Zarzis, Tunisia, June 16 – The Tunisian trawler radioed in
for help as it passed the migrant boat in distress out at sea. But with the
packed craft still adrift two days later, captain Chamseddine Bourassine took
direct action.
Fishermen from the North African country are spending more and more time
pulling in stranded migrants after a sharp decline in humanitarian and
European naval patrols along the stretch of water between war-wracked Libya
and Italy.
Bourassine, his crew and three other fishing boats ferried the 69 migrants
back to shore on May 11, five days after their boat pushed off from Zuwara on
the western Libyan coast.
“The area where we fish is a crossing point” between Zuwara and the Italian
island of Lampedusa, said Badreddine Mecherek, a Tunisian fisherman from
Zarzis near the border with Libya.
Fisherman from Zarzis have saved the lives of hundreds of migrants in
recent years, and as the number of boats leaving western Libya for Europe
spikes with the return of calmer summer seas, they will probably have to save
even more.
“First we warn the authorities, but in the end we end up saving them
ourselves,” Mecherek grumbled as he tinkered with his rusting sardine boat.
European countries in the northern Mediterranean are trying to stem the
number of migrants landing on their shores, and the Tunisian navy with its
limited resources only rescues boats inside the country’s territorial waters.
Since May 31, Tunisia itself has barred 75 migrants from coming ashore
after they were saved in international waters by a Tunisian-Egyptian tug
boat. Contacted multiple times by AFP, Tunisian authorities have refused to
comment.
– ‘Angel’ –
“Everyone has disengaged” from the issue, said Mecherek, adding it was
hampering his work. Fishermen who run across migrants on their second day out
at sea are at least able to have done a day’s work, he added, “but if we find
them on the first night, we have to go back”.
“It’s very complicated to finish the job with people on board.”
The complexity of the rescues grows when fishermen find migrants adrift
closer to Italy.
When Bourassine and his crew last year tugged a boat towards Lampedusa
which was adrift without a motor, they were jailed in Sicily for four weeks
for helping the migrants. It took months to recover their boat.
Humanitarian boats and those of the European Union’s “Operation Sophia”
anti-piracy force had scooped up most stranded migrants in recent years, but
rescue operations dropped in 2019.
“Now most often we are the first to arrive… if we aren’t there, the
migrants die,” Mecherek said.
On May 10, a Tunisian trawler just barely saved the lives of 16 migrants
after they had spent eight hours in the water. Sixty others drowned before
the ship arrived.
Survivor Ahmed Sijur said the boat’s appearance at dawn was like that of
“an angel”.
“I was loosing hope myself, but God sent us the fishermen to save us,” the
30-year-old from Bangladesh said.
– ‘Police of the sea’ –
Mecherek is more worried than proud.
“We don’t want to see all these corpses anymore. We want to catch fish, not
people,” he said, adding his crew was growing uneasy.
“I have 20 seamen on board asking, ‘Who will feed our families?’” he added.
“But local fishermen will never let people die at sea.”
For Tunisian Red Crescent official Mongi Slim, the fishermen “are
practically the police of the sea”, adding that many migrants say large ships
won’t stop to help.
Under pressure to catch their quota during a short annual season, big tuna
boats out of Zarzis often call the coast guard instead of stopping themselves
to help.
“We report the migrants, but we can’t bring them back to shore… We only
have a few weeks to fish,” said one crew member.
For Chamseddine, the summer months look difficult.
“With fighting having resumed in Libya, traffickers are free to work
again…. There’s a risk of many shipwrecks.” – BSS/AFP
