700 migrants are feared drowned 40 miles off the Libyan coast after an overloaded boat capsized early this morning. A Portuguese merchant ship was directed to the scene (as the nearest vessel) but has succeeded in rescuing only 20 people. Other ships are now there searching for survivors but there is little hope. The merchant ship reported it had done everything it could but is not equipped for such a huge rescue operation.
UPDATE
The first refugees to reach Italy have said there were 950 people aboard the lost boat of which 200 were women and 50 children. Many had been locked into the hold. So far only 40 people have been saved. Prime Minister Matteo Renzi returned to Rome early this morning from campaigning in local elections to organise help but stated this afternoon that the rescue ships reaching the scene were now "searching for the living among the floating corpses". Only now is their some kind of response from other European governments; some expressions of the need to help Italy cope, after such a long term, disgraceful disregard of the situation here.
The migrants were from: Algeria, Egypt, Somalia, Nigeria, Senegal, Mali, Zambia, Bangladesh, Ghana.
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4 comments:
Upping the ante, or upping the hype, it's difficult to be able to discern.
Can the sources of these reports be verified and thus authenticated?
One wonders, given that the beeb has turned its attention to the Mediterranean boat people, reporters buzzing about hither and thither, any wild report will, may be, seized upon.
Moreover, it is also maybe true, that many, many more deaths will have occurred and these pour souls deaths will never be recorded nor marked.
All round, it is a human tragedy but I still say to the western leaders [a loose term admittedly]. That, the protectionist EU policy agenda like the CAP, CFP [EU boats plundering fish stocks in the Med] provokes and perpetuates poverty in the of North Africa and far beyond that.
Excessive political interference, not least military adventures in Iraq and Libya have so undermined security and what governance there once was in the region, thus what historically was named the 'Barbary coast' has regressed to its previous hellish lawlessness, or worse than that.
Agri business, Corporate giants have been buying up land in sub Saharan Africa and pushing hundreds of thousands of Africans off their land.
In the Sudan, it is the Chinese who back a brutal Islamist regime, who is indulging himself in a lot of ethnic cleansing - all these people drift off and we know where some turn up.
In the Horn and Afar triangle, constant civil war means incessant emigration and with fighting in Aden a knock of civil war in the Yemen - another problem forces people to leave their lands.
What could happen never will, because either, they do not comprehend the bigger picture, or they do and remain silent.
Western leaders should alert the Chinese, that they are not happy with Sino interference in sovereign African states.
The same too, with Saudi Arabia and mendacious quasi Wahhabist interventions and arming Sunni sects and militias in the levant, North Africa, Sinai, Egypt, and all points Barbary coast and of course in the Yemen.
It might be an idea to impress on the Saudi's that instead of causing mayhem in the Barbary coast and the Levant - perhaps a few billion spondulicks spent to aid their religious brothers rebuild their shattered lives might be a preferable way to spend their Petrodollars.
At last, the Saudis would retort - "no, not a bit of it effended, for Allah decrees it, we adore and create instability.... and migration north is the icing on the cake, instability in EUrope equals - that's what we want".
Dave, Obama, Hollande and Merkel must seek to acquire some working knowledge and quickly - concerning REALPOLITIK and geo-strategy - don't hold your breath.
I recall, about six or seven years ago, a friend who was a senior staff officer in the MoD telling me that the 'threat' was no longer from conventional or nuclear weapons but how to deal with the MILLIONS of refugees from the Horn of Africa walking westwards fleeing drought and starvation.
I laughed.
I am not laughing now.
At the beginning of the year I thought to watch a sub-Saharan African country electing a new president. Zambia seemed an appropriately small, familiar (in the sense of being a former English colony) reasonably stable place to follow via its own media and sufficiently long independent to be operating on its own terms.
It was an eye-opener in terms of criminality, violence, corruption, and the use of brute force to obtain the ends of its exploiters. Its constitution embodies an outrageous concentration of formal power in the hands of its president and its legal system is so deformed it's difficult to recognise it as such. Its population is tribalised, patronised, brutalised, ill, and poverty stricken. It is quite obvious that any minute the dam could come down and resources to repair it are the object of personal enrichment and the securing of political control. Its domination by Mugabe and his objectives in southern Africa is complete.
And Zambia is one of the better African countries in which to live.
"Its domination by Mugabe and his objectives in southern Africa is complete."
Mugabe is backed up by the Oriental imperialists, they have big investments in Southern Rhodesia and big contracts in Northern Rhodesia, Mugabe is a proxy for the projection of 'Oriental' power and the effective rape of Africans and resources goes apace but almost unnoticed. With a view to some sort of stitch up in the Paris Climate junket... Obama keeps quiet and if he POTUS is keeping quiet, then who else is going to stand up and bear witness?
No one - that's who.
Thus, Zambia's silent misery is perpetuated and seen as just collateral damage but the people move out and south to the Cape where they meet savagery, intolerance and well blow me - RACISM.
No words of protest are ever uttered from the left, from stalwart supporter of all that is bad in South Africa... Peter Hain, nor indeed from Baroness Amos.
Amos, who in 2003 was secretary for international development under Tony Blair at that time turned a blind eye to Mugabe's genocidal tendencies and clearances of white farmers causing his own citizens to starve to death! Amos also now chooses to cock a deaf un, for she acts as the United Nations Under secretary general for humanitarian affairs - no less - what does she actually do, as it says on many students job applications a gap year - "enabled the opportunity for travel and cultural enrichment".
Another funny thing, on reflection - is selective and very polarized eyesight and is of course African black on black racism writ large.
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