We must do more to help - Migrants feared murdered

Yesterday, as asylum seekers protested over the very difficult conditions and the inordinate delays they face in direct provision centres right across the country, reports, as yet unconfirmed, that about 500 migrants fleeing from North Africa had been murdered by human traffickers who sank their boat following a dispute, emerged. Two survivors were the source of the story published by Maltese media.

This is an escalating problem in nearly every country that shares a frontier with a less fortunate neighbour. Several months ago, Italy’s navy rescued nearly 1,800 migrants from over-crowded boats over just one weekend. A merchant ship, over that same weekend, recovered five bodies from a sinking raft off Libya. The discovery of refugees, often dead, in containers has become routine. Most of those trying to escape from Central America to a better life, or at least the opportunity of a better life, in America, no longer carry any kind of identification in case they are kidnapped and their impoverished families are held to ransom.

That a more or less constant stream of humanity is prepared to take these risks to escape from the kind of grinding poverty that makes what passes for austerity in this country seem a trip to Disneyland, suggests levels of hardship we can hardly imagine. It suggests too that we will have to do much more to help those taking such desperate measures.