Reports are emerging that up to 500 migrants may have drowned off Malta as the boat they were trying to reach Europe in was sunk. The death toll through drowning in the Mediterranean as a result of the racist policies of Fortress Europe reached a horrific new peak over the summer with 2,200 people drowning since June according to the UNHCR. For comparison in the entire 28 year period of its existence some 136-245 people were killed by another migration barrier, the Berlin wall.
Reports are emerging that up to 500 migrants may have drowned off Malta as the boat they were trying to reach Europe in was sunk. The death toll through drowning in the Mediterranean as a result of the racist policies of Fortress Europe reached a horrific new peak over the summer with 2,200 people drowning since June according to the UNHCR. For comparison in the entire 28 year period of its existence some 136-245 people were killed by another migration barrier, the Berlin wall.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) has called this the "the worst shipwreck in years" and says "According to the survivors, the Syrian, Palestinian, Egyptian, and Sudanese migrants set out from Damietta in Egypt on September 6. In a separate incident, dozens were feared drowned after a boat carrying 200 migrants sank off Libya, with only 36 survivors rescued."
These deaths lie at the door of the EU’s Fortress Europe policy which make it almost impossible to legally migrate to Europe from North Africa and the Levant. Huge security operations at the possible land borders make the relatively safer crossings there impossible with the result that thousands of desperate people take the risk of sea crossings in over crowed boats run by gangsters. It appears in this incident that the gangsters may have deliberately sunk the boat when migrants refused to move to a smaller boat they considered unsafe. The criminalisation of migration by the EU has created the conditions under which criminals run people smuggling operations for profit much as prohibition created Al Capone.
WORDS Andrew Flood (Follow Andrew on Twitter )