The cargo ship Ezadeen, which set sail under a Sierra Leone flag from a Turkish port this week, was discovered drifting without a captain
40 nautical miles from the Italian coast. Italian coastguards were
forced to intervene to prevent a disaster and possibly save the lives of
the estimated 450 people on board, many of them thought to be Syrian
refugees. … The Ezadeen was the second vessel in four days to be found
sailing without a crew. Earlier in the week, 800 migrants on the Blue
Sky M, a Moldovan-registered ship, were rescued by Italian coastguards
when it was discovered sailing without an active crew five miles off the
coast. The two incidents have left observers of migrant routes in the
Mediterranean fearing that people-smugglers have found a new and
ruthless way of working in the area despite a recent decision to scale
back Italian rescue operations.
Frontex estimates that the smugglers on the two large cargo ships
that arrived in Italy last week cleared more than $3 million after the
price of the aging vessel was subtracted.
Wars in Syria, Libya
and Iraq, severe repression in Eritrea, and spiraling instability
across much of the Arab world have all contributed to the displacement
of around 16.7 million refugees worldwide. A further 33.3 million people
are “internally displaced” within their own war-torn countries, forcing
many of those originally from the Middle East to cross the lesser evil
of the Mediterranean in increasingly dangerous ways, all in the distant
hope of a better life in Europe.
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