Theresa Maggio

To honor the third anniversary of the drowning of 368 African immigrant at the dock of Lampedusa, Italian TV last night broadcast the Oscar nominated film Fuocoammare, Fire at Sea, filmed on Lampedusa. It does not have much distribution in the US. It was a beautiful sad poem. Like nothing I had ever seen before.
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Today, Sunday, alone saw 1100 migrants saved from the Strait of Sicily. The Libyan traffickers sent off eight rubber rafts all at once. Also saved were two tiny boats full of complete Libyan families. This is a new phenomenon, according to a report in the daily La Repubblica. The Libyan families are autonomous immigrants escaping  Read More 

From Reuters in Rome via The Guardian:
An Italian judge has acquitted two men accused of people-smuggling and murder, saying they had been forced at gunpoint by Libyan traffickers to drive a rubber boat packed with migrants last year.

The judge in the Sicilian city of Palermo on Wednesday ordered that Jammeh Sulieman and  Read More 

More than a thousand migrants, including tiny babies, were rescued in the past few hours off the coast of Libya in several operations that involved the Italian Coast Guard and and Maltese ship. IN the video you can also see a rescuer who was overcome by the diesel fumes of one of the vessels, felt ill and fainted in the waters. Imagine having to smell the diesel fumes day and night without respite during the transit of the Mediterranean. Read More 

My translation of the article in today's La Repubblica:
The Italian Coast Guard announced that it coordinated 40 rescue operations in the Strait of Sicily Sicily yesterday saving 6,500 people. Working with the coast guard were the Italian Navy, non-governmental organizations,a nd European Union forces including Frontex, which is the European border police, and Eunaformed.  Read More 

The images were taken during the rescue on Monday of approximately 6,500 people, many from Eritrea and Somalia, who had set off in wooden fishing boats a few hours earlier.

I just did the math. The traffickers generally charge around $2,000, a phenomenal sum for people from southern Africa. Then they cram them onto boats and rafts and send them off. Without food, life jackets, water or sufficient fuel, nor a compass nor anybody who knows how to run a boat. Under the broiling sun, no shade, crammed  Read More 

The Libyan navy has admitted taking part in a confrontation with the refugee rescue boat the Bourbon Argos in international waters off the coast of Libya, following days of speculation about who attacked it.
A navy spokesman was reported to have claimed that Libyan forces had approached the rescue boat, chartered by the aid group Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), after its crew allegedly refused to identify themselves. But the navy denied that it had fired directly at the MSF boat, and claimed it did not board the boat itself. Read More