- By Mike Thomson
- BBC News, Sfax
5 hours before
As the number of migrants trying to reach Europe increases, so does the number of deaths in the Mediterranean.
As European Union officials struggle to stem the exodus, the fate of those fleeing poverty and persecution is leaving a tragic mark on Tunisia’s shores.
As the sun rises above the horizon off the east coast, fisherman Oussama Dabbebi begins to haul in his nets. His face anxiously fixes on the contents, because sometimes fish isn’t all he finds.
“Instead of catching fish, sometimes I get dead bodies. I was scared the first time, then gradually I got used to it. After a while, when I pull out a corpse, it’s like pulling a fish out of a net.”
The 30-year-old fisherman, dressed in dark hooded sweatpants and shorts, says he recently found the bodies of 15 migrants in his nets over a three-day period.
“Once I found the body of a baby. How can a baby be responsible for anything? I cried. With adults it is different because they have lived. But you know, the baby didn’t see anything.”
Mr Dabbebi has been fishing in these waters near Tunisia’s second largest city, Sfax, since he was 10 years old.
Back then he was one of many who cast their nets, but today, he says, most fishermen would have sold their boats to people smugglers for huge sums of money.
“Smugglers have often offered me unbelievable sums to sell my boat. I always refused because if they used my boat and someone drowned I would never forgive myself.”
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Many African migrants are determined to reach Europe in hopes of a better life
Not far away, a group of migrants from South Sudan – which has been plagued by conflict, climate shock and food insecurity since independence in 2011 – slowly walk away from the port.
All ultimately hope to reach the UK. One explains that they reluctantly gave up a second attempt at crossing to Italy because of an overcrowded boat and deteriorating weather.
“There were so many people and the boat was very small. We wanted to go anyway, but as we headed away from shore it was really windy. It was too much wind.”
According to the Tunisian National Guard, 13,000 migrants were forced from their often overcrowded boats near Sfax and returned to the coast in the first three months of this year.
According to the UN refugee agency, around 24,000 people left the Tunisian coast in makeshift boats between January and April this year and made their way to Italy.
The country has now become the largest departure point for migrants on their way to Europe. Libya had previously received this dubious accolade, but violence against migrants and kidnappings by criminal gangs led many to travel to Tunisia instead.
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Most fishermen in Sfax have sold their boats to people smugglers for large sums of money
Many of their rusting and rotting ships lie either half submerged or on huge piles alongside Sfax Harbour. Lonely reminders of the dangers of the world’s deadliest known migration route.
Another clear reminder can be found in the cemetery on the outskirts of town.
In a vast part of the cemetery, rows of freshly dug graves lie empty, awaiting the next loss of life at sea.
But they will not be enough. A new cemetery dedicated exclusively to migrants is currently being planned.
In just two weeks, more than 200 bodies of migrants were recovered from the sea here earlier this year.
More than 27,000 people have died trying to cross the Mediterranean since 2014.
This accelerating tragedy is causing great difficulties for the city.
The director of the regional health authority, Dr. Hatem Cherif says there simply aren’t the facilities to deal with so many deaths.
“The maximum capacity of the hospital’s morgue is 35 to 40. That’s usually sufficient, but with the influx of corpses that’s only getting worse, it far exceeds the number we can accommodate.”
Up to 250 bodies were recently brought to the morgue. Most had to be stacked one on top of the other in a refrigerated side room grimly called the “disaster chamber.” However, wanted Dr. Cherif to indicate that all will be buried in separate, numbered graves.
Many of the deceased are unidentified, so DNA tests are organized and the results are carefully preserved.
The idea is to allow loved ones searching for loved ones to see if they are buried here by looking for matches to their own DNA.
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African migrants in Tunisia say they have been the target of racist attacks
Three hours’ drive north-west in central Tunis, several hundred members of Tunisia’s black minority, many of them women and children, camp in small tents in front of the offices of the International Organization for Migration.
All were evicted from their homes and fired from their jobs in the city after the country’s President Kais Saied delivered a inflammatory racist speech in February.
He claimed “hordes” of illegal immigrants were pouring into the country as part of a “criminal” plot to change the country’s demographics.
Comments are widely seen as an attempt to find scapegoats for the country’s deep economic crisis, which has led many desperate Tunisians to become migrants themselves.
A young man originally from Sierra Leone, still recovering from a brutal civil war that ended in 2002, cites a recent stab wound to his arm and says knife-wielding youths have attacked many here since the president’s speech.
“Some Arab boys came here to attack us. The police said they would protect us if we stayed here. But if we leave this area, we are not safe.”
This worrying situation and the country’s president’s continued detention of opponents and erosion of civil liberties appear to be less of a priority for EU officials than stemming the flow of migrants.
So far this year, more than 47,000 migrants have arrived in Italy, triple the same period last year, and calls for action have grown.
On a brief visit here earlier this month, a visiting delegation led by European Commission chief Ursula Von der Leyen pledged a possible financial support package of nearly €1 billion (US$1 billion; £850m).
If approved, about a tenth of that amount would be spent on anti-trafficking measures.
Last week’s tragedy off the Greek coast has increased calls for countermeasures.
But with so many migrants so desperate and human smuggling so profitable for traffickers, it will be very difficult to stop the increasing flow of small boats.
Crowds of migrants from across Africa and parts of the Middle East gather in groups in shady spots on the streets of Sfax.
Some have the money to pay for a place on a trafficker’s boat, others live in limbo and are unable even to pay for their food and shelter.
Many either lost their passports or had them stolen, while some never had one because they left their country illegally.
Everyone has heard of the deaths of so many people trying to reach Europe, but it seems that despair continues to outweigh the danger, as a young man from Guinea made clear.
“We cannot return to our country because we have neither money nor passports. I’m not afraid. I am starving, there is so much poverty.” [at home] and my parents have nothing. I don’t want my children to live like this. I have to go.”
The tragedy is that this basic human quest for a better life so often comes at such a high cost.