Report
Nearly 50 died in a shipwreck near Lampedusa – no word from the government
The silence of the authorities has been accompanied by political silence. Government officials have made no statements. After all, it is enough if the bodies are not seen, dragged ashore or photographed on the pier for national institutions to pretend nothing is happening.
It took almost a day after the bodies started washing up at the Favaloro pier for the Italian authorities to give out any information. The shipwreck on March 19 southwest of Lampedusa cost as many as 46 lives. Six bodies were recovered, 40 are missing. Five men and five women survived, from the Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Mali and Guinea Conakry.
Two people were urgently taken to the island by a Coast Guard patrol boat. "An 18-year-old boy from Cameroon, who lost his 12-year-old brother, said they were less than 20 kilometers from the island. He told us they had tried to call for rescue, but no one came in time. They were at sea for five days," says Francesca Saccomandi, working with Mediterranea Hope, a project of the Federation of Waldensian Evangelical Churches that offers assistance for migrants at the pier. The boat with migrants had departed from the Tunisian coast around Sfax.
"He said he had no choice. He knew the weather could get worse [which only happened on Tuesday], but the situation in Tunisia is so violent and the departures so few that it was the only chance he had to reach Europe. He left from the El Amra area near Sfax, where he had been trapped for 11 months with thousands of other migrants," Saccomandi recounts. The story is a perfect summing up of the effects of the agreement between the EU and Tunisian President Kais Saied: more racism and violence against foreign nationals, and crossings that are more difficult and dangerous. The young man arrived at the island's outpatient clinic in a state of shock, with a swollen arm and obvious difficulty walking.
The other eight survivors were brought to shore later that day by a patrol boat of the Finance Police. It was about 4:30 p.m. on Tuesday afternoon. The first, and only, official communication came at 12:26 p.m. on Wednesday, with a note from the Coast Guard: “Search operations are underway off the coast of Lampedusa coordinated by the Palermo Coast Guard, initiated following the report yesterday of an inflatable boat with migrants on board in a precarious state of buoyancy.” No news on what was recovered, no times, no images, no information on who reported the people in distress and how. As a result, what actually happened (currently subject to a police investigation) remains to be clarified.
The silence of the authorities has been accompanied by political silence. Government officials have made no statements. After all, it is enough if the bodies are not seen, dragged ashore or photographed on the pier for national institutions to pretend nothing is happening. The only one to speak was Lampedusa Mayor Filippo Mannino, who mentioned “the drama we have faced and managed” but was especially keen to thank the right-wingers in power for their support to the island, where 470 people arrived since Sunday, and the improvement of the system for disembarking, receiving and transferring migrants.
The only ones who raised their voices were a few humanitarian NGOs. “The deaths at sea are an accusation directed at our inability to imagine a future that could give hope and life perspectives to everyone,” said Fr. Marco Pagniello, director of Caritas. “We cannot become accustomed to these deaths,” said Giorgia D'Errico, institutional relations director at Save the Children. “We call once more for the activation of a coordinated and organized search and rescue system.” UNICEF pointed out that there are also minors among the missing, while the October 3 Committee, set up after the 2011 tragedy, called for the dead to have their DNA sampled in order to identify them, “as would happen if the shipwreck had involved tourists and not migrants.”
Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/quasi-50-morti-vicino-allisola-di-lampedusa-ma-il-governo-tace on 2025-03-20