Most of the passengers on capsized refugee boat fleeing Libya were from sub-Saharan Africa
According to the June 3
New York Times,
The fishing vessel, the Wave, set off from Tripoli, Libya, around noon last Friday, Colonel Baili said, and was carrying migrants from the African nations of Mali, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast and Morocco as well as from Pakistan and Bangladesh.
If these people, particularly the ones from Africa, needed to escape Libya because of the fighting, why didn’t they just go home to their own countries instead of trying to enter Europe? The media never ask this obvious question. Instead, they consistently treat the supposed desperate need of these people to get into Europe as self-evident, not requiring any explanation. Based on the fact that they came from nearby African countries which they chose not to return to, it would seem that the reason they wanted to go to Europe was not fear for their lives, but simply the desire to live in better circumstances than those prevailing at home. That wish was so great that that 850 of them crowded onto a 100 foot long fishing boat and now 270 are dead.
Unless Westerners recognize that the reason Third Worlders seek to come to the West is not victimization or oppression or anything that the West is responsible for or can do anything about, but just the understandable wish to live in a nicer place with greater opportunities, and unless Westerners, without a spot of a guilty conscience, firmly close their borders to such “refugees” and tell them to make a better life for themselves in their own countries, the “refugees” will do to Europe what they did to that Libyan fishing boat—overload and capsize it.
Here is the article:
Bodies Recovered After Migrants’ Boat Founders
PARIS—The Tunisian authorities have recovered the bodies of 150 refugees, mostly sub-Saharan Africans, who drowned after their boat foundered this week in the Mediterranean Sea, a United Nations official said Friday, but up to 120 refugees were still missing.
“The authorities have managed to recover 150 bodies so far,” said Firas Kayal, a spokesman for the United Nations refugee agency in Tunisia. “The search operation is still going on.”
The clandestine migrants, aboard a 100-foot fishing vessel, had been fleeing Libya for Europe. Rescuers from the Tunisian Coast Guard and Navy were able to save 578 men, women and children from the vessel, which was crowded with as many as 850 passengers when it ran aground Tuesday about 30 miles from the Kerkennah Islands, said Col. Lotfi Baili of the coast guard, who helped coordinate the operation.
Hundreds of passengers fell from the vessel when it listed, he said, and others fell into the water during the scramble to reach the military rescue boats. The Tunisians were overwhelmed by the number of migrants who needed to be rescued, he said, and could use only small vessels because the water was so shallow.
The fishing vessel, the Wave, set off from Tripoli, Libya, around noon last Friday, Colonel Baili said, and was carrying migrants from the African nations of Mali, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast and Morocco as well as from Pakistan and Bangladesh.
The survivors were taken to the coastal Tunisian city of Sfax. About 200 have been transferred to a refugee camp at Ras Ajdir, near the Libyan border, and 383 more are on their way to the camp now, Mr. Kayal said. He said seven people had been hospitalized, including several pregnant women.
Mr. Kayal said the fate of the remaining 100 to 120 refugees who ended up in the sea remained uncertain.
The migrants aboard the Wave were the latest to attempt the voyage to Europe from North Africa, with border controls largely nonexistent after the revolution in Tunisia and the upheaval that continues in Libya. Tens of thousands have fled Tunisia for better economic opportunities and have sought to escape the violence in Libya.
Scott Sayare reported from Paris, and J. David Goodman from New York. David Jolly contributed from Paris.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 04, 2011 07:31 PM | Send