THE MORALITY OF OUR SHORES The Mediterranean’s Money Wall and European Apathy
Órlaith Roe
W
ithin the deepest and darkest environment of human suffering lies a familiarity, a devastating pain that is unknown to those of us privileged enough to escape the confines of unspeakable tragedy. It is a movable tragedy, one that washes up on our European shores with sinister frequency, one often ignored. In recent times, it seems as though many of us have placed the European refugee crisis within the parameters of 2015, tucked within those twelve months and revisited via news reels and photography documenting the unspeakable events that ravaged human life. The crisis of migration in our modern era cannot be restricted to a twelve-month timeframe. Approximately 1.3 million refugees claimed asylum in Europe throughout 2015, the highest number since World War II, but the grave problems surrounding migration and displacement are only growing, and they have stretched themselves into this new decade. The Covid-19 pandemic, naturally, shifted and narrowed the world’s focus regarding societal crises and the so-called ‘hierarchy’ of issues to address.
“The past two years have offered a new form of refugee crisis, one with added suffering, increased human rights abuses, and an even blinder eye turned by European powers.’’ In April of 2020, over the Easter week, the Mediterranean Sea lay claim yet again to tragedy of the highest magnitude, of which was barely spoken of or addressed at the time. 10 Eritreans and 2 Ethiopians died in circumstances that can credibly be attributed to the negligence and malice of European and Italian authorities, while the surviving 51 refugees were forcibly taken to Libya to be imprisoned in the Tarek al Sika detention centre, one of the most infamous camps in Tripoli. Statewatch documents the events as follows: “The raft with the 63 refugees leaves the evening of Thursday, April 9 from the coast of Garabulli,
east of Tripoli, heading north. The next day it isin difficulty and launches requests for help. Volunteer Alarm Phone operators intercept the messages and immediately warn the Maritime Rescue Coordination Centres (MRCCs) in Malta and Rome. The dinghy was also sighted, together with four others roughly in the same stretch of sea, by a reconnaissance plane of the European agency Frontex, which in turn reports its presence both in Valletta and Rome, for the interventions of the competent authorities, it being clear - as the agency itself will later specify - that the task of organizing any rescue operations is not up to Frontex but to the competent maritime authorities, duly notified. The position of the dinghy - from which the requests for help are multiplying - is known from the beginning: it entered the Maltese SAR zone but it is much closer to Lampedusa than to Malta. Hours and days pass but no intervention is recorded to reach it and rescue the shipwrecked.” A combination of exhaustion, hypothermia, drowning, and desperation contributed to the death of twelve refugees, with negligence and slow intervention by the competent authorities being the overall cause of death. With the entirety of these events taking place less than thirty miles from Lampedusa, the endorsement of the abandonment of the shipwrecked refugees for five days at sea is evident through the silence and inaction of Italian maritime authorities, who were duly notified of the boat’s status, and their complicity in the senseless loss of life of twelve migrants. The events over the Easter week of 2020 in the Mediterranean Sea were nothing the region had not experienced before, no surprises or one-offs, and they were far from the final time. But the arguably guilt-free mindset of the relevant European authorities, comfortably excusing themselves from responsibility, is harrowing. But perhaps what is more pertinent than the questionable morals of maritime affairs and ‘crisis-mode’ decision making, is the money wall harnessed by the European Union in order to pay their way out of inevitable problems. Moreover, a money-wall that is creating temporary solutions to a longer-term issue that should be of growing concerns to the entirety of Europe.
