At last

Well, my laptop has finally given in completely and is – according to the only computer-technician on the island- beyond repair.
So I was left with my phone and an old non-internet-compatible laptop of Daniela. But I had written this entrance before, so you just get it a bit later.

I had an interesting talk with a guy visiting the rescue center today. As his main occupation he is a chef and apparently a quite famous one. But he came to Lampedusa to visit people from the organisation “open arms” and that draw my attention back to the topic this island became sadly famous for. The arrival of thousands of refugees in 2011, at the beginning of the “arab spring”. As Lampedusa is only 100km away from Tunisia, people fleeing violence and death which followed the protests, entrusted their lives to little, often not properly functioning boats to cross over to Europe.  The way over the small Mediterranean sea is considered the most dangerous passage worldwide and a sad peak was reached in Lampedusa in 2013, when a ship sank at its coastline, taking 368 people with it.

There is that man who owns the best Gelateria in Lampedusa.
He also used to be a fisherman. On the night of the 3^rd of October 2013 he went out with his boat. In the early morning hours he retreated under deck to get some hours of sleep. He was woken up by, what he thought were cries of seagulls, circling the boat. But they were cries of humans. When he went outside, he saw hands reaching out of the seas surface and then disappearing.  About 500 people, most of them unable to swim, were floating in the water. The boat they had been on, was already on its way to the sea floor. The man reached for his radio and placed an emergency call. Then he started pulling people into his boat.
The reconstruction of the accident says, that the captain of the wrecked boat had wanted to set off an emergency signal with a burning blanket and the fire got out of control. It drove all the passengers to one side of the boat, which caused the latter to tip over and sink.
The Gelateria-owner says, the hands and arms he tried get hold of were sometimes covered in motor oil. It made them slippery. He didn’t manage to drag on board every person whose hand he grabbed this morning.
Finally other fishermen and the coastguard arrived and together they managed to bring 155 people to shore.

Today the naturally help of the fishermen would be illegal.
Two days ago, Italy passed a law which allows for a fine of one million Euro for a captain who enters Italian waters with rescued refugees on board. On top of it, the state is entitled to confiscate the vessel and send  the captain to prison.

Also in Italy, a military man recently shot the boyfriend of his daughter and let him bleed to death for 4 hours. He got 5 years in prison.
Meanwhile with the new law, if one saves a person from drowning, he/she might have to face 15 years in prison and his/her  financial ruin! 
This law is said to never be enforced, because it is not compliant with the Italian constitution and also not with international law of seafaring. But that is not the point. The point is, that European citizens voted for this law. It is welcomed and supported by a majority of people, not only in Italy.
This is the Europe we WANT to have! This is the world we WANT to live in!
And somehow we still summon the nerve to consider ourselves morally superior over “undeveloped countries”.

The Gelateria-owner says, he is not the same person anymore. Watching people die in front of you changes you.
For the anniversary of the tragedy from 2013 he created a sculpture. A golden spiral descending into a blue plate. On it, the names of the 368 human beings he couldn’t save that morning.