Thursday, March 20, 2014

SPRING TIDES UPDATE

It is now being reported that the body of a migrant was found on board one of the boats saved by the Italian Navy on Tuesday night. The cause of death is being given as inhalation of hydrocarbon fumes on the boat. Another migrant from the same boat was airlifted to hospital in Catania after he or she was found to be experiencing serious breathing difficulties.

Now it is estimated that a further 1,000 migrants have been rescued by the Italian Navy and Coast Guard in the last 24 hours.

Once those migrants who survive the incredibly dangerous crossing arrive on Italian soil they are helped to an extent but facilities for them are inadequate. Most do not wish to stay here and either escape from the holding centres and try to make their way north - in which case they may again fall into the hands of people traffickers -  or wait for permission, which may not come, to move on. And then what? Some are lucky and manage to legally stay in northern Europe; others are not.

Throughout history, people have fled persecution, poverty, danger and war and no one has the right to prevent them from doing so. And no one, least of all me, knows how to tackle these sources of the problem.

4 comments:

Jenny Woolf said...

I am so sorry for people who are desperate enough to pay a fortune for unsafe routes to other countries where they are not welcome. It's hardly possible to imagine the feeling.

Rosaria Williams said...

Leaving a homeland is a desperate act of survival. I come from a long line of emigrants, those whose lives couldn't possibly change without the help of another nation. Italy better have the heart to help, knowing full well how their own people had to emigrate to survive.

Liz Hinds said...

How right you are, welshcakes that people have fled persecution throughout history, and how right you also are that we have no right to stop them.

Welshcakes Limoncello said...

Hi, Jennyl As you say, virtually impossible to imagine. Hi, Rosaria. Yes, you are absolutely right. I think Italy does remember its emigration history on the whole and people are individually sympathetic. Hi, Liz. Glad you agree.

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