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October 03, 2019 Twenty-sixty-eight victims, twenty missing, 155 survivors including 41 minors, most of them unaccompanied. One of the greatest tragedies of the sea consumed a step away from salvation, half a mile from the ground.Today Lampedusa, and not only that, commemorates the massacre of October 3, 2013. Tonight, at 3.30 am, the time of the drama, the silent homage to the memorial that shows the names of the victims. Then he said to himself "never again", but other tragedies followed one another up to the present day. Among the most significant initiatives, this morning, the march to the Door of Europe, to solicit from this "frontier" the EU's compact commitment.
Not only Lampedusa, therefore, where landings continue. In thirty European cities, initiatives have been organized to promote the petition that aims to require EU institutions to become the "European Day of Memory and Reception" on 3 October, National Day of Victims of Immigration.
Students from 60 schools in Lampedusa
All the initiatives are promoted as part of the community project Snapshots from the Borders, which sees the municipality of Lampedusa and Linosa as the leading body. And on the island more than two hundred students from 60 schools, coming from 20 European countries, have landed for a project supported by Unchr, Oim, Doctors without Borders, Save the Children, Amnesty International, National Civil War Victims Association, Cisom, Legambiente Lampedusa, Esther Ada. "We are in the same boat" is the slogan. They are confronted with some of the survivors, giving life to international laboratories on the rights of migrants and refugees, aid at sea, racism and discrimination.
National day victims of immigration: many initiatives in 30 European cities
And in each of the European cities involved, various types of initiatives are foreseen (cultural events, documentaries, debates, exhibitions, flash-mobs, concerts, signatures) aimed at making citizens aware of the various aspects related to the migration phenomenon. Among the most significant events in Amsterdam three Rederij boats sail along the city canals with the "refugee captains" on board, to tell their personal stories; in Vienna and in Berlin a reproduction of the Gate of Europe is exposed, one of the symbols of Lampedusa; in Lisbon, flash mobs will set up a scene in the venue that reproduces a large wall that a group of dancers will destroy and then invite the public to build a bridge with the same materials; in Mostar a banquet for the collection of signatures for the petition right on the famous bridge that became a symbol of rebirth.
Mayor of Lampedusa: "They tried to cancel us with a blow"
"They tried to erase Lampedusa, to wipe out this island as a geographical point with a demagogic and mediatic stroke. Instead, Lampedusa continues to exist and to welcome. And the landings continue. We have always been and remain an open port". the mayor Totò Martello. And he continues: "Today this date has become National Memory Day, but it is not enough:" We ask that it become a European Day, the broad and strategic commitment of all is needed ".
Pietro Bartolo: "What I remember is that I don't want to remember anything"
"What I remember about that night is that I don't want to remember anything at all." Thus says Petro Bartolo in an interview with the Manifesto, six years after the sinking of Lampedusa. In his 30 years as a doctor at the Sicilian island clinic (he began in 1988) he visited and treated tens of thousands of migrants. He was there also on 3 October 2013, when a boat with over 500 men, women and children caught fire and toppled a few meters from the port.
"I already know that tomorrow (today) will be a terrible day," he says from Brussels where he has been vice president of the Libe commission for four months. "Last night I already dreamed of the first child I saw dead." On that day, remember, "the first calls are five in the morning, but the survivors arrived around eight. I was not well, I had had a stroke a month before and I was half paralyzed but I was there because during the night there had been other landings. So when the harbor master's office called me to warn me of the shipwreck I was already on the dock. A half hour later came the first boat of Lampedusans who had saved 49 people.
Fiorino and Grazia used to take tourists around with their boat and they made the night. By morning they had heard the cries for help and when they arrived they were traumatized by what they saw. The girl cried in despair because they could not save more. I visited the first survivors, they were all dirty with diesel because when the boat turned over it poured everything in the tanks into the sea. After another half hour Domenico arrived with his fishing boat. He had managed to take 17 live boys and even corpses ".
Save the children. Since 2013, over 15,000 migrants have lost their lives
"Six years ago, in the face of the hundreds of bodies of the victims of the tragic shipwreck on 3 October 2013 in Lampedusa, Europe had said 'Never again' but since 2013 over 15,000 people including many children and adolescents have lost their life or are lost trying to cross the Mediterranean.
New landing in Lampedusa in the night: 72 migrants arrived
New landing on Lampedusa. In the notes the Coast Guard saved 72 people including two women and a child. Many of the migrants would come from Bangladesh, Gambia and Nigeria.
In all, 72 landed:
69 men, 2 women,
1 child. Most of Bangladesh nationality, a Nigerian woman pregnant with a small child pic.twitter.com/BIun30qVRn