Death in Crotone: the tragedy of a migrant boat

On 21 February, around 180 people, mostly from Afghanistan, Iran, Somalia and Pakistan, were taken by truck from Istanbul to Izmir on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast. That night they boarded a ship, the Luxury 2, for Calabria in southern Italy, said Oliver Meiler in Süddeutsche Zeitung (Munich). 

Smugglers sold each place on board for between $4,000 and $8,000. Soon after, the ship’s engine died and the smugglers replaced the Luxury 2 with an old wooden fishing cutter, Summer Love, and the migrants continued on their “long and dangerous journey”. 

At 10.30pm on 25 February, a plane operated by Frontex, the EU border agency, spotted the boat in rough seas about 40 miles off the Italian coast. Its thermal cameras gave an image which was “very red”, indicating many people were in the ship’s hold. Frontex notified the Italian authorities, who sent out two boats, but they turned back because the waves were too high. 

At about 5am on the morning of Sunday 26 February, fishermen reported a boat in distress on a sandbank off Steccato di Cutro, a seaside resort in Crotone province. Soon, the first corpses washed up on the beach. The Summer Love had broken up 100 metres from shore, hurling its passengers into the stormy sea. 

In total, 81 people survived. More than 70 have been found dead, including 16 children. The rest are still missing. It was the deadliest shipwreck in Italian waters since 2013. A “gloomy, confused” picture has emerged of this terrible episode, said Francesca Paci in La Stampa (Turin). At best, there were “a series of misunderstandings, errors, omissions”; at worst, there was “bad faith”. 

The Italian authorities claim that Frontex didn’t warn them that the boat was at risk of being wrecked. Frontex states that it is the responsibility of the national authorities to coordinate search and rescue efforts. Either way, it is unclear why two boats were sent out from the anti-smuggling Guardia di Finanza, rather than coast-guard craft capable of weathering the heavy seas. 

It’s also unclear why, after the Guardia di Finanza’s boats returned to port, nothing more was done until it was too late. “Too many things don’t add up, while large and small bodies multiply on the sand.” Enough is enough, said Elena Stancanelli in La Repubblica (Rome). 

Article source: https://www.theweek.co.uk/news/959980/death-in-crotone-the-tragedy-of-a-migrant-boat