27,000 deaths in the Mediterranean Sea in 9 years: Osama, in whose nets the bodies of migrants are also caught with fish.
As the number of migrants trying to reach Europe rises, so does the number of deaths in the Mediterranean. It should be remembered that the sinking boat on which the Pakistanis were on board has also sunk in the Mediterranean Sea.
As EU officials struggle to contain the massive influx of migrants, the plight of those fleeing poverty and persecution is taking its toll on Tunisian shores.
As the sun rises over the horizon on his east coast, a fisherman named Osama Dabibi throws his net into the water. Their eyes begin to anxiously examine what is caught in the net because sometimes it is not just fish.
“Instead of fish, I sometimes find dead bodies,” he says. At first I was afraid, but gradually I got used to it. After a few days, removing the body from the net became like catching a fish for me.
30-year-old Osama, dressed in a dark shirt and shorts, says that 15 bodies of migrants have been caught in his net during the last 72 hours (three days).
Once I found a dead body of a child. How can a child be responsible for anything? I cried. Adults or older people are different because they have lived but children have not seen anything.
Osama has been fishing in these waters near Sfax, Tunisia’s second largest city, since he was 10 years old.
He says that earlier he was just one of many netters, but now most of the fishermen have sold their boats for huge sums of money to smugglers who use them for human trafficking.
“Several times the smugglers offered me incredibly large sums of money for my boat but I always refused because if they used my boat and someone drowned, I would never be able to forgive myself.”
A short distance away, a group of migrants from South Sudan is slowly walking away from the port. It should be noted that since independence in 2011, Sudan has been suffering from conflicts, climatic extremes and food shortages.
All these people are hoping to reach the UK. One of them said they had reluctantly abandoned a second attempt to cross to Italy, citing an overcrowded boat and worsening weather.
There were too many people and the boat was too small. Nevertheless, we were on our way. We had just left the shore when we noticed a strong wind. The wind was too strong.
In the first three months of this year, about 13,000 migrants were forced to abandon boats near Sfax and return to shore, often overcrowded, according to Tunisia’s National Guard.
About 24,000 people have traveled from Tunisia to Italy in makeshift boats between January and April this year, according to the UN refugee agency.
The country has now become the main departure point for migrants trying to reach Europe. This ‘honour’ was previously held by Libya, but due to violence against migrants and kidnappings by criminal gangs, many people now turn to Tunisia instead of Libya.
Remember that the boat involved in the disaster off the coast of Greece last week departed from Libya, in which at least 78 people have died and an estimated 500 people are missing.
Many of their rusted and dilapidated ships are either half-submerged or piled up in huge piles near the harbor of Sfax. These abandoned remains are a reminder of the dangers of the world’s deadliest migration route.
The graveyards on the outskirts of the city are another vivid reminder of this.
Rows of freshly dug graves in a large section of the cemetery are empty for the next casualties at sea, but not enough as plans are underway to build a new cemetery dedicated entirely to migrants.
Earlier this year, more than 200 bodies of migrants were recovered from the sea in a period of two weeks.
More than 27,000 people have died trying to cross the Mediterranean since 2014.
Such frequent tragedies are causing major problems for the city.
The director of the local health department, Dr. Hatim Sharif, says that they do not have the facilities to deal with so many deaths.
“The capacity of the hospital’s mortuary is 35 to 40 dead bodies at most but the influx of dead bodies, which are deteriorating, is more than what we can take in the mortuary,” he said. .’
Recently, 250 bodies were brought to the mortuary. Most of them had to be kept upstairs in an adjoining cold room, called the ‘Chamber of Destruction’, but Dr Sharif was keen to point out that all would be buried in individually numbered graves.
Many of the dead are unidentified, so DNA tests are being conducted and the results are being carefully guarded.
This is being done with the idea that if someone comes looking for their loved ones, they will be able to match their DNA with the DNA there to find out if their relative is buried here or not.
Three hours northwest of there in central Tunisia, several hundred members of Tunisia’s black minority are camped in makeshift tents outside the offices of international migrant organizations. Most of them are women and children.
All were driven from their jobs and homes in February after an inflammatory racist speech by the country’s president, Qais Saeed.
In his speech, he claimed that “swarms” of illegal immigrants were entering his country as part of a “criminal” plan to change the country’s population ratio.
The comments are widely seen as an attempt to find scapegoats amid the country’s deep economic crisis, and the statements have led many Tunisians to become refugees themselves.
A young man from Sierra Leone, pointing to a recent stab wound on his arm, said that since the president’s speech, knife-wielding local youths have attacked many people here.
It should be noted that Sierra Leone is trying to get out of the brutal civil war that ended in 2002.
The young man said that some Arab boys came here to attack us. The police said that if we stay here, they will keep us safe, but if we go out of this area, we will not be safe.
This alarming situation and the constant jailing of opponents and the violation of civil rights by the country’s president, etc., are not among the priorities of the EU authorities, but the priority for them is to stop the flow of migrants.
More than 47,000 migrants have arrived in Italy so far this year, three times more than in the same period last year, prompting calls to do something about it.
During a brief visit here earlier this month, a delegation led by European Commission chief Ursula van der Leyen pledged a potential bailout package of around one billion euros.
If approved, about 10 percent of that money would be spent on anti-trafficking measures.
Last week’s tragedy on the Greek coast has fueled calls for action.
Even so, the increasing flow of small boats will be very difficult to stem due to the desperation of many migrants and the highly lucrative business of people-smuggling.
Immigrants from all over Africa and parts of the Middle East congregate in groups in the shady spots of Sfax’s streets.
Some have the money to get aboard a smuggler’s boat while others hang around. They are even unable to pay for their food and accommodation.
Many have had their passports either lost or stolen, while some have never left their country illegally before.
Everyone has heard of the deaths of many people on the journey to Europe, but their desperation seems to outweigh the danger, as a young man from Guinea expressed.
He said that we cannot go back to our country because we do not have money or passport. I am not afraid. I am starving, there is a lot of poverty (at home) and my parents have nothing. I don’t want my children to live like this. I have to go.
The tragedy is that this basic human desire for a better life sometimes comes at such a high price.