Special Report | The perilous journey for survival

"Miriam, wake up. It’s a wooden boat.”

4.15am and it’s pitch-dark. I scramble out of my bunk bed, grab my camera and rush downstairs. The rest of the Migrant Offshore Aid Station (MOAS) crew and the medical team from Emergency NGO are outside, ready on deck.

A searchlight from the Topaz Responder suddenly shines light on the target: it’s a 45ft, blue wooden boat. Once used for fishing, it’s now carrying 356 men, women, children and babies.

John Hamilton, head of MOAS’s rescue operation, is leading the rescue mission: the fast rescue daughter craft (FRDC) is battling small waves as it tries to make its way towards the rickety boat in the darkness. 

Faint shouts are heard in the distance as the boat swings against the waves. Within minutes, the crew had reached the boat and lifejackets were thrown over. Hamilton asks whether anyone is injured or seriously ill, and the migrants reply in the negative. 

These are the people on the upper deck, unaware that four young men were already dead in the hold.

Nick, a rescue diver, jumps onboard the wooden boat. His job is to ensure that everyone remains sitting down, and is heard shouting “sit down”, “life jacket”, “don’t push”. Packed as it was, the slightest movement by the migrants could capsize the boat.

The rescue operation started at around 5am, when the boat was finally out of Libyan territorial waters, 17nm off the Libyan coast. The group had left Zawija on Monday night at around 11 and the ship’s radar picked them up at around 3.30am. Although they appeared as just a dot, the realization that it was a migrant boat came as soon as it was noticed that the boat was sailing at four knots.

By 6.45am, MOAS had ferried all Eritrean migrants on board, with the exception of a few.

Although this wasn’t their first rescue of the sort, the crew was shocked at seeing over 100 migrants packed like sardines in the hold. Air was limited, coming from only two holes, just large enough for a slim person to pass through.

It was then they realized that four had died from suffocation: carbon monoxide was leaking from the fuel pipe. One of them had been dead for at least six hours, rigor mortis already setting in.  

A cardiologist from the Emergency NGO performed CPR on three of the migrants and struggled to revive a fourth on the wooden boat. No one knows the name or age of the man, but he appeared to be still young. The assistance of an Italian navy ship was requested and the patient was medically evacuated by helicopter to a hospital in Lampedusa.

The medical crew performed miracles: a young man, Daniel, was unconscious and very close to death. But thanks to the crew, Daniel would walk off the Topaz Responder two days later when the ship docked at the port of Messina.

It’s a combination of hunger, dehydration, exhaustion and sitting crammed in the same position for hours on end that lead to many of them being unable to walk or breathe properly.

Two brothers held onto each other as they walked off the ship, one of them in shock. They sat down on the plastic pallets and the elder brother forced his sibling to drink water. The younger one kept fainting as the medical crew wrapped him in a space blanket. It would take around six minutes until he came to his senses: at times, his brother would slap his face – not to hurt him but to force him to stay awake. And then it happened: the young one sat up straight, turned to face his brother and, having finally recognized him, burst out crying. 

The two held onto each other for dear life, sobbing in each other’s arms as the younger one started shaking uncontrollably. A few minutes later, he was sleeping, exhausted but knowing that he was finally safe.

It’s a dual reality unravelling before your eyes: those who are a step closer to their European dream and those whose crossing marked the end of their life’s journey for good.

Amongst the crying of men and wailing of women, the four bodies were wrapped in body bags and transferred onto the Topaz Responder by the MOAS crew. There was no other alternative but to pass in front of the rescued group, whose screams pierced the ship. A sombre atmosphere takes over and everyone – crew included – is left staring into each other’s eyes. No words are uttered.

“It’s the ones who don’t make it that haunt me,” the rescue crew would later tell me, standing on the bridge smoking a cigarette with a distant look in their eyes. Had MOAS not spotted the boat at the hour they did, the death toll would have been higher.

Once aboard, the migrants are searched and any cigarettes or lighters are confiscated. Some carry mobile phones, tightly wrapped in plastic to make them waterproof. One teenager had a scrapbook, with handwritten prayers which they would sing to the Virgin Mary. It was clear that, as Orthodox Christians, faith gave them the courage to proceed. Each morning and night, they would sing prayers.

It would take two nights, 33 hours and 330 nautical miles to reach the port of Messina, where the migrants disembarked. 

Three of those rescued, an Egyptian, a Sudanese and a Moroccan, would be the first to touch ground in Messina. Contrary to the rest of the group, the trio were immediately taken away by Italian police. One of them had been carrying a wad of cash.

The vultures of the seas

Two fishing boats kept circling the Topaz Responder as the rescue mission was underway

It is not the first time that MOAS has been faced by questions suggesting that its operations served as pull factor for human smugglers. But dismissing the questions, the organization argues that with or without its presence, people still cross. 

MOAS was set up in 2013, following the humanitarian disaster that left 400 men, women and children dead when two boats capsized and sank.

The Mediterranean route from North Africa to Europe is just one route used by human smugglers to traffic people. Smugglers do not care whether the people make it safely to land or not: all they care about is the money pocketed from every individual who is desperate enough to place their life in the hands of criminals.

Smugglers have expanded their business: depending on the numbers, they make use of wooden boats or rubber dinghies. The use of cheap rubber dinghies – bought from China and sometimes imported through Malta – has increased, mostly because the navy vessels have started blowing up wooden boats.

The crudeness of the traffickers’ spirit of criminal enterprise was best illustrated by the image of two lonely boats on the horizon biding their time until the rescue was completed.

The MOAS crew on Monday had rescued 133 asylum seekers on board a rubber dinghy that left from Subratha. 

Whilst the rescue was underway, three men on two boats could be clearly seen circling the Topaz Responder like vultures, in the hope of recouping the $100 China-produced dinghy, along with the $5,000 Yamaha 40HP outboard motor. 

Their plan failed as the dinghy was towed away and handed over to the Italian military.

Migrants on average pay between $2,000 and $5,000 to secure their place on a boat – excluding the money paid along the way to get to Libya and to buy their way out of a prison. On rare occasions, they are given a satellite phone but they’re mostly advised to sail north, keeping the sun to their right-hand side. 

For just one departure, a smuggler can earn a minimum of $332,500. Take the conservative estimate: a dinghy can hold at least 133 migrants, with males sitting on the sides, feet dangling in the sea, whilst elder people, women and children sit in the lower extremities of the boat. Multiply that by a conservative fee of $2,500 and you have your figure. 

If the smugglers are feeling generous enough, they might even throw in some raspberry yoghurt or juices or croissants – but even for this they usually charge.

Considering that the daily departures are far higher than 133 migrants, the smugglers are making millions in profit every week – which has now led to fights among smugglers, even sabotage, who want to ensure business remains their own.

‘I would do it all over again’

It may take three months, two years or 10 years to reach Europe, but they would still do it. As the sun sets and the air is cooler, I sit down to chat with the asylum seekers. Some of them can communicate in English, other times I needed the help of Johannes, a cultural mediator with Emergency.

Each with their own story, but it always boils down to, “I would do it again”.

“I never expected the journey to be so hard and I thought that people were trying to discourage me because I thought they didn’t want me to have something good.” Mariam, 19, is from Gambia and is an economic migrant.

“My father gave me away at 13 and I have four children. I used to sell vegetables at the market, but it’s very hard now. We do not have anything to eat and I have six younger sisters. I need to help them.”

Salih Muhammad, a pharmacist, is 47, and he’s with his wife – a nurse – his three daughters and son. They used to live in Darfur, Sudan, but had to leave three years ago after he lost his job. He tells me he’s a Muslim, but not from an Arab tribe. 

Together with his family, he entered Libya legally in the hope of finding a job. But last year, fighting intensified between two militias close to where he lived and it was no longer safe for his family. 

“Schools were bombarded, I had no job and we couldn’t even afford to buy milk every day. This is no way of bringing up children. I want them to have an education.”

It’s very easy to learn your way out of Libya, he adds. “You can ask anyone, any person in the street and they will point you towards the right person… including the police and the army.”

Salih paid 2,000 dinars. On the day of the departure, the smugglers sent a taxi to pick them up from Tripoli and drove to Subratha. They were placed in a house where they were first stripped naked and clothes returned once they had been robbed of their possessions.

Mibrak is 44 years old, has a daughter and had been in Libya for two years before the escape. She used to teach English and Mathematics in Asmera, the Eritrean capital. With tears in her eyes, she recounts how she left her daughter behind with her brother as their only chance of survival. “We do not have enough money … we couldn’t live.”

She spent a month travelling the Sahara desert, as others perished along the way. Another survivor – who was held by ISIS in a prison and tortured – says he saw decapitated bodies. 

Mibrak did not pay smugglers in cash but spent a year and a half working as a housemaid. Her left eye was swollen, a reminder of the multiple beatings she was given by a Libyan smuggler to ensure that she does not move on the boat.