“A massacre of innocents”, was indignant the Italian daily The print the day after the shipwreck which occurred on February 26, very close to the east coast of Calabria, in southern Italy. President Sergio Mattarella gathered on March 2 in front of the 67 coffins which rest in the sports palace of Crotone, transformed into a funeral chamber. The number of missing remains undetermined. The wooden boat that shattered was probably carrying more than 200 people. Three suspected smugglers were arrested.
From the tragedy, the controversy swelled in Italy. How could such a tragedy have happened so close to the coast, even though the boat had been spotted the day before by a plane from the European agency Frontex? Was there on the part of the latter, or of the Italian authorities, a lack of transmission of information, under-evaluation of a situation of distress, or even a desire not to intervene?
“The boat showed no signs of distress”
In fact, a police operation was first carried out. Two boats from the financial brigade, responsible for migration control, set sail on the evening of February 25, before turning back due to bad weather. While lifeboats can face stormy seas. But these came too late.
“The elements of which we and the Guardia di Finanza were aware did not suggest a dangerous situation for the occupants”, defended the spokesman for the coast guard, on March 1, according to comments reported by the Italian agency Ansa.
Frontex indeed declared, in a press release, that during its observation “The boat showed no signs of distress”. However, the agency states that it has informed the Italian authorities that, thanks to on-board thermal cameras, it had “detected a significant thermal response from the forward open hatches and other signs indicating the presence of people below deck”. “This aroused the suspicions of Frontex surveillance experts”, she adds, taking care to specify that classifying an event “like a search and rescue” is a matter for the national authorities and not for Frontex.
“A strategy of letting European states die”
“Frontex clears customs, but assistance to people in danger is an obligation imposed on everyone under the law of the sea, recalls the jurist Claire Rodier, co-founder of the Migreurop border observatory. A wooden boat overloaded with people is by definition in danger. »
If the boat had left Turkey four days earlier, taking this longer and more dangerous route, “it is to escape the refoulement practices of the Greek coast guard”, denounces Sara Prestianni. For the “migration and asylum” specialist of EuroMed Rights, “These shipwrecks are the product of European security policy which ignores rescue obligations and refuses to create legal access routes”. “It is a strategy of European states, to let people die, which is moving people today because the bodies are washing up on our shores. But who spoke of the 73 dead and missing off Libya in mid-February? », asks Claire Rodier.
According to the High Commissioner for Refugees, at least 295 people had already died in the Mediterranean since the beginning of the year, before the sinking of Crotone. It will be up to Italian justice to establish the exact sequence of events and responsibilities of this night from February 25 to 26.