EU and Italian migration policies are responsible for the deaths of dozens of migrants who died in a shipwreck off Italy’s southern coast, an expert has claimed. A wooden boat, crammed with migrants who paid human traffickers for the voyage from Turkey, broke apart in rough water just off a beach in Calabria, Italy, before dawn on Sunday. Eighty people survived the shipwreck. According to survivor accounts, the boat had held 170 or more passengers when it set out from the Turkish port of Izmir a few days earlier.
Refugees International President Jeremy Konyndyk blamed EU and Italian migration policies, calling for the bloc to welcome more people in.
In a note sent to Express.co.uk, he said: “The deaths at sea of more than 63 migrants—including an infant and children—off the coast of southern Italy on Sunday is not an accident.
“It is an outcome that flows directly from EU and Italian migration policies that have made the Mediterranean routes more dangerous by design, in order to deter migration.
“Over the past decade, EU policy has pushed migrants toward increasingly dangerous migration routes while obstructing lifesaving rescue operations. This latest tragedy comes just days after Italy’s parliament passed a new law making it more difficult for NGOs to conduct rescues at sea. It also comes on the heels of Greece attempting to prosecute NGO staff for serving on rescue operations.
“Rather than deterring asylum seekers, these policies simply endanger more people and increase the risks of migrants drowning. More incidents like this one are inevitable.
“If Europe can absorb millions of Ukrainian refugees when it chooses to, tragedies like the one should not be allowed to occur.”
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The search by air and sea to spot any of the many believed still to be missing continued for a fourth day. Italian state TV and the LaPresse news agency said a child’s body was the latest of three corpses to be recovered, raising the confirmed death toll to 67.
On Wednesday, the coffins, brown ones for adults and white ones for children, were arranged in neat rows on the sports facility’s wooden floor in the city of Crotone. Atop each coffin was a bouquet of flowers. Some people added toys to the coffins of children.
According to family accounts, some passengers had called loved ones in Europe and excitedly reported that they could see the Italian mainland — about an hour before the boat smashed up against a reef or sandbank in the Ionian Sea.
When the relatives heard about the shipwreck, many drove from Germany, northern Italy and other European points down to Cutro, the beach town where many of the corpses washed up and some of the survivors came ashore.
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While many traffickers launch boats filled with migrants from the shores of Libya and Tunisia across the central Mediterranean toward southern Italy or Italian islands, others use a route beginning in Turkey that crosses the eastern Mediterranean and aims to reach either Calabria in the “toe” of the peninsula, Puglia, the “heel” of the mainland, or eastern Sicily.
Viewing the coffins along with the victims’ families were the mayors of nearby Italian towns, the local bishop and imam, and townspeople.
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