FORUM: Europe’s new human tide of misery

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Published: 15 April, 2011

IT was a pitiful sight. The refugees sat in shocked silence on the pier, staring blankly ahead of them as relief workers milled about them handing out food and water. 

Minutes earlier they had staggered off a boat that had just completed a perilous four-day journey across the sea from Libya packed with more than 200 desperate souls. Their destination was the Italian island of Lampedusa, a rocky outcrop in the Mediterranean that is the first bit of European territory from Africa. 

For years it has been a magnet for Africans seeking a stepping-stone into Fortress Europe. But in the past three months political turbulence in north Africa has turned what is normally a trickle into a flood and at one point the number of migrants outnumbered the island’s population of 5,000. The majority were young men from Tunisia who felt that the overthrow of the Ben Ali regime in January had failed to change their economic fortunes. 

Then, in late March, as the west’s confused military intervention in Libya turned the uprising against Muammar Gaddafi into a full-scale war, migrant workers began to arrive from Tripoli.   

Living in Libya but hailing from all over west and north east Africa as well as Bangladesh, the latest boatload included a good many women and children and even babes in arms. 

One man I spoke to, a 27-year old Nigerian labourer, said he had been forced to flee Misrata, the western Libyan city that has become a bloody tug-of-war between assorted rebels and government forces. It seemed safer, he said, to take his chances on the 300km crossing to Italy in an overladen boat.

By the time it arrived into port, all of Lampedusa’s refugees had been evacuated after Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi finally decided to act amid mounting concerns about what was fast becoming a humanitarian emergency.  

With the island authorities unable to cope with such huge numbers, refugees were sleeping out in the open and forced to rely on sympathetic islanders for food and blankets.  

Then on April 6, came the tragic news that 250 people, including women and children, had drowned in the early hours after their boat capsized in rough seas on its way from Libya to Lampedusa.   

Berlusconi made good his promise to clear the island of its “tsunami humano” within 48 hours and flew in like a conquering hero on Saturday, April 9, mission accomplished. 

But even as he told reporters that everything was under control, there were rumours that more boats had been spotted by the coastguard heading towards Lampedusa. 

It is ironic that a few years ago the Italian leader signed a “friendship treaty” with Gaddafi to tighten up Libya’s coastal and desert border patrols. This was to help stem the flow of migrants to the island, which had seen an upsurge due to increased security in other parts of the Mediterranean, especially the Straits of Gibraltar. The number of boat people arriving in Lampedusa virtually dried up. 

That deal is obviously in shreds and Italy is part of the western coalition force triggering the current exodus. While the Tunisians are now being repatriated, the Libyans cannot be returned to a war zone. Berlusconi has little choice but to offer them asylum on the Italian mainland. 

At the same time, he is calling on other EU members, France and Germany in particular, to share the burden of their resettlement, saying it is a European problem not an Italian one. 

And so it is. But it appears those who intervened so enthusiastically in the Libyan bombardment to protect innocent civilians are reluctant to intervene in the human tide of misery they have helped to create.  

• Angela Cobbinah visited Lampedusa on behalf of NewsAfrica magazine.