resentment the local residents have to refugees who, in life or in death, get more government benefits than they do. Lampedusa’s lament….
Lampedusa — Islanders on Europe’s southern edge have become used to tragedy and trauma, they see it every day in the thousands of asylum seekers who land on their shores — and they say they have had enough.
The locals of the remote fishing community on Lampedusa island rush to help every time but their patience is wearing thin as they see government funds allocated to migrants and not to them.
“Here it’s the dead that keep the economy going,” said Silvana Martelli, a waitress, as divers fished out bodies after a shipwreck in which over 300 African refugees are feared to have died.
“It doesn’t feel like our island anymore. There’s money to take care of the immigrants while the schools fall apart and rubbish piles up,” she said.
As European ministers discuss the refugee crisis at talks in Luxembourg on Tuesday, this type of local resentment is a concern for governments that see the problem before them but do not want to risk being seen as a soft touch on immigration.
With a resident population of just a few thousand people, Lampedusans are sometimes outnumbered by the new arrivals before they are transferred to asylum centres on the Italian mainland.
In a corner of the harbour, the blue and red fishing boats daubed in Arabic script that are used for the landings lie discarded —
Read on about problems such as burying this many people on a tiny island, here.
This is a special commentary from reader ‘pungentpeppers’ who has become a much-appreciated unofficial reporter and investigator here at RRW. Emphasis is mine.
The doomed boat (photo texted from a cell phone).
A LEBANESE TRAGEDY
You may have heard the terrible news last week about the ill-fated group of mostly Lebanese migrants who had dreams of living in Australia. They included 68 Lebanese citizens, of whom 40 perished. Many of them were children who drowned when their boat crashed and broke up in rough waters 50 meters off the Indonesian coast. It was an ill-conceived voyage from the start.
These Lebanese, who were dissatisfied with their lives in Lebanon, believed they could do better. So they listened to the sales pitches of unscrupulous smugglers. People smugglers, who work in the lucrative trade of transporting human souls, persuaded their Lebanese victims that they would be transported safely and would receive residency in Australia. Some Lebanese from their region had previously succeeded in such a venture. But the smugglers neglected to mention that the Australian Government had changed its policies and would no longer grant asylum to any person who comes to Australia illegally by boat.
There were warnings. One man, Ali Taleb, who had already settled in Australia and was living in Melbourne, told his brother, “If you come with them I will never talk to you till the end of time.” Perhaps because of that threat his brother is alive today. Another family, that of survivor Hussein Khoder, urged the father to make the voyage alone, and leave his eight children in Lebanon – their grandfather offered to take care of them. His brother said, “There’s a 90 percent chance you will die.” But Hussein Khoder answered, “Either we all die, or we all live”, and chose to go ahead. Call it hubris, call it irrational expectations, or call it entitlement or greed, or perhaps it was the false belief that the involvement of children would force the Australian Government’s hand – whatever was in his mind, the man decided to spend the $80,000 the smugglers demanded, and set out with his wife and children for Indonesia, along with the other doomed travelers.
The plan for these Lebanese was to pose as Syrian war refugees, fly to Indonesia, get on a boat, and then call Australian rescue who would come, like a taxi service, and pick them up and carry them to Australia. The migrants destroyed their Lebanese documents, grabbed their fake Syrian passports and took off from Indonesia in a rickety wooden boat. One of the men texted home to Lebanon a picture of them sitting on that boat. [*photograph link below* use as illustration*] The small craft traveled some distance, but was still within the range of cell phone service, so it could not have wandered far offshore. At that point, according to one of the survivors, Abdullah Al-Qisi, they called the Australian Government for help, even though they were still close to the Indonesian shoreline. “We called the Australian Government for 24 hours, they were telling us ‘we’re coming, we’re coming, we’re coming,’ and they didn’t come,” said Al-Qisi to TV reporters. “We sent them the position on the GPS, exactly where we are, and we drowned and nobody came. This is because of the Australian Government. I want them to know that.” “And we wait two hours. We wait 24 hours, and we kept calling them: ‘We don’t have food, we don’t have water for three days, we have children, just rescue us.’ And nobody come. Sixty person dead now because of Australian government.’’ He further alleged that he lost his whole family because Australians did not come when they phoned in the rescue the day before the sinking.
Here’s where accounts differ: The asylum seekers’ story was that they called on Thursday. However, a statement from the Australian immigration minister’s office states that the first time the Australians heard about the boat was from a call on Friday morning. The Australian Maritime Safety Authority coordinated the initial rescue effort and notified the Indonesian search and rescue agency, since the boat was in Indonesian waters. A merchant vessel responded, as well as an Australian Border Protection Command aircraft, but neither could locate the vessel.
But why did the boat migrants need help? The survivors said their two motors had stopped working. So they called Australia and waited for their Australian rescuers to arrive. While they waited, their stocks of food and water diminished and the seas grew rougher. The motor that pumped water ran out of fuel, and the boat started taking on water. The migrants and the boat’s crew decided they had better turn back towards land. It’s unclear how they managed to return without either “broken” motor working.
Once they were within 50 meters of the Indonesian shore, tragedy struck. The boat crashed in heavy seas and broke into pieces. The men who could swim headed for the shore. As far as I can tell practically all of the women on board perished. One woman, Nazime Bakour, spied the eldest of her three children in the water and grabbed him, saving his life. Most of the men, however, apparently saved only their own skins. Hussein Khoder, the man who had paid $80,000 to the smugglers to take him, his pregnant wife, and eight children on the boat – he was the sole survivor of his family. He swam ashore and left his family behind to drown.
I cannot comprehend how a man who was able to collect $80,000 for such a trip, would not spend some of that sum on life jackets for his children! Saying they are “poor” and have no money is a recurring theme with these migrants. Yet if you saw the conditions in which they were living in Lebanon – their town, their automobiles, their houses, their furniture – and their ability to come up with thousands upon thousands of dollars to pay the smugglers – you realize they have a rather strange notion of poverty.
After the disaster, the survivors appeared on television, very emotional. Abdullah Al-Qisi mentioned previously, who spoke excellent English, complained and blamed the Australians. He said he called the Australians many times on his iPhone! Did he ever think to use his iPhone to look at the map and check the distance to Australia? Did he not realize that maybe he should call Indonesia and not Australia, especially since they were barely offshore?! Al-Qisi and the others spoke of the lost women and children. How precious and beloved these women and children must have been that the men did not strive to save them? Left them in the water? Did not give them life jackets? Put them on a rickety boat? Indeed, they seem not to have been very concerned about those “women and children”!
An Australian television program, SBS Dateline, aired a 6-minute special about the reaction in Lebanon to the deaths. The video shows Qabeit, the village where many of the victims came from. Overhead hangs a black banner describing those who perished as “martyrs*** in search of a dignified life”. It’s a nice village, surrounded by orchards and mountains. People have cars and trucks, not donkeys. Homes, not shacks. Furniture, not mats on the floor. Curtains on the windows. People who looked well fed. Do they even know what “poor” means? Yet, in the film they say the family that spent $80,000 could not “afford” to buy their baby a bed. The relatives of the dead children brought out their photographs, and called them “an army” – because of how many they were. One by one, they reverentially laid out each photograph on a table. They showed the girls. They showed the boys. As the pictures of the two lost boys were placed on the table, their uncle called each one by his nickname and said he was “mudallal” – “pampered”. Yes, the boys were pampered and spoiled. And as spoiled boys become men – they become willing to risk their women and children’s lives and leave them in the ocean to drown.
The cleric of the village, Sheik Ali Khoder, yelled in anger in Arabic, “Listen, Australia. The boat sought help and rescue and the coastguard kicked the boat out and told the boat “Go back to where you came from.” Shame on you. Shame on you. Ask for the meaning of these words. Australia, shame on you. Australia, which has been the land of dreams, freedom, humanity and justice for so long. Shame on you, that your new rulers have reached the stage of killing people and making this part of their election campaign. Is there a court of justice to try you, Australia?” Yes, the speechmaker was indignant and angry and put on a big show. Lebanon is all about appearances. It doesn’t matter that the ship fell apart but 50 meters from Indonesia’s shore. It does not matter that the migrants were neither kicked out, nor were they told to go back. The evil Australians are to blame! They must be made to feel guilt! They must mend their ways! The world must condemn them! Lebanon is all about showing bravado, and anger, and strength. That’s how their society works. The truth is twisted. The weak are abused. The kind are taken advantage of. And humanity is viewed as a weakness to be exploited.
Editor: Cynic that I have become wonders if this was a plan to test the new Australian government hoping to force them to rescue yet another boat carrying illegal Muslim migrants and it went very wrong.
***Why “martyrs” were these Jihadists?
‘Pungentpeppers” has included these links for your further information. Photo is here.
Dateline is here. Opinion pieceat the Herald-Sun. Lebanese village in shock, here. Survivors will return to Lebanon, here.
40 drowned or are missing, here. Survivors blame Australia, here. Asylum seeker recalls horror, here.
