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unhappycamper

(60,364 posts)
Fri Oct 10, 2014, 07:33 AM Oct 2014

'Aren't We Human Beings?': One Year After the Lampedusa Refugee Tragedy

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/lampedusa-survivors-one-year-after-the-refugee-tragedy-a-994887.html



When over 300 refugees drowned off the coast of Italy last October, the incident prompted widespread outcry and promises to save more lives. But 12 months later, the fates of the survivors show just how broken Europe's refugee system really is.

'Aren't We Human Beings?': One Year After the Lampedusa Refugee Tragedy
By Juliane von Mittelstaedt and Maximilian Popp
October 09, 2014 – 02:20 PM

A few weeks ago, Tadese Fisah returned to Lampedusa to thank the fisherman who had saved his life. He was shaking when he stepped onto the island, Fisah says. When he saw the shipwrecks and the sea, the images all came back to him, images of women crying for help and of tangled bodies.

Fisah, who is from Eritrea, knew nothing about the man who pulled him out of the water one year ago except his name: Costantino Baratta. He asked some passersby, who sent him to the harbor. There, he was told that Baratta was at sea, so Fisah waited. After a few hours, the fisherman, a powerful man in his mid-50s, returned to port and tied up his boat. Fisah walked up to the man timidly, not knowing what to say. But Baratta understood him nevertheless. With tears in their eyes, the two men embraced.

On the morning of Oct. 3, 2013, Baratta saved 12 people while the coast guard did nothing. Although he and other fishermen recovered 155 people altogether, 366 others drowned, only 800 meters (2,625 feet) from Europe. Most were from Eritrea.

Fisah was sleeping that night as the lights of Lampedusa approached on the horizon. He was still asleep when, in an effort to signal that the boat was in distress, the captain set fire to a sheet soaked in gasoline. The burning sheet fell to the deck, and the passengers began to panic. That was when Fisah woke up.
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