RAVENNA – The disembarkation of the 202 shipwrecked people rescued by the ship of EMERGENCY Life Support. The people rescued – including 15 women and 18 minors, 8 of whom were unaccompanied – come from Bangladesh, Egypt, Eritrea, Ghana, Pakistan, Palestine and Syria.
“It’s been a scary journey.” “The boat trip was really scary, we didn’t know what to expect. – says a Syrian boy – They told us to go to the lower deck of the ship. There were too many of us and we had to squat on each other’s legs. After half an hour my legs and arms were already in terrible pain. I couldn’t move and water started coming in from the bottom of the boat. We cut some bottles in half to use them as containers to carry the water out: we went on for hours to make sure we didn’t sink. We were exhausted. I left Syria in 2016 because there was no possibility of having a life in my country.”
Supported by family members abroad. “Families in Syria – continues the boy’s story – manage to survive because there are family members abroad who send money to eat. I myself have lived in Lebanon since 2017 to work as a delivery boy in a restaurant and be able to send money to my parents who are very elderly. I had to leave Lebanon because the people who were hosting me had to leave the country and I had nowhere else to stay. There is a strong economic crisis and even Lebanon now is not the right place to “I want to try to build a new life. I’m traveling with my older brother and his little son, my nephew. I want to build a new life in Europe, I want to live in freedom.”
Rescue in the Libyan SAR area. The rescue of the 202 shipwrecked people took place on the morning of Friday 5 April in international waters in the Libyan SAR area. The 202 castaways were on two different precarious boats very close to each other. About 12 and 10 meters long, they had left from Sabratha and Zawiya in Libya. The boats, both overcrowded, had been identified by radar. To get to the port of Ravenna, the Pos (Place of Safety) assigned by the MRCC (Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre), it took four days of navigation.
A witness from Bamgladesh. “My father died seven years ago. My mother is very ill, she is 70 years old. She needs very expensive medical care and I couldn’t afford it with my job in Bangladesh. – says a 35-year-old Bangladeshi man rescued by Life Support – I decided to go to Libya where I wanted to work. As soon as I arrived, the Libyan militias kidnapped me and took me to prison. I would have had to pay thousands of dollars to be free. Almost every two weeks they moved us from one prison to another. They are horrible places, they fed us every two or three days.”
The beatings every evening to convince families to send money. “Every evening – the story continues – they beat us to convince our families to send more money. My mother had to sell her house so I could get out of that place. After my family paid the ransom, some men came to take me one night. Instead of releasing me, they decided to put me on the boat and cross the Mediterranean. I do not know why. They covered my eyes and put me in a car. I didn’t know where we were going. When they took off my blindfold, we were on the beach in Zawiya. They put us on a very small boat for the people we were. If you refused to go up, they threatened you with weapons. We all went up. I saw almost nothing during the journey because I was in the internal hold. The smell of petrol was unbearable and the position I had to hold was extremely painful. Luckily you found us. The only thing I can think about now is calling my family to tell them that I am fine and that I am no longer in Libya.”
Life Support saved 1544 people. The Life Support of EMERGENCY, on which a crew of 29 people including seafarers, doctors, mediators and rescuers operates, is on its eighteenth mission in the Central Mediterranean. In total it brought 1,544 people to safety. EMERGENCY continues its commitment to providing humanitarian assistance to migrants in the Central Mediterranean, ensuring timely and effective intervention in emergency situations at sea.
What is EMERGENCY. It is an international organization founded by Gino Strada, born in Italy in 1994 to offer medical-surgical care to the victims of wars, landmines and poverty and, at the same time, to promote a culture of peace, solidarity and respect for human rights. Between 1994 and 2022, more than 12.5 million people were treated free of charge in all EMERGENCY health facilities. The work of EMERGENCY is possible thanks to the contribution of private citizens, companies, foundations, international bodies and some of the governments of the countries where we work, who have decided to support our intervention. To support the work of EMERGENCY and offer free, quality care to those in need: here’s how to do it.
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– 2024-04-10 18:10:26
