When a humanitarian tragedy disappears from our newspapers, there are two possibilities: that the crisis is over and life for survivors is gradually returning to normal — or that the human toll has become so routine as to no longer be considered newsworthy. Sadly, the deaths of migrants from North Africa and the Middle East as they attempt to cross the Mediterranean to seek a new life in Europe fall into the latter category. Eighteen months after the photographs of little Alan Kurdi’s body on a Turkish beach generated a huge swell of public emotion, entire families are still dying on a regular basis. In the first ten weeks of this year, some 525 people were lost crossing the Mediterranean.
Europe is still no closer to ending this outrage. As a continent we have wavered between trying to stem the tide of boats and encouraging it — as Angela Merkel fatally did by briefly opening Germany’s doors to migrants in the weeks following Alan’s death. Policy tends to be driven by public emotion: torn between compassion for people thought to be in a desperate situation and fears that we are taking in too many of the wrong sort of people, with grave implications for national security.
It is ludicrous to regard migrants who survive their journey across the Mediterranean and land on European shores as saboteurs, out to destroy our way of life. But it’s also wrong to see them as the world’s poorest and most desperate people. Some may have begun their journey escaping wars in Syria, Somalia or elsewhere, but by the time they board their boats on the southern Mediterranean coast, most have already arrived in safe countries. The Mediterranean leg of their journey is a search for a better life.
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