Italy migrant boat shipwreck: More than 100 people feared dead

[Still Waters]

There are fears that more than 100 people, including children, have died after their boat sank in rough seas off southern Italy.

At least 62 migrants are confirmed to have died, with 12 children said to be among the victims, including a baby.

The vessel, thought to have carried some 200 people, broke apart while trying to land near Crotone on Sunday.

People from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, Iraq and Iran were said to be on board.

Bodies were recovered from the beach at a nearby seaside resort in the Calabria region.

The coastguard said 80 people had been found alive, "including some who managed to reach the shore after the sinking", meaning many more remain unaccounted for.

One survivor was arrested on migrant trafficking charges, customs police said.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-64784208

[pellinore]

I fear there is not much sympathy. Even if there was, what, practically, can Europe (incl, the UK) do? I guess there are hundreds of thousands of people (maybe be millions) living in poverty in the Middle East, Far East and the Near East who would prefer living in our continent. People in refugee camps, in countries where there is no rule of law just tribal warfare, reliant on outside aid for medicine and even food.

In Europe, we sort of plugged on with things over the centuries- we had the Agrarian Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, we gradually made advances in social care and medical care, we decided to just pay lip-service to religion rather than let it dominate our lives, we reluctantly realised our work force had to be educated and have healthcare to be productive, and we all, now, in Europe have roughly comparable standards of living which are pretty decent.

But we are not prepared for unplanned immigration. In the UK we get a bit more than 1000 per week at present, with the numbers increasing each year since Brexit. A village has a population of maybe 2000 people, a small town 20,000 people, a very large town maybe 50,000 people.  Where will they all go? 

 

[Black Red Devil]

I'm in two minds about this.  On the one hand most of these "refugees" being trafficked are mainly migrants seeking better opportunities in life, therefore bypassing official assylum seeker requests, rather than political refugees escaping wars or similar tragedies occurring back home.  On the other hand, doing nothing while people drown or putting them in detention centres for years on isolated islands, as per the Australian Govt policy, is inhumane.

I also don't accept the idea that Human Rights Orginisations criticise certain border protection methods in some countries while doing or saying absolutely nothing when other rich countries refuse to intake a reasonable number of refugees or refuse to intake refugees because of their different cultural backgrounds.

If boat people are a problem they are a world problem, not just in the country of arrival.