On board the vessel that departed from Smyrna, in Turkey, and sank 150 metres from the coast of Cutro, in the province of Crotone, were travelling (it is assumed) 180 people from mainly Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq and Pakistan.

To date, the toll stands at 67 people dead during the shipwreck, of whom 14 were children. One body was found in Catanzaro due to the strong currents. There are no cases of burns among the survivors, which would rule out an explosion. In all likelihood, the vessel struck a rock.

This is not, however, an accident: the tragedy that occurred during the night between Saturday 24 and Sunday 25 February could have been avoided.

In Crotone, the cynicism of the interior minister

"If I were desperate, I wouldn't leave. Because I was raised with a sense of responsibility, not to ask myself what I should expect from the country I live in, but what I can give to it" — this was how Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi responded to those who, during the press conference held the day after the massacre, asked him to put himself in the shoes of the migrants on that boat.

Chilling words that Riccardo Noury of Amnesty International described as "cynical". And yet, those people could objectively have been saved and an investigation is under way by the Crotone prosecutor's office to clarify the dynamics of the incident and establish any potential responsibilities. In the meantime, it can be said that this kind of enforcement-led approach is a contributing cause of this incident, or that it at least does nothing to help safeguard the lives of people seeking refuge in another country.

That said, the idea that people fleeing war should not escape their own country out of a sense of responsibility is absurd, as demonstrated — if any demonstration were needed, without even invoking the Jews persecuted by the Nazis — by the global network of reception that came to be built in response to the invasion of Ukraine.

Sergio Scandura @scandura

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Moriremo retequattristi

(ma "educati alla responsabilità").

♥ 67💬 12 27 feb 2023 · Apri su X →

What happened before the Crotone massacre

If the facts as reconstructed by several newspapers — one of the first journalists to work on the reconstruction of events was Sergio Scandura of Radio Radicale — were confirmed, the institutional responsibilities would be very serious. But let us proceed in order: at 4:57 on Saturday 25 February, approximately 24 hours before the shipwreck, an Italian radio station received a mayday from a boat in distress in the Ionian Sea.

The alarm came without coordinates, so all vessels in the vicinity were asked to remain vigilant. Then, on Saturday evening, a Frontex aircraft — the agency responsible for patrolling the Mediterranean Sea — spotted the boat and photographed it. The report was sent to the agency's Italian base: through satellite monitoring it was possible to detect the presence of a "significant thermal response." In other words, it was established that the boat was packed with people, with no life jackets and therefore no protection whatsoever.

The question at this point becomes crucial: why were rescue operations not launched, despite the alarm? The ongoing investigations will need to establish who decided not to dispatch the Coast Guard's unsinkable patrol vessels — the kind capable of righting themselves in any sea conditions — and instead sent two Guardia di Finanza craft. That is to say, someone decided to undertake an enforcement operation rather than a rescue one: the objective had become arresting the people smugglers rather than saving the migrants.

The two Guardia di Finanza patrol vessels were unable to reach the boat due to adverse sea conditions. Hours passed and the Coast Guard received no further signal from the vessel, despite the fact that those on board had tried to attract attention the previous evening by waving their mobile phone lights and shouting "Help!" During the course of the morning, a fisherman was asked to go and check on the situation. When the authorities arrived on the scene, at 4:30 on Sunday morning, the worst had already happened at sea: the shipwreck survivors had fallen into the water — some were alive, but many others were not.

Had the Italian Coast Guard launched a search and rescue (SAR) operation, a chain of aerial and naval rescue efforts would have been set in motion. Instead, a law enforcement operation — such as the one carried out on Saturday night — was a police operation. With the outcome we all know.

Stopping departures and saving lives: one does not exclude the other

These are the facts, as far as we know them so far. Establishing who ordered an enforcement decision rather than a rescue one will be a matter for the courts, but attention must be kept firmly on this. For the moment, the only thing we can do is reflect on what happened. Because the reasoning put forward by the minister — reasoning also adopted by previous governments — is that stopping departures is the only way to contain the problem, at the expense of saving lives at sea. But one thing does not exclude the other.

Do we want to stop the departures? Then we can start by ceasing to fund armed militias and human traffickers. Indeed, in Libya, for example, we fund the so-called Libyan coast guard: numerous journalistic and judicial investigations have shown that these very people, paid to stop departures from the North African coast, are in fact managing human trafficking across the Mediterranean through torture and concentration camp-like detention centres. And the same is being done on the eastern coast, where the repressive Turkish government is funded with European money to block entry from the east. Yet it was from Turkey that the migrants involved in this tragedy had departed.

Sergio Scandura @scandura

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Frontex ha torto nel non aver lanciato il 🛩️ may-day-relay per evento SAR.

Ma Frontex NON è un RCC secondo Leggi Internazionali🌐.

Se tu 'Italia' (NCC Viminale + RCC Roma⚓️🇮🇹) sai che ci sta un barcone con 200 Persone🌊 NON puoi esentarti dall'attivare le procedure per il SAR.

♥ 203💬 1 1 mar 2023 · Apri su X →

Humanitarian corridors grant the right to at least 1,200 receptions

Much more can be done on the rescue front: the constitution and international law oblige us to allow anyone to apply for political asylum in Italy. Not all the people who wish to enter our country will be able to obtain refugee status, it is true, but they at least have the right to apply for it. What is more, if regularised, entries can also be more effectively monitored. Just as people have the right to apply for asylum, the state has the right to review such applications. It is a win-win, where everyone stands to gain.

To achieve this, it is necessary to open regular pathways — humanitarian corridors: one of the many reasons why these people board a boat, spending up to 7,000 or 8,000 euros to put their own lives and those of their family members at risk, is that no legal means of reaching Italy exist. Or rather, they exist, but they are not upheld.

Indeed, as mentioned, among the people on that boat there were several Afghan, Pakistani and Iraqi nationals. In 2021, a number of institutional and civil society bodies signed a protocol to receive those fleeing this region. Those bodies, which include the Community of Sant'Egidio, the Italian Episcopal Conference, the Waldensian Board, the Federation of Evangelical Churches, Arci, UNHCR, IOM, INM, expressed their willingness to take in 800 migrants, while the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs were to take charge of a further 400, according to the protocol — 1,200 people in total.

To date, Piantedosi has proudly claimed to have allowed 617 people to enter. Few, when you consider the number of Ukrainian refugees taken in since the start of the war: 173,000. We appreciate that setting migrants arriving by sea against Ukrainian migrants is uncomfortable — we agree — but it is a comparison that gives a sense of the different approaches, and above all contradicts Piantedosi's invitation to some migrants, and not others, not to flee their country.

Starting again from the survivors and preventing new massacres

While we wait for the state to work diligently to put in place a legal and safe system capable of receiving migrants and preventing disasters like the one that has just occurred, those shipwrecked at sea must be rescued. There are no alternatives. And if the government does not trust the NGOs, then let the relevant institutions do it. But let them actually do it.

Right now, in the Cara (asylum seekers' reception centres) there are around 60 survivors who are receiving psychological support from NGOs (them again). Almost all of them are Afghan. 22 people are in hospital, including six children. So, if the state wants to show it has learned its lesson, it can start again from them. By delivering justice, finding those responsible for what happened in Calabria, and ensuring that a tragedy of this kind is never repeated.