Migrant crisis: Tunisian fisherman finds dead bodies in his net
Mike Thomson - BBC News, Sfax
Wed, June 21, 2023
Fisherman Oussama Dabbebi on his boat holding a net in Sfax, Tunisia
As the number of migrants trying to reach Europe grows so does the number of deaths in the Mediterranean.
While European Union officials struggle to contain the exodus, the plight of those fleeing poverty and persecution is leaving its tragic mark on the shores of Tunisia.
As the sun creeps above the horizon off the shores of its eastern coast, fisherman Oussama Dabbebi begins hauling in his nets. His face fixes anxiously on its contents, because sometimes fish are not all he finds.
"Instead of getting fish, I sometimes get dead bodies. The first time I was afraid, then step by step I got used to it. After a while getting a dead body out of my net is like getting a fish."
The 30-year-old fisherman, clad in a dark, hooded sweatshirt and shorts, says he recently found the bodies of 15 migrants in his nets over a three-day period.
"Once I found a baby's body. How is a baby responsible for anything? I was crying. For adults it's different because they have lived. But you know, for the baby, it didn't see anything."
Mr Dabbebi has fished these waters near Tunisia's second city of Sfax since he was 10 years old.
In those days he was one of many casting their nets, but now he says most fishermen have sold their boats for vast sums to people smugglers.
"Many times smugglers have offered me unbelievable amounts to sell my boat. I have always refused because if they used my boat and someone drowned, I would never forgive myself."
Many African migrants are determined to reach Europe in the hope of a better life
A short distance away a group of migrants from South Sudan - which has been hit by conflict, climate shocks and food insecurity since its independence in 2011 - are walking slowly away from the port.
All ultimately hope to reach the UK. One explains that they have reluctantly abandoned a second attempt to cross to Italy because of an overcrowded boat and worsening weather.
"There were so many people and the boat was very small. We were still going to go, but when we pushed away from the shore it was really windy. There was too much wind."
According to Tunisia's National Guard, 13,000 migrants were forced from their often overcrowded boats near Sfax and returned to shore in the first three months of this year.
Between January and April this year some 24,000 people left the Tunisian coast in makeshift boats and made it to Italy, according to the UN refugee agency.
The country has now become the biggest departure point for migrants trying to reach Europe. Libya previously held this dubious accolade, but violence against migrants and abductions by criminal gangs have led to many travelling to Tunisia instead, before heading on to Europe.
Though the boat involved in last week's disaster off the Greek coast, which has left at least 78 people dead and an estimated 500 missing, had sailed from Libya.
Most fisherman in Sfax have sold their boats for vast sums to people smugglers
Many of their rusting and rotting vessels lie either half-submerged in water or stacked in huge piles next to Sfax's port. Forlorn reminders of the dangers of the world's deadliest known migration route.
Another stark reminder can be found at the cemetery on the outskirts of the city.
Rows of freshly dug graves lie empty in an extended part of the graveyard, waiting for the next loss sea disaster.
But they will not be enough. A new cemetery entirely dedicated to migrants is now being planned.
In just one two-week period earlier this year, the bodies of more than 200 migrants were retrieved from the sea here.
Across the whole Mediterranean, more than 27,000 people are known to have died trying to reach Europe since 2014.
This accelerating tragedy is causing great difficulties for the city.
The director of the regional health authority, Dr Hatem Cherif, says there simply are not the facilities to deal with so many deaths.
"The capacity of the hospital mortuary is a maximum of 35 to 40. This is usually sufficient, but with all this influx of bodies, which is getting worse, it's way past the numbers we can take."
As many as 250 bodies were brought to the mortuary recently. Most had to be placed in a chilled adjoining room, grimly named the "catastrophe chamber", one on top of each other. Though Dr Cherif was keen to point out that all will be buried in separate, numbered graves.
Many of those who die are unidentified, so DNA tests are being organised and the results carefully stored.
The idea is to enable relatives searching for loved ones to see if they are buried here, by checking for matches with their own DNA.
African migrants in Tunisia say they have become targets of racist attacks
Three hours' drive north-west of Sfax, several hundred members of Tunisia's black minority, many of them women and children, are camped in small tents outside the offices of the International Organization for Migration in central Tunis.
All were evicted from their homes and sacked from their jobs in the city after an incendiary, racist speech in February by the country's President Kais Saied.
He claimed "hordes" of illegal migrants were entering the country as part of a "criminal" plan to change its demography.
These comments were widely viewed as an attempt to find scapegoats for the country's economic crisis, which has led many desperate Tunisians to become migrants themselves.
Pointing to a recent stab wound on his arm, a young man originally from Sierra Leone - which still recovering from a brutal civil war that ended in 2002 - says that since the president's speech, knife-wielding local youths have assaulted many people here.
"Some Arab boys came here to attacks us. The police said they would keep us secure if we stay here. But if we go outside of this area, we are not safe."
This worrying situation and the continued jailing of opponents and erosion of civil rights by the country's president appear to be less of a priority for EU officials than curbing the flow of migrants.
So far this year more than 47,000 migrants have arrived in Italy, a three-fold increase on the same period of last year and demands have grown for something to be done.
During a brief visit here earlier this month a visiting delegation led by the head of the European Commission, Ursula Von der Leyen promised a possible financial support package of nearly 1bn euros ($1bn; £850m).
If approved, around a tenth of this sum would be spent on measures to tackle human trafficking.
Last week's tragedy off the Greek coast has heightened demands for something to be done.
Yet with many migrants so desperate and people smuggling so profitable for traffickers, stopping the flow of small boats will not be easy.
Crowds of migrants from all over Africa and parts of the Middle East gather in groups in shaded spots of the streets of Sfax.
Some have funds to pay for a place on a trafficker's boat, others live in limbo, unable to even pay for their food and shelter.
Many have either lost their passports or had them stolen, while some never had one having left their countries illegally.
All have heard of the deaths of so many who tried to reach Europe, but it seems desperation continues to trump danger, as a young man from Guinea made clear.
"We cannot go back to our country because we don't have money or passports. I'm not afraid. I'm starving, there is so much poverty [at home] and my parents have nothing. I don't want my children to live like that. I need to go."
The tragedy is that this basic human aspiration for a better life so often comes at such a very high price.
German leader defends deal to stop migrants at EU borders, says old system was 'dysfunctional' STILL IS
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz addresses the German parliament Bundestag ahead of a European Council meeting at the Reichstag Building in Berlin, Germany, Thursday, June 22, 2023. A European Council meeting will be held in Brussels on June 29 and 30. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
Thu, June 22, 2023
BERLIN (AP) — German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Thursday defended a deal to stop migrants from entering the European Union until their chances of getting asylum have been reviewed, arguing that the bloc's existing arrangement is “completely dysfunctional.”
Speaking to lawmakers in Berlin, he said the compromise reached earlier this month by the EU's 27 member states after years of negotiations was a “historic agreement.”
Human rights groups have criticized the deal, saying migrants, including families with children, will be held in camps while authorities check whether they are likely to be granted refugee protection inside the EU. The details are still to be worked out in negotiations with the European Parliament, which must approve the change to EU migration rules.
“I know that the agreement isn't without controversy in this house,” Scholz told parliament. “Everyone had to make compromises, including Germany.”
“But it was the right thing to do in the interest of Europe's unity and ability to act,” he added. “It was right, because our current system is completely dysfunctional.”
In the period from January to May, a total of 135,961 people applied for asylum in Germany, up 76.6% on with the same period last year, according to the country’s Federal Office for Migration and Refugees.
Most of them came from Syria, Afghanistan or Turkey.
In 2022, 12,945 rejected asylum seekers were deported from Germany. However, according to German authorities, there were 304,308 people in Germany as of December 31, 2022, whose asylum plea had been rejected but who have not yet been deported, German news agency dpa reported.
The reasons for the delay in deporting them are manifold, running from health issues to bureaucratic hurdles. It often takes years until a final decision on an asylum application has been made because applicants can appeal through the courts if their claim is turned down.
Scholz noted that many migrants don't apply for asylum until they reach Germany, even though the country is surrounded by other EU member states that would have had to register them first under the bloc's existing rules.
“Those who only have a very slim chance of being recognized as refugees will go through a swift asylum and return process at the (EU's) external borders in the future,” he said. “Those who have good chances of getting protection in Europe, however, because they come from war zones or are politically persecuted, will be registered and able to enter the EU in the future.”
Scholz said the new system would ease the burden on Germany, which has seen more than 2 million asylum applications over the past decade.
He stressed that countries which refuse to take in their share of refugees would in future have to make a financial contribution toward the cost borne by others.
EU's top court says Hungary broke the law by forcing migrants to go abroad to start asylum process
LORNE COOK
Thu, June 22, 2023
BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union’s top court ruled Thursday that Hungary flouted the bloc’s laws and infringed on migrants' rights by forcing asylum seekers inside the country or at its borders to start the process at its embassies in Serbia and Ukraine.
Hungary’s anti-immigrant government has taken a hardline on people entering the country since well over one million people entered Europe in 2015, most of them fleeing conflict in Syria. It erected border fences and forcefully tried to stop many from entering.
After the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak in 2020, the government pushed through a law forcing people seeking international protection to travel to Belgrade or Kyiv to apply for a travel permit at its embassies there to enter Hungary. Only once back could they file their applications.
The EU’s executive branch, the European Commission, took Hungary to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) over the law, insisting that the country had failed to fulfil its obligations under the 27-nation’s blocs rules. The rules oblige all member countries to have common procedures for granting asylum.
People have the right to apply for asylum or other forms of international protection if they fear for their safety in their home countries, or face the prospect of persecution based on their race, religion, ethnic background, gender or other discrimination.
The ECJ ruled that by “making an application for international protection subject to the prior submission of a declaration of intent at a Hungarian embassy situated in a third country,” the government in Budapest “has failed to fulfil its obligations,” according to a court statement.
The court said that Hungary was in essence depriving people seeking protection of their right to “effective, easy and rapid access” to the procedures for doing so. It said that the new law could not be justified on public health grounds meant to limit the spread of the coronavirus.
It said that the obligation to travel to a third country could have put people at risk of catching and spreading the disease and that the conditions Hungary was imposing on them “constitutes a manifestly disproportionate interference” with their rights.
It is now up to the commission to decide whether to try to persuade Hungary to amend or withdraw its legislation, or to ask the court to impose fines.
