How 61 Africans were left to die at sea

In what has been described as a ‘dark day for Europe’, a nine month investigation by the Council of Europe into the deaths of over 60 African migrants left adrift at sea, highlights so many spectacular failures that it is difficult to say other than in some these African lives were not worth saving.

These African migrant workers were not fleeing Africa to find a ‘better life’ in Europe, they were fleeing a bloody civil war in Libya in which they found themselves were caught up.

In one of the survivor’s interviews, Dan Haile Gebre said that while he worked and earned a decent living as a mechanic in a garage located in Tripoli, the Libyan conflict made life increasingly perilous for Sub-Saharan migrants in particular.

‘The people are divided in two, pro Gaddafi and pro Benghazi groups. So anybody will ask you asked: who do you support? If you say 'rebels' the person you are speaking to might be pro Gaddafi, and if you say with 'Gaddafi' he might be with the rebels’

‘They started killing black people. They come to our homes and steal everything you have. They stole everything from my workshop because of the green flag, mandatory if you want to find work under the Gaddafi regime. We were afraid. There were a lot of things: if you want to take a taxi, the driver will ask you the same question. In a bakery: buying bread was not allowed for Africans.’

Fearing for their lives Gebre and others crammed into a small boat in the dead of night. After losing all power in their boat they were just drifting. For many their slow and torturous death was just unfolding. Their many distress calls for help were heard and ignored.

There was for example a military helicopter which is still unknown that briefly flew over the migrants, offering them food and water and motioning at them to remain in place only to then fly off and never return.

On the 10th day of their ordeal the migrants drifted up to a large military vessel – so close that the survivors claim those on board were photographing them from the deck as they held up the dead babies and empty fuel tanks in a desperate appeal for assistance – but this too has not been definitively identified.

The report argues that the military vessel must have been under the command of NATO, adding: ‘NATO must therefore take responsibility for the [military] boat ignoring the calls for assistance from the ‘boat left to die’.

In its damning conclusion the report states that the ‘deaths of 61 migrants on board the boat, plus two more who died soon after reaching land, could have been avoided.’

Furthermore, it adds, there were, ‘many opportunities for saving the lives of the persons on board the boat were lost. They could have been rescued if all those involved had complied with their obligations’, adding that ‘NATO and its individual member states should now hold their own inquiries into the incident and allow the full facts to come to light.’

At a time when people are talking about the Titanic rescue operations have changed since then its difficult to see that if those in the boat where not Black rescue operations around the area would have not left people to literally starve to death. European countries must honestly investigate why so many people were just left to die.

Simon Woolley