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Tunisian Villagers Set Out for Italy, but Sea Takes Some

14 February 2011 23:04 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. A dozen young men from this sun-drenched village of olive groves and white-washed houses near the coast of Tunisia left last week in an overcrowded fishing boat bound for the Italian island of Lampedusa. They joined a flotilla of would-be migrants that has created a humanitarian crisis and stirred a political furor in Italy. But unlike the more than 5,000 Tunisians who have successfully reached Italian shores, this groupâ€™s trip ended in failure â€” and death. On Monday villagers buried one of the men, Walid Bayahia, who was killed when the fishing boat collided in frigid waters with a Tunisian National Guard patrol vessel and sank, according to four of the villagers who survived, APA reports quoting The New York Times.
â€œFour buried and two missing â€” itâ€™s a disaster,â€ said Tarak Bahyoun, a house painter who attended the funeral on Monday. â€œNothing like this has ever happened here.â€
The fall of Tunisiaâ€™s autocratic president, Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, on Jan. 14 brought euphoria and hope to this country of 10 million people. But the revolution, as Tunisians call it, also created a power vacuum. After battling protesters for weeks, the police, fearing retribution, fled their barracks.
It suddenly dawned on the young and underemployed in Tunisiaâ€™s hinterland that there was no one standing in the way of a departure for Italy â€” and the prospect of a lucrative job in the European Union.
â€œNo fear anymore,â€ says graffiti written along the main road that runs through Zarzis, a port near the border with Libya that many migrants have departed from.
â€œBefore the 14th the police and the National Guard were everywhere,â€ said Salem Ben Abdallah, the father of a young man, Moncef Ben Salem, who died in an attempt to get to Lampedusa a week earlier. â€œThen the police disappeared.â€
Tunisiaâ€™s caretaker government said Monday that it had set up military checkpoints at several ports along the coast to try to halt the flow of migrants amid growing tensions with Italy. Franco Frattini, the Italian foreign minister, was expected to meet with Tunisiaâ€™s interim prime minister on Monday evening after Tunisian authorities turned down an Italian request to send its own police to help Tunisia patrol its coastlines.
In Zarzis, a small group of soldiers was patrolling the port on Monday.
â€œWe are being very, very strict now,â€ said a security official who stood guard at the entrance to the port. â€œWe want to be sure that this phenomenon stops,â€ said the official, who declined to give his name.
For now the armyâ€™s presence seems to have stemmed the tide of migrants. Fishermen report seeing fewer departures in recent days. But the armyâ€™s presence is thin and the coastline is long.
Fishermen say they are sleeping in their boats because they are concerned that they might be stolen by migrants. â€œWe saw them day and night,â€ said Mohamed Hnid, a security guard at the port sitting on a pile of fishing nets. â€œOnly God knows why they went,â€ he said. â€œThey are insane.â€
The young men of Sedouikech village who survived the sinking gave varied reasons for their decision to try to reach Europe. Several have family in France and wanted to be reunited with them. Others sought better-paying jobs. One of the villagers who was killed, Lassaad Ragdal, was trying to reach France to be with his French fiancÃ©e, villagers said. His body was buried here on Sunday.
Finding steady work at home is difficult, said Zyed Ben Salem, one of the survivors. â€œWe can only rely on tourism three or four months a year, he said. Income from fishing is limited and the olive groves have suffered low yields in recent years because of a lack of water. All of this enhances the lure of Europe.
â€œI have been trying to convince our young people not to go there,â€ said Gacem Ben Yahiaten, an English teacher who drove the bodies of the dead men back to the village. â€œBut they have this idea â€” they want to make money quickly and they think itâ€™s easy in Europe.â€
For many of those on the boat that sank it was their first attempt to travel to Europe â€” and possibly their last.
â€œI wonâ€™t try it again,â€ said Mr. Ben Salem, who paid 2,000 Tunisian dinars, or about $1,400, to a smuggler.
He and three other survivors recounted seeing the lights of Lampedusa when they were intercepted by the Tunisian National Guard.
The National Guard boat, which survivors said was named â€œHorriya,â€ or Freedom, rammed into them, the survivors say. (The National Guard could not be reached for comment.)
â€œWe heard a very loud noise,â€ said Wissem Ben Yahyaten, another survivor, who described the sound of the hull splintering. â€œI can still hear it. It was like we were watching an action film.â€
Mr. Ben Yahyaten says he was thrown into the water and swam about half a mile to reach the Guard boat. Once he was aboard, the vessel circled for three hours looking for other survivors before heading back to the Tunisian coast.
â€œI was crying the whole night,â€ Mr. Ben Yahyaten said.