A deadly silence

One Friday, 28 people were rescued by the Italian coastguard when the boat on which they were fleeing Libya capsized in the Mediterranean. Arriving homeless and without prospects in a strange land, these were — relatively speaking — the lucky ones. As many as 700 are thought to have drowned. Add them to the tally. On Monday, another boat capsized with 400 souls feared lost. Last year more than 3,000 died in the Mediterranean trying to get to the West. It has become a phenomenon of our times.

We do not hear much about life in the supposedly liberated Libya, but the fact that even immigrants into Libya would rather risk death than stay there gives a fair idea. Were these survivors being routinely scooped out of the sea by the British rather than Italian coastguard, it might focus our minds on just how things have developed since David Cameron stood in Martyrs’ Square in -Tripoli and declared that Libyans had ‘no greater friend than the United Kingdom… We will stand with you every step of the way.’