Up to 4 000 asylum seekers drown at sea every year as they flee persecution or poverty, according to newly published British research.
Fear of terrorism and public scares about mass migration have led to more vigilant coastal patrols and an international climate that discourages captains from stopping to help small boats in distress, says Professor Michael Pugh of Plymouth University.
His figures derive from interviews with refugees, records of bodies washed up on shores, wrecks and government statistics.
They suggest that about 2 000 people perish annually in the Mediterranean trying to reach prosperous European states. A similar number are thought to die on crossings to Australia and the United States — the two other main destinations for boat people.
Pugh, who believes that he is the first to produce such global statistics, stresses that the numbers are, inevitably, estimates.
Up to a third of the people who set out on perilous crossings fail to land safely, he says in his study, Drowning not Waving, published in the Journal of Refugee Studies.
”The Spanish produce reasonable records of the bodies they find, but many people think that’s an underestimate.
”It’s a hidden tragedy because there are few aid organisations at sea to monitor the situation and undertake rescues. In the past, captains were concerned that they were being decoyed by people who might turn out to be pirates. Now their concerns are that they could be attacked by al-Qaeda.”
Such fears, says Pugh, are usually unfounded.
”There are far easier ways of attacking western targets and it’s the lives of refugees and migrants that are most at risk. Yet politicians in the United Kingdom, southern Europe and Australia have fabricated refugees and migrants as a ‘security threat’, even sending out warships to turn back boats on the high seas. In part, this is to make capital in domestic politics.”
Three German aid workers were arrested recently after their ship, Cap Anamur, docked in Sicily with 37 African refugees they had picked up from an inflatable dinghy. The asylum seekers initially claimed to be fleeing the stricken Darfur region of Sudan, but were later shown to be from Ghana and Nigeria.
The vessels hired by those trafficking migrants and asylum seekers are often old and unseaworthy, Pugh points out.
”Many have no, or only limited, navigation aids or charts. They have unreliable engines and steering and little by way of safety equipment.”
Last week, 64 African migrants were feared drowned after their overcrowded boat capsized en route from Tunisia to the Italian island of Lampedusa. Most of the victims were thought to be Moroccans.
Pugh, who lectures in international relations, suspects that the numbers dying at sea have risen recently. Fatality rates were probably higher, however, during the 1970s, when tens of thousands of Vietnamese boat people crossed the South China Sea. Many were attacked by pirates.
”The International Maritime Organisation should encourage support for seafarers who adhere scrupulously to the norms of humanitarianism at sea,” Pugh concludes, ”if necessary regulating the shipping industry to ensure that masters are not penalised for bona fide rescue deviations and delays.” — Guardian Unlimited Â