The lifeless bodies of children on the beach in Libya, Open Arms: “Abandon yourself for more than 3 days"
The shocking photos of lifeless children and women abandoned on a beach in Libya, victims of yet another shipwreck, were released by the Spanish NGO Open Arms: “Abandoned bodies. Forgotten lives. The horror kept away so that it disappears. Shame on Europe”. It is not yet known whether the bodies have been removed by the authorities, nor are their names known.
There is a newborn baby with his face pressed into the sand, a child with arms wide open and a woman. The Spanish NGO Open Arms showed the shocking images of the lifeless bodies of some migrants on Twitter, abandoned on a beach in Zuwara, in Libya. “I'm still in shock at the horror of the situation, small children and women who only had dreams and ambitions in life. They were abandoned on a beach in Zuwara in Libya for more than 3 days. Nobody cares about them”, Oscar Camps wrote on social media, the founder of the NGO. The little ones are probably victims of yet another shipwreck. “Abandoned bodies. Forgotten lives. The horror kept away so that it disappears. Shame on Europe”, the humanitarian organization denounced.
Not much is yet known about their tragic deaths, Their names and ages are not known, and no one knows exactly how they ended up on that beach. And it is not yet clear whether the authorities bothered to take away the bodies, giving them the dignity of a burial. According to journalist Nancy Porsia, migrants “They were not left there for three days. This is a misunderstanding. My contact found them on the ground last Saturday, immediately informed the local security directorate and on the same day military personnel recovered the corpses and buried them in the Abu Qamash cemetery”, west of Zuwara.
According to initial reconstructions, the migrants could be victims of a shipwreck reported by the IOM 18 May last. Flavius Di Giacomo, spokesperson for the Mediterranean of the International Organization for Migration, announced the number of missing: at least 50 migrants, while 33 they would be the survivors. In all on that boat they were traveling around 90 migrants.
Sunday 23 May the call center for migrants in difficulty at sea, Alarm Phone, reported another vessel in distress: “We are unable to contact them again 95 people in difficulty. The last contact dates back to 15 hours ago. But we know that the boat is still at sea: merchant ships First Brother and Sea Loyaltyála are monitoring. We fear an illegal pushback to Libya”. No certain information is known about the lives of these people. What we know, however, is that with the easing of anti-Covid restrictions, departures along the Libyan route in the central Mediterranean have resumed, and that several shipwrecks with victims have occurred in recent weeks, as well as rejections in Libya.
They have already been counted since the beginning of the year 500 people who died while trying to cross the central Mediterranean, according to data released at the beginning of May by the United Nations Refugee Agency (Unhcr), while in 2019 the deaths on the same route would have been at least a thousand. According to Amnesty International at least in 15 thousand lost their lives between 2014 and the 2019. The relationship between departures and migrants dying during the crossing has dramatically changed: it passed by one every 29 in 2018 to one in every six in 2019. The same year, at least 2.747 Intercepted migrants were brought back to Libya.
From the beginning of 2021, after the drastic reduction of 2020, caused by the pandemic, according to UNHCR they are beyond that 5.500 migrants brought back illegally to Libyan territory. As has now been established by various journalistic investigations, in Libya migrants are locked up in prisons, exposed to torture and violence.
Meanwhile, no agreement was reached on the redistribution of migrants at yesterday's European Council, and the topic wasn't even addressed. Prime Minister Mario Draghi, although the issue of immigration wasn't even on the agenda, tried to raise the issue. But the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, after the leaders' meeting, he explained that “Several Heads of State and Government have asked that the issue of immigration be returned to at the next European Council” scheduled for June. Given the circumstances, next summer risks being punctuated by a daily bulletin of deaths at sea, in the absence of a shared and centralized solution to the migration phenomenon.
