Home » Was my child swallowed by the sea? – Annalisa Camilli

Was my child swallowed by the sea? – Annalisa Camilli

by admin

April 30, 2021 1:48 pm

To warn him that his son Mobarak was on the ship wrecked on April 21 off the coast of Libya was a friend who called from Tripoli, a few hours after the discovery of the remains of the rubber boat. His phone rang while he was working at the market and he learned in this way that his son had died in a shipwreck. A dizziness, that’s what he felt. Mobarak was 23 years old, he was Sudanese, he left on April 20 at ten in the evening from the beach of Al Khoms in Libya, a city 120 kilometers east of Tripoli, together with more than one hundred other people.

Having learned of his son’s death, Abdullah looks at his phone irrationally hoping to receive a WhatsApp message from Mobarak. “I watch our chats all the time, he was always connected and now he’s always offline.” Their line of communication has been interrupted and for Abdullah, in the absence of confirmation of the death of his son, unable to have his body back and celebrate a funeral, this silence is the only proof that something serious has happened to him. Abdullah did not even know that his son had left, they had spoken two days earlier, on WhatsApp and then on the phone. “Call me” was the last message his son sent him.

She hadn’t told him she would try to cross the sea. “I would have told him not to.” Abdullah has been unable to eat or sleep for days: “My wife is destroyed”. The couple, who have six other children, three boys and three girls, live on the outskirts of Khartoum, Sudan, but are originally from Darfur, like most of the shipwrecked on 21 April.

See also  Find everything you need in one place! ✔️

Da sinistra: Mohammed Abdul Khaleq e Ali Abu Bakr.

(Courtesy of the families)

“We had to flee, there was a war, the situation has always been difficult for us,” he says. Mobarak was the eldest son, he left Khartoum a year and a half ago to go to work in Libya and help his family. “He was studying at the university in Sudan, economics, but he wanted to work, to help us. He was a generous boy. I don’t know how to explain to his brothers and sisters that we lost him. I lost my eldest son, I can’t even think about it ”. In the photos that Abdullah sends me via WhatsApp Mobarak has a serious expression on a still immature face of a boy, two large, slightly irregular black eyes and scars on his forehead. The photographs show him together with his friends in Sudan. Now Abdullah would like at least to be able to do the funeral for his son: “Are you sure that the sea has swallowed him? Have the bodies been recovered? ”He asks.

Mobarak Abdullah is allegedly one of around 130 people who drowned off Libya on 21 April. But there are no certainties, because the bodies of the shipwreck have not been recovered or officially identified. They asked for help for hours, but no one came to help: neither the Libyans nor the Italians nor the Maltese. The volunteers of the European Alarm Phone network issued the alert on the morning of April 21, when they received the first call directly from the boat. “They called us all the time, because the weather conditions were getting worse, but in the end their satellite phone went dead,” says Deanna Dardush, one of the Alarm Phone volunteers.

More than 100 people died after asking for help for two days, with no response

The Ocean Viking, the only humanitarian ship in the area, reached the disaster area at 4.25am on April 22 and together with three other merchantmen found the dinghy twelve hours later, destroyed, surrounded by ten corpses kept afloat by chambers. air and life jackets. “No one coordinated the searches for our ship and the other three cargoes, it was like moving in the dark”, says Alessandro Porro, Italian head of Sos Méditerranée. The so-called Libyan coast guard said it would recover the bodies, but did not. Frontex defended itself by stating that it “immediately alerted the rescue centers in Italy, Malta and Libya, as required by international law”. But as a result, 130 people died after asking for help for two days, with no response. According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), 580 people have died at sea in the central Mediterranean since the beginning of 2021. “The states have refused to take action to save the lives of over 100 people. Is this the legacy of Europe? ”, Said Safa Msehli, IOM spokesperson.

The shipwreck of 21 April is the latest in a long series due to the dangerousness of the crossing, the lack of coordination in rescues and the lack of rescue vessels in the central Mediterranean. The Ocean Viking was the only civilian ship in the area. In the last year, many humanitarian ships have been subjected to administrative detention by the Italian authorities for quibbles. Since May 2020, inspections by the Italian coast guard have been frequent and severe and have led to the blockade of NGO ships for long periods. Furthermore, since 2017 there have been sixteen investigations opened by the prosecutors, in which NGOs have been accused of aiding illegal immigration.

Da sinistra: Talal Baba e Muhammad al Adnani.

(Courtesy of the families)

From what emerges from an investigation by The Intercept, translated by Internazionale, the National Anti-Mafia Directorate has played an important role in the criminalization of the work of NGOs. For now, no one has been indicted, but the effect has been devastating: NGOs have lost credibility and donors. The best known investigation is that of the prosecutor of Trapani, closed at the end of March. The 40 thousand pages of the investigation reveal an anomalous investigative effort towards NGOs: dozens of humanitarian workers, journalists, even lawyers and parliamentarians who were not under investigation were intercepted. From the papers of the investigation it emerges that at the end of 2016 the Ministry of the Interior had asked the judicial police to investigate the work of the NGOs of the sea, held responsible for the increase in arrivals from Libya.

The first NGO to patrol the central Mediterranean was Migrant offshore aid station (Moas) in 2014. But between 2015 and 2016, eleven NGOs joined the Italian coast guard and European naval vessels with 14 ships. In 2017, with the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding between Italy and Libya, which provided for the training of the Libyan coast guard, a gradual withdrawal of European government assets began. In 2018, the Libyans managed to be recognized by the international maritime authorities as a search and rescue (SAR) area under their control. However, Tripoli almost never responds to calls for help and the means available are few, unsuitable for patrolling such a vast stretch of sea. The people arrested by the Libyan coast guard are also returned to detention centers where the United Nations has documented “unspeakable horrors”. The existence of the Libyan SAR has become the excuse for the Italian, Maltese and European authorities to delay and omit aid. Often the Libyans’ telephone rings empty and bad weather becomes a sufficient condition to suspend searches.

But there is a tragedy in the tragedy: it is very difficult to identify the dead and the authorities do not even take it upon themselves to inform the families of the alleged disappearance of their loved ones. Volunteers often deal with this, the same ones who try to alert the authorities when there are boats in difficulty. “When this last shipwreck occurred, we learned that there were Sudanese people on the boat. On the websites and chats of the Sudanese of the diaspora, photos and names have begun to circulate, which in some cases have been shared with us. But we wonder if it is right to alert families, if this is up to us or if it should be the authorities to do it, ”asks Dardush. Meanwhile, on the chats and on the sites of the Sudanese diaspora in Europe, photos of some young people, names, animated videos of the prayers that are dedicated to them to take leave in some way circulate. Everything is sent to the volunteers, who, however, are not in a position to officially confirm the death.

advertising

At the moment when the shipwreck occurred, two other boats were in the sea: one had left from Zuara, another from Al Khoms. It is therefore very difficult for the volunteers to have certainty about the identity of the castaways. “What we are sure of is that if it had been European castaways, the effort to identify them and to inform their families would have been very different,” says Dardush. Meanwhile, the messages in the chats never stop arriving: “Can you confirm that my son is dead?” Asks the father of Ali Abu Bakr, another 27-year-old Sudanese, who allegedly was on the sunken boat. “Did the sea return the bodies?” There is no peace of mind that the son’s body has not been recovered. Mohammed Abdul Khaleq’s uncle is also very active on social networks, he is spinning his photos in a blue wedding dress, he does it to help the boy’s mother, he would like to be sure that Mohammed is one of the victims of the shipwreck. He was 25, he had a degree in communications from the university in Sudan. Then he left a year ago for Libya to help his family. He also hadn’t told his family that he would go out to sea to try the crossing.

The relatives only knew that things were not going well in Libya, that Mohammed wanted to go to Europe in the future to find a better job and help his mother, who was left alone in Khartoum. Meanwhile, in Berlin on 29 April a group of humanitarian workers and volunteers organized a protest to ask for relief to be restored in the Mediterranean. During the sit-in, messages from a Sudanese activist who is currently in Libya and who is helping to identify the dead were read. “Every time there is a shipwreck everyone cries for a week, but then the same tragedy is repeated. These disasters will not stop unless those responsible are punished, ”says Ahmed, the Sudanese activist. His words rang out in a Berlin square, but the volunteers wondered if they will be heard.

Internazionale has a weekly newsletter covering the latest migration news. You sign up who.

.

You may also like

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. Accept Read More

Privacy & Cookies Policy