Turning the back

“A rubber dinghy carrying around 120 people braved through the towering waves and high winds of the Mediterranean. Or perhaps there were 100 people, or maybe even 130. We will never know because they were all dead. Using three merchant vessels, we started the search again at dawn without receiving any assistance from the EU countries. If it had been an airliner that had crashed into the sea, half of Europe would immediately send their marines to help. But since they were only refugees, they were considered filth and therefore not worth dropping everything to come to their aid. Indeed, we were left alone to our own devices. […] We were sailing among floating corpses,” says Alessandro Porro, from SOS Mediterranee Italy, on board the Ocean Viking, the vessel that came to the rescue of the shipwreck that killed more than 100 people off the Libyan coast on 23 April.

According to Sea-Watch, an NGO,  and other international organisations, the alert was launched on Wednesday morning, but the rescue calls were ignored by both Frontex and the European authorities. This is a rough estimate considering that there have been more than 450 deaths in the Mediterranean (as reported by IOM) since January 2021, higher than compared to last year when the recorded deaths over the same period were “only” 150.