A boat laden with up to 950 people capsized in the Mediterranean Sea on Sunday. Its passengers were migrants bound for Europe escaping the limited opportunities, war and chaos of their home countries. The ship left from Libya, a failed state which has descended into civil war, where ISIS executes people on the beach. Who can blame them for wanting to leave?
At the time of this writing, 28 of the passengers have been rescued. More than 700 are feared to be dead, with only 24 of the bodies recovered so far.
It’s the second horrific shipwreck this month off the Libyan coast. On Wednesday, another migrant boat capsized, killing about 400 people.
In terms of lives lost, these are two of the worst tragedies at sea since World War II. The families and the survivors affected by the disasters are experiencing unimaginable pain.
But, beyond the immediate consequences, the shipwrecks have profound implications for European politics.
There are many reasons why so many migrants have recently died at sea. Human traffickers pack migrants onto rickety old boats — overcrowding makes the ship unstable and more likely to overturn. In the most recent case, 300 people were locked in the ship’s cargo hold, unable to escape.
But a major part of the problem is recent change in European policies enacted in response to the rising power of anti-immigrant parties and nativist attitudes on the continent. In the last few years, this ugly segment of the European right has been growing, infecting nearly every member of the European Union.
France has the Identitarian movement, a far-right youth movement dedicated to reversing the social revolutions of the ‘60s. In Germany, there’s PEGIDA, a loose gaggle of rabidly Islamophobic and anti-immigrant street protesters. Its founder, Lutz Bachmann, resigned in disgrace after he was caught dressing up like Adolf Hitler. On Facebook, he regularly refers to immigrants as “cattle” and “trash.” Bachmann was voted back into the group in February.
Groups like these aren’t representative of the whole continent, but they do embody an anti-immigrant ideology that’s becoming more and more mainstream. British pundit and columnist Katie Hopkins has referred to immigrants as “cockroaches” and suggested they be turned back with gunships. After Sunday’s sinking, she suggested a unique solution to the problem of immigrant-laden boats sinking in the sea: Burn every boat in North Africa.
These attitudes have begun to affect public policy. European countries used to patrol the Mediterranean and rescue ships like the ones that sank this month. In response to growing nativist attitudes at home, though, Europe has scaled back this program on the auspices that it encourages immigration.
The change shows up glaringly in statistics. At least 900 immigrants have already drowned in the Mediterranean this year. In the same time frame in 2014, only 90 people did. In all of 2014, more than 3,000 people perished, compared to a total of 700 the year before.
Not crazy about the idea of immigration? That’s acceptable. Everyone’s entitled to an opinion; for one reason or another, some don’t like immigrants. But when policies made to cater to this opinion result in a more than 300-percent increase in people literally dying, it’s time to back down.
[A version of this story ran on page 6 on 4/20/2015]
