Waves of 3 meters, gusts of wind and, stranded on an uninhabited rock 200 meters by 180 meters, thirty-two people, including a baby, who were trying to reach Europe by the Sicily Channel. Bad weather almost engulfed the makeshift boat carrying them. On Monday April 3, an Italian Coast Guard helicopter rescued the small group on the island of Lampione. Leaving from Tunisia and originating from West Africa, the migrants were gradually landed on the tarmac of Lampedusa airport, under the dumbfounded gaze of the travelers present on the spot.
In this tourist island of 6,000 inhabitants, we have lost the habit of seeing these survivors. The Coast Guard usually disembarks people rescued at sea on the port’s military wharf. We can then only see, in the distance, the golden glitter of the survival blankets in which they wrap themselves before being escorted to the hot spot nestled in a valley in the middle of the island, protected by fences, police and soldiers.
Conditions at the heart of the condemnation of Italy, on March 30, by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). Seized by four Tunisians landed on the island in 2017, the ECHR considered in particular that their detention was “lacking a clear legal basis”which prevented them from challenging it in court.
Barefoot
More than 400 migrants are currently in this closed center, whose maximum capacity does not exceed 350 places, forcing many of them to sleep outside, before being gradually transferred outside the island. On Sunday April 2, more than 170 people embarked on a ferry to Porto Empedocle, in southern Sicily. When you meet them on the pier, some go barefoot. A man, who is celebrating his 28th birthday that day, says he left Sfax and had no destination in mind. Another, aged 43, worries about whether it is true that“there is no more room in Italy”while a young couple, whose wife is seven months pregnant, explain that they left because“there is no work in Tunisia”. The police intervened quickly to prohibit any exchange with the press.
In Lampedusa, history stutters. Since the beginning of the year, more than 27,000 people have reached Italy by sea, mostly via this 20 km island.2located about a hundred kilometers east of the Tunisian coast and nicknamed the “gateway to Europe”. Flows are up 400 % compared to the same period in 2022, and more than 900% on the Tunisian corridor alone, which has become the first country of departure for boats, ahead of Libya. With increasingly favorable weather, arrivals could exceed the record figure of 180,000 reached in 2016. uncertain than wooden boats.
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