opinion
Images made public recently of the bodies of hundreds of Asian immigrants found at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea near Italy's coast substantiate reports of a shipwreck that Italian authorities had asserted was a mere legend of the fishing community.The worst maritime disaster in the Mediterranean since the end of World War II was discovered, filmed and photographed by the Rome-based daily La Repubblica , which published the story in its June 15 edition.
At three o'clock in the morning of Dec 26, 1996, when many people in Italy were still celebrating the Christmas holiday, a fragile wooden boat sank in the Sicilian Channel, becoming a mass grave for 283 immigrants who were just kilometres away from reaching Italian territory - and concluding their journey of hope.
Italy's maritime authorities had - until now - rejected stories of the sinking of the immigrant boat, calling it a 'legend', despite repeated testimonies from 11 surviving crew members about the catastrophe.
What has become the Mediterranean's largest cemetery is centred on a boat 108 metres under water. The vessel had been carrying undocumented immigrants from India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka who were put on board by migrant traffickers on the Greek coast.
The boat had been dubbed 'the phantom ship' because it had disappeared without a trace, while the 11 survivors insisted that nearly 300 people had died.
Human remains
The truth about the wreck began to come to light when Giovanni Maria Bellu, a La Repubblica journalist, figured out the exact location of the accident.
Bellu described the photographs and videos of the shipwreck, which were also shown on television, as 'images of disgrace'.
The journalist explained that a friend had told him about fisher folk in the area who would occasionally find human remains in their nets but would never report it to authorities because they wanted to avoid problems.
In April, a fisherman found a laminated identification card bearing the name Anpalagan Ganeshu, 17, of Sri Lanka. It was later recognised by the victim's uncle who lives in Milan.
Following the discovery of the identification card, La Repubblica hired a team to film and photograph the remains of the ship at the bottom of the Mediterranean.
Moroccan author Tahar Ben Jelloun commented that 'if the sea were a book, some pages would be blank, erased by shame, with no story written upon them'.
''Unless we are fatalists, we can reject the notion that young Anpalagan Ganeshu and his brother Arulalagan were born to be devoured by fish off the Italian coast,'' he said.
''All of the stories of undocumented immigrants, who come from Asia or Africa, are stories of swindling, lies and slavery,'' added the writer.
End up dead
Each one of the people who are now buried at sea had paid US$5,000 to reach Italian soil. The people smugglers thus earned nearly US$1.5 million.
Charito Basa, president of the Community of Filipina Women in Italy, told IPS that the shipwreck serves to underscore - once again - the industrialised world's lack of sensitivity toward the needs of poor countries.
Thousands of people emigrate from the nations of the developing South and try to enter the countries of the North illegally because they are not accepted through legal channels, and they often end up dead, she pointed out.
Basa predicted that the situation of foreigners from poor countries will worsen under the right-wing government of Silvio Berlusconi, who took office this week, because "he has long been dedicated to attacking immigrants".
Civil society must openly manifest its rejection of Berlusconi's stance, she added.
''The problem is that Italy, like other rich countries, does not recognise the contribution immigrants make to the wealth of the nation that receives them, and they always try to shut their doors,'' said the activist.
Fingerprinting
Fittingly, the xenophobic movement of the Northern League, a party included in the coalition government led by Berlusconi, has presented a bill to tighten border patrols and, particularly, to establish a more effective mechanism to expel undocumented immigrants from Italy.
Senator Fiorello Provera, an adviser to Northern League chief Umberto Bossi, explained that it would 'introduce an additional element of personal identification, in which fingerprints will be taken of all non-European Union immigrants'.
Italy is among the European countries with fewest immigrants. Today there are approximately 1.7 million foreigners residing here legally, equivalent to three percent of the Italian population, while undocumented immigrants number around 300,000.
The above article was first written for the Inter-Press Service (IPS).
