Throughout a rescue operation by Medical doctors With out Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres, or MSF) within the Central Mediterranean, I watched as a younger Syrian boy named Ali rushed to know his father’s hand as he got here on board the Geo Barents rescue vessel. Moustafa, Ali’s father, limped. I instantly considered how tough it will need to have been for him to face after hours of sitting in the identical place in an overcrowded boat.
However Ali helped him stand and held him tightly. After I reached them to assist and put a thermal blanket round their shoulders, I observed some phrases written in pen in Arabic on Ali’s proper arm.
“I feared I might not make it, so I wrote my spouse’s title and her contact on Ali’s arm. She is in Syria. If one thing had been to occur to me on that boat, I might have hoped somebody would maintain my son and inform her,” defined Moustafa. He advised me they left Libya the day prior to this, on the wood boat from which they’d simply been rescued.
“After I noticed all of the individuals who had been approaching board [in Libya], I realised that it was too crowded. I used to be frightened and wished to get off the boat. I pleaded with the smuggler to allow us to depart,” mentioned Moustafa, scanning the deck of the Geo Barents to examine that every one three of his sons had been safely collectively on board. “It was too late, the person I paid to get on the boat yelled at me to cease and threatened to shoot me and my sons. We had no selection however to remain.”
Moustafa and his three sons had been among the many 99 survivors rescued by the MSF workforce on the Geo Barents on November 16, throughout a tough search and rescue operation lower than 30 nautical miles (55.5km) from the Libyan coast.
The survivors recounted that they left the city of Zuwara, some 100km (62 miles) from Tripoli on the Libyan shore, late within the night of November 15, on a cramped wood boat. After a number of miles at sea, the climate began deteriorating, the waves had been changing into greater, and the engine stopped working.
“There have been ladies and kids on board who had been all scared and crying. Many individuals had been sobbing, screaming, and shifting round on the boat in panic. There was nothing I might do however pray to God for my sons to remain alive,” mentioned Moustafa whereas wrapping his arms round his youngest son, Ali.
When the Geo Barents reached the wood boat in misery within the early afternoon, the MSF workforce discovered the our bodies of 10 individuals on the decrease deck, who had been thought to have suffocated from gas fumes. The survivors advised us that these individuals had spent greater than 13 hours on the cramped decrease deck of the boat. A few of the individuals on the boat had not realised what was taking place to their pals or members of the family on the decrease deck, whereas others had needed to sit for hours subsequent to the useless our bodies of their fellow travellers.
Most of the individuals rescued that day had survived a collection of traumatic occasions all through their journeys, and their expertise on the boat was the newest. Regardless of the causes that pushed them to go away their homeland, there was all the time a standard thread of their accounts: the expertise of violence, deprivation, and a heart-wrenching worry for his or her family members’ lives.
“I’ve no needs for my very own life any extra, however simply desire a good life for my sons. I would like them to be protected and to lastly have a great training,” Moustafa mentioned, sitting in ache on the ground.
Moustafa had a steel inside fixator on his proper leg that made him limp. He mentioned he had lived in ache since 2011, when his leg was severely injured in Syria and the docs wanted to connect the fixator. “[Armed men] got here for me whereas I used to be in my store. They locked the door, and repeatedly beat me with the butt of their rifles and anything they discovered,” mentioned Moustafa, exhibiting me an extended scar nonetheless seen on his head.
“I fell unconscious and so they thought I used to be useless. A number of hours later, I wakened in an empty road, behind some deserted buildings, with a damaged leg and coated in blood.”
Moustafa is from Bab Bila, a southern suburb of Damascus that was underneath a four-year siege in the course of the battle in Syria, which started in 2011. When the siege was lifted in 2015, he determined to flee the struggle along with his three sons. Ali was solely one-year-old at the moment. Their journey has been lengthy and tough: the household spent nearly a month in Sudan after which moved to Egypt, the place their residing circumstances had been robust.
In September 2021, jobless and with an expired passport, Moustafa made the tough resolution to journey to Libya and try to cross the Mediterranean. He hoped to provide his sons at the least an opportunity to attend faculty. The household crossed the border from Egypt to Libya, passing by Benghazi and Tripoli on their technique to Zuwara, from the place they set off on a ship.
It’s incomprehensible to me {that a} baby like Ali, type and with an extremely mild smile, had spent his complete life fleeing. And it’s inconceivable to just accept {that a} devoted father had been left with no different selection however to embark along with his kids on a harmful boat journey for an opportunity at their training. That is the shameful actuality unfolding at European borders, the place irresponsible and reckless migration insurance policies drive individuals like Moustafa and his household to danger their lives.
An estimated 1,305 individuals, together with 37 kids, have died or gone lacking whereas making an attempt the treacherous journey throughout the Central Mediterranean in 2021. Some 18,582 individuals have died or gone lacking on this identical route since 2014.
Since Europe washed its arms of Mediterranean rescue operations, NGOs have been making an attempt to cowl the void, whereas departures from Libya are persevering with and increasingly more persons are risking their lives to cross the ocean. The devastating lack of lives within the Mediterranean Sea is just not a collection of unlucky tragedies, however the consequence of the political selections made by European leaders within the title of defending borders as a substitute of defending individuals.
The names of refugees talked about on this article have been modified to guard their identification.
Since launching search and rescue actions in 2015, MSF has despatched medical groups on board eight rescue ships, at instances working the vessels in partnership with different organisations. General, MSF search and rescue groups have assisted greater than 82,000 individuals. The Geo Barents is the present MSF-chartered search and rescue vessel that began operations in Could 2021. A complete of 1,345 individuals had been rescued by the MSF workforce on board the Geo Barents between Could and November 2021.
The views expressed on this article are the creator’s personal and don’t essentially replicate Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
