Death in the Mediterranean: ‘It’s a graveyard. What’s happening ... we cannot pretend we didn’t know’

Dotted along the shore on Lampedusa island lie dozens of lifebuoys and old shoes, a green baby’s lifejacket with small armbands and a cartoon smiling face, and bags of discarded thermal foil blankets previously used to warm the migrants who have arrived there after crossing the Mediterranean Sea.

“It’s a graveyard. What’s happening in the Mediterranean ... we cannot pretend we didn’t know,” says Pietro Bartolo, a former doctor who treated migrants on the island for more than 30 years.

Nearly 26,000 people have died or gone missing while attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea since 2014. Lampedusa, a 20sq km island that is closer to north Africa than the Italian mainland, is one of the main arrival points for migrants coming from Libya and Tunisia, who disembark there before being moved elsewhere by authorities.

Before becoming an MEP in 2019, Bartolo met an estimated 250,000 migrants who arrived at the pier in Lampedusa and treated many of them for hypothermia, malnutrition, dehydration and injuries sustained from long boat journeys, as well as wounds from torture before they took to the sea.

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[ Migrant shipwreck in southern Italy leaves dozens dead ]

While he has helped to save thousands of lives, he has also witnessed many deaths. It was the children who haunted him the most.

Bartolo was working on the island on October 3rd, 2013, when a boat coming from Libya sank off the coast of Lampedusa, killing more than 360 people, many of whom were children.

“I never could have imagined this kind of shipwreck could happen. There were so many bodies, hundreds of them along the shore in body bags,” he says.

“I was standing there, prolonging checking them because my fear was there might be a child inside. The first one I opened was a child. He wore red shorts and a white T-shirt. His eyes were still open.”

“I looked inside his eyes. I wish I had never done this. He was only this size,” says Bartolo, holding his hands out to show how small the boy’s body was.

Bartolo’s voice trembles and his eyes fill with tears when he talks about the boy he found that day. “Sometimes I have nightmares about him. He is screaming at me because I didn’t save his life.”

The doctor had a bottle of water and a brush with him that day, which he used in an attempt to give the dead “some dignity”.

“I cleaned their faces and combed their hair before the police took photos for identification, so they would be more recognisable if family ever came to look. We identify them with numbers, but they are people.”

At the back of the island’s cemetery, a small section is dedicated to the migrants who died attempting to reach Europe, with a monument made from some of the wood from shipwrecks over the years. “Here lie Muslims, Catholics, old, young, black, white. All migrants died in the sea seeking freedom,” it reads.

The graves are mostly unmarked, except for one – that of a six-month-old baby, Youssef, who died in a shipwreck off the coast in winter 2020. On the baby’s grave lies a picture of him, above which “mummy and daddy love you forever” is written.

When migrants die in shipwrecks, it’s described as tragedy, but it’s not a random incident, it’s a consequence of policy in Europe. And now a new law is criminalising the only people who dedicate themselves to rescuing people at sea

It is estimated that more than 30,000 migrants reached Lampedusa in 2021, representing more than half of those who arrived in all of Italy that year.

When the weather and conditions at sea are better in the summer, it is not uncommon for hundreds to arrive daily, a police source on the island told The Irish Times.

But to the 6,000 locals, the issue has been “made mostly invisible” in recent years.

Two people living on Lampedusa say they “sometimes only find out about migrants on television” because they’re quickly taken to a reception centre and then bussed out to other parts of Italy.

The reception centre, initially designed for 350 people, is often overcrowded, with more than 1,000 people inside. The centre is blocked off by double fencing and a strong police presence.

Giovanni D’Ambrosio, a social worker in Lampedusa for migrant support group Mediterranean Hope, says migrants have been “completely locked inside” since the Covid-19 crisis.

“Before, there was a hole in the fence from which they went to the town. The authorities tolerated this, but this hole has been closed since Covid. They are not criminals, but they are locked up,” he adds.

Migrants can spend anywhere between a few days and a few weeks in the centre. In one week in February this year, more than 6,000 migrants arrived, half of whom went directly to the reception centre.

“It was more than 10 times its capacity,” says D’Ambrasio. “People didn’t have a space to sleep, many slept outside. They couldn’t shower or use the toilet. The conditions were really ugly.”

Three people have died at the centre in recent months, he says, deaths the authorities are now investigating.

“When migrants die in shipwrecks, it’s described as tragedy, but it‘s not a random incident, it’s a consequence of policy in Europe. And now a new law is criminalising the only people who dedicate themselves to rescuing people at sea.”

[ How many more deaths must there be on migration routes for Europeans to pay attention? ]

D’Ambrasio is referring to a law passed in Italy this year, establishing a code of conduct for migrant charity ships.

Part of prime minister Giorgia Meloni’s efforts to crack down on rescue vessels, the new law requires ships to request access to a port and sail to it “without delay” after a single rescue, rather than remain at sea to look for more migrant boats in distress.

Previously, some of these vessels would complete an average of four rescues per trip, with an average of 280 people rescued, says Caroline Willemen, deputy head of mission at the charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).

“Now, we can only rescue about 100 people per rotation. When we’re not there, there’s a heightened risk of people dying or being captured by the Libyan coastguard and brought back there, which many of the people we’ve spoken to said they would rather die than experience,” she says.

The disaster off the coast of Calabria on February 26th, in which at least 64 people died after a wooden boat carrying migrants from Turkey broke apart, was “a very stark reminder of how dangerous crossing the Mediterranean is, and the consequences of restricting NGOs at sea”.

“One man we rescued said he had tried to cross the Mediterranean 11 times – it’s a vicious cycle. I’ve never met someone who would leave if they did not have to. When you see people with small kids, it makes you think of all the people you know with small kids, and what it must take for a parent to make that journey,” says Willemen.

The Council of Europe has urged Italy to scrap the new decree, describing it as a breach of international law

The Italian government has repeatedly claimed that the presence of rescue boats in the Mediterranean is encouraging people to make the perilous journey. It has accused NGOs patrolling the Mediterranean of incentivising illegal migration and rewarding people smugglers who charge migrants hundreds of euro for help with the crossing.

The decree restricting the activities of the rescue boats was introduced in December and passed into law by a parliamentary vote in February.

Speaking ahead of the vote, Nicola Molteni, a deputy interior minister and member of the right-wing Lega Nord party, told the senate: “If immigration is not controlled, it creates exploitation, forced labour, illegal labour.”

The Italian embassy in Ireland declined to comment when contacted.

MSF was the first NGO to have its vessel, Geo Barents, detained under the new law, for a period of 20 days, and with a fine of up to €10,000 for “failing to provide the voyage data recorder to authorities on arrival” at a port city on Italy’s Adriatic coast in February.

[ Italy blocks rescued migrants from landing and orders ship to leave port ]

NGOs are also being assigned “very distant ports that can add 1,000km to our journey”, she says. The official explanation given by authorities is that reception centres in the south are overcrowded.

However, two other NGO workers say they have come across many migrants who disembarked in the north, only to be transported farther south again.

The Council of Europe has urged Italy to scrap the new decree, describing it as a breach of international law.

In a letter to the Italian interior minister Matteo Piantedosi, the council’s commissioner forhuman rights, Dunja Mijatović, said she was “concerned the application of some of these rules could hinder the provision of life-saving assistance by NGOs in the Central Mediterranean and, therefore, may be at variance with Italy’s obligations under human rights and international law”.

“It is a pity, because Europe has so much to gain from opening its doors to migrants,” says Pietro Bartolo.

Every year, on the anniversary of the 2013 shipwreck, survivors come back to the island to celebrate their lives in Europe and to remember those who died.

The participants toss flowers into the waters off Lampedusa, and pray for those who continue to attempt the journey.

Bartolo attends the ceremony each year as a reminder of the need “to make things better”.

One of “the most beautiful moments” of Bartolo’s life was at the ceremony three years ago. He got off the plane at Lampedusa to see a woman coming towards him with a bunch of flowers.

“She was pregnant. She was one of the women I saved from a shipwreck many years ago, and she came all the way from Sweden just to thank me.

“I have seen so many bad things in my life that nobody should see. But there are many success stories of migrants in Europe, too,” he says.