Feature article

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September 19, 2008

The smell will remain imprinted forever; an acrid cocktail of

sweat, urine and exhaustion, the scent of hope and the stench of

despair. In surreal, dignified silence, men, women and tiny

children hobble down the gangplank, a sea of haunted faces

clutching little more than each other or a plastic water bottle,

long since sucked dry.

An infernal scene, it is played out daily on the vast concrete

wharf that dominates the tiny port of Lampedusa. There is no

moaning, no wailing, just the deep drone of boat engines churning

water, the shout of coastguards mooring, a seagull’s cry. On land,

safe and shaded from the vicious 40-plus heat, the relief is

palpable, if fleeting.

Between January and last month, nearly 20,000 people made the

perilous overland journey to the coasts of Libya or Tunisia, to

cross the Mediterranean and land on Italy’s southernmost territory,

the islet of Lampedusa. Many have spent weeks, months and even

years on the road and, once on the coast, must entrust what little

money remains to the local criminal syndicates that traffick human

beings in smaller and ever-more dangerous boats.

This year, an estimated 600 souls have perished at sea trying to

get to Italy while more than 18,000 are estimated to have

disappeared or died en route from Africa to Europe since the mid

1990s. The fishermen and commercial trawlers that work the waters

between North Africa, Sicily and Malta haul in human remains with

horrible regularity but admit that they no longer bother to report

their finds to the authorities. Lampedusa’s fishermen state openly,

if anonymously, that they cannot afford the loss of a day’s income

while the slow grind of bureaucracy works through the

paperwork.

Dr Marinella Cantalice, of Lampedusa’s Medecins Sans Frontieres,

says the provenance of the “clandestini”, or illegals, has changed

dramatically over two years. “It used to be that they came

primarily from the Maghreb [Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco]. Now, 70 per

cent are from the sub-Saharan regions and 30 per cent of those from

the Horn of Africa, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia. They arrive after

long journeys, dehydrated, stiff, sore, with swollen feet and

sometimes burned by the mix of salt, urine, petrol.”

Laura Boldrini, a spokeswoman for the United Nations High

Commissioner for Refugees, says the number of women and children

arriving on the boats has doubled in the past year. This year 678

minors reached Lampedusa without a parent or family.

“The characteristics, the profile of the African immigrant has

changed: it is no longer merely about finding work and a better

economic life but about surviving war, persecution, famine. The

Mediterranean is increasingly Africa’s roadway to political asylum

… we cannot pretend that this is not happening nor can we

ignore the phenomenon any longer,” she says.

Over and over we are asked about Australia and how it compares

with this end of Italy. Is it true Australia lets children drown

when they come on boats? Half way around the world, the stories

have developed their own lives.

The sightings come at all times of the day. During summer, the

seas are flat and calm and traffic increases dramatically. The

Herald spent a week on call with Medecins Sans Frontieres

and the Italian coastguard, Guardia Costiera. On Wednesday, seven

boats arrive at Lampedusa.

The largest, a 15-metre wooden fishing boat, was reported early

by a yacht that radioed the coastguard. Within half an hour, a

launch loaded with water and medical supplies leaves port with a

crew of seven including Order of Malta medical volunteers – a

doctor and specialist nurse. Gildo Damanti estimates it will take

close to two hours to reach the stricken boat. “All we know is that

there are many, many people on board,” says the coastguard

commander. “We have water and some food but we cannot make a

decision on what to do and how to get them in until we get

there.”

Under a baking sun, the trip seems interminable, while the high

tension is made clear by the gallows humour of the crew and medical

staff. When binoculars discern two pinpricks on the horizon – the

white sails of the yacht within discreet distance of the boat’s

light blue hull – the launch buzzes into frenetic activity. An

aerial swoop by the coastguard plane radios details, and the crew

and medical back-up don rubber gloves, sterile suits and masks.

Once the boat comes into view, a hush falls over the launch. “Dio

mio, quanti?” whispers a crewman. [“Dear God, how many?”]

The sight is unforgettable, a seemingly impossibly large cargo

of wretched humanity perched on deck, on the roof, on the sides,

hanging over rails, below deck and sitting on top of each other.

The desperation is visible, dry cracked lips, shouts for water.

When bottles are thrown their way, fights break out and the boat

lists dangerously; coastguards have to wave axe handles and a

wooden oar above the men’s heads in a distressing but necessary

restoration of order.

It is impossible for one launch to rescue all 332 men and women,

and an attempt to start the fishing boat’s engine and tow it back

to shore is thwarted by the refugees; terrified they might be

abandoned they throw the engine keys into the sea. It is another

three hours before a second launch arrives; meanwhile, agitated

occupants bail water and wait. Women, 45 in total, are transferred

first: most are from Nigeria and had been travelling for weeks –

one says three months – before they began their sea journey. They

have been without water or food since they sailed from Africa four

days ago.

Exhausted, dead-eyed, they speak of fleeing violence: “I have my

brother, my daughter … my parents dead, they shoot my mother,

I decide to run,” says Eli, a 36-year-old Nigerian.

Says Charity, 26, before dissolving into sobs: “My father was a

soldier. He was shot in the war and he was dead and my mother had

nobody to take care of me and my mother and two children … I

don’t know what has brought me to this place. I don’t know, I don’t

know.” The crewmen show extraordinary compassion. One sits on the

front deck, in the baking heat and smell, singing songs to keep the

men’s spirits up on the long, slow limp back to port. “Being useful

to other human beings is half the satisfaction of the job,” says a

crewman, Giovanni Iuculano. And his colleague, Vincenzo Caracausi,

says: “Our work means something … this boat alone has saved

2000 people during the last three years. We fish 10- to 15,000 out

of the sea every year.” On land, after triage by the Medecins Sans

Frontieres crew, the arrivals are quickly loaded onto buses and

ferried to a rocky valley that served as a wartime burial place for

American troops. Here, out of sight of tourists and in the European

Union-funded centre rebuilt from rundown army barracks a year ago,

they are given clean clothes, shoes and a telephone card. They are

photographed, identified if possible, rested for a few days, and

sent by air or sea to an Italian mainland centre for processing of

applications for papers and asylum.

Sebastiano Maccarrone, the Lampedusa centre director, is angry

at my use of the words detention centre; his charges, he insists,

are ospiti, or guests, and are not held against their will. “These

poor desperate people come to us, to Europe to find a new life and

to find succour. This is a centro di accoglimento [a welcome

centre].”

Behind big metal gates – guarded by carabinieri, who double as

military police, and armed soldiers – the arrivals are locked in

their hundreds in hot, concrete segregated yards. The word welcome

seems hollow. And yet, a couple of days later, when we return to

try to find the young women we interviewed on the coastguard

launch, the “ospiti” are clean, rested and manage to smile despite

their anxiety.

The Lampedusa operation costs Italian taxpayers €50 million

($88 million) a year, a cost that increasingly infuriates island

residents, whose town centre is reminiscent of a Third World

shantytown – decrepit buildings, potholed roads, crumbling school,

ancient desalinator and no hospital. Lampedusa’s administration

falls within the prefecture of Agrigento in Sicily – 250 kilometres

away – while Tunisia is less than half that distance.

The awful irony is that while residents complain, the African

exodus has created a state-funded service industry in which local

contractors vie for multimillion-dollar tenders to provide the

centre with clothes, food, security and transport.

Worse is the hypocrisy of the Berlusconi Government and the

anti-immigration Northern League which gleefully whip up xenophobia

as a campaign tool, but who say nothing of the exploitation of

African illegal immigrants who pick southern Italy’s fruit and

crops to feed the north. Italy’s Medecins Sans Frontieres recently

reported on these workers’ conditions in the aptly titled The

Fruits Of Hypocrisy.

In the restaurants, bars and shops of Lampedusa, residents

preface observations with “non sono razzista ma … ” (I am not

racist but … ) before delivering diatribes about the boat

people’s effect on tourism. The mayor, Bernardino De Reubis, told

an Italian newspaper last week that he was “not a racist” but that

“the stench of negro flesh stinks even when it is washed”.

A couple of days later, he insisted to the Herald that he

had been quoted out of context. “I was talking about what happened

last month when 1900 people were crammed into the centre in 40

degree heat … in such terrible conditions, white flesh, any

flesh would smell.”

De Reubis says that as a Catholic, offering help to the less

fortunate is an imperative. But the island’s people need help, too.

Angela Maraventano, his deputy, is a senator for the

anti-immigration Northern League and has called for the immigration

centre to be moved to a ship offshore and has echoed her

parliamentary leader Umberto Bossi’s suggestion that the best way

to stop the exodus from Africa is to fire weapons over boatpeople’s

heads, “just as a warning”.

It is said that the things you cannot change are the things that

shape you; the flight of Africa’s poorest, ever northward and

across the sea toward Western wealth has fundamentally changed

Lampedusa. And Italy.

In the early days, when new arrivals were a desperate but mere

trickle, the islanders were proud to shelter, feed and clothe them.

The trickle has turned to a flood and, as the global economy

continues to falter, the whole of Europe has hardened its heart,

too.

In just two weeks – and after a two-year debate – the EU, under

French leadership, will enact tough anti-immigration laws,

criminalising illegal arrival and lengthening to 18 months the time

new arrivals can be detained. In Lampedusa, what was dubbed an

emergency has become a way of life.

This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2008/09/19/1221331207183.html