the immigration thread
Out of context: Reply #15
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- lowimpakt1
i spent an evening a few weeks back with a doctor who has spent 12 months on a relief ship in the mediterranean with a leading international NGO.
His job was mainly to rescue people out of sinking boats, administer healthcare to people if they survived and to deal with the bodies of the hundreds that drowned.
He showed photos of the boats where people were crammed in and there was no space, food, water. Many of the boats that capsized did so because there would be fumes from diesel motors and people were literally crammed in like sardines so people would be panicking and rushing to get above deck and the boat would become unstable.
utterly horrific when you see photos.
What was most interesting is he was able to shares real stories from the 1000s of people that came aboard their boat. real people with the same hopes and aspirations as every person in Europe. they just had the misfortune of being born into a particular ethnic group that was being persecuted or living in a country that was falling apart through civil war.
He dealt with pregnant women, children under 12 on the boats with no family. He said many of the young men who have been sent by their family as the final hope and all their savings were paid to traffickers with the hope that the young men would reach Europe find work and then support the family. These were often 15, 16 or 17 years old.
He showed me photos of young men that were tortured by traffickers, scare on their bodies. They would take the family's money and when they were near the ports they would call the family on the phone and torture the young men so the mother or father could hear them being tortured and they would extort more money from them.
the situation is truly fucked up and for many of the people that he met it was the first moment of humanity they have experienced in many months or even years. They had fled warzones and were then caught up in the criminal trafficking trade.
- Sounds like the Haitians fleeing to the US or Dominicans trying to go to PR. Same shit everywhere...Maaku