The sinking of the boat which left Sfax with 49 people on board, belonging to “to the Cameroon network”, he inflamed tempers in the migrant chats. There were only 15 survivors and now the Africans themselves are starting to rebel against the camorasseurs, i.e. the organizers of the convoys, accused of pocketing the money without guarantees of safety, overloading the boats to earn more. Nothing strange, considering that these are human traffickers who earn on illegal trafficking.
“SYou are complicit in their deaths, give departure information but do not plan for safety”, reads one of the many angry comments. In the flow of information that gradually spread in those chats, it is underlined how the boat left with an engine of just 25 horsepower and without any orientation tools. One of the answers leaves no doubt: “But why do they keep on commit suicide everyday?”. There are those who call the crossings by their name, without too many words: “This kind of trafficking is murder“.
In Whatsapp chats, spirits are even more tense: “They are ready to publish their adverts to fill the convoys but a camorasseur who puts 49 people on a small boat, if he is not a criminalwhat is it?”. Among the messages we find that of a person who seems to have had contact with that trafficker: “When they said the weather wasn’t so good I said: ‘Camo, what are you going to do?’. Here is now the damage you have created. Money is needed, but human life is also important”.
Someone even tries to do a more in-depth analysis of the phenomenon: “Honestly, what comes to people’s heads to have the courage to take water and rely on the people who come to rescue you? We have to fight this systemfor them it has become like a game, of course, but what is it?“. And unlike our country, where the do-gooders of hospitality shout “welcome them all”, almost encouraging departures, on the other side of the Mediterranean there seems to be more realism than ideology: “But what do they expect by taking this risk?“
The perception is of a climate that is changing: more and more often on the social pages dedicated to migrants there are announcements of “missing” people who have boarded those boats and who have never arrived at their destination. And they have also begun to appear for the latest shipwreck: “Please can we have photos of the victims? We have loved ones who have departed and are unreachable“. This narration begins to hit the mark and raise doubts among the migrants themselves about the methods of departure: “Why carry on with everything that’s going on?”.
But in contrast there are the images of the migrants who have more luck, of those who manage to arrive in the Italian SAR waters and get on the patrol boats of our Coast Guard. Images that often arrive directly from the bridge of our military vehicles that take them to Italy. “Successful convoy!”, they shout in favor of their smartphone camera, while recording the video to send to their camorasseur. The same one they paid and who put their lives in danger to pocket a few more dinars. The same one who will use that video to recruit many other sub-Saharans among those crowding Tunisia, ready to leave North Africa. “So many dead… But why not stop?”, asks a user in chats among Africans, commenting on the news of the latest shipwreck. “Business” is the answer to the growing anger.