Advocates ‘upset’ by difference in response to missing sub, migrant shipwreck tragedies

By Noushin Ziafati

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    Toronto (CTV Network) — As the world watched the saga of a missing submersible carrying five well-to-do tourists unfold this week, some advocates in Canada couldn’t help but feel upset that a ship carrying hundreds of poor migrants that recently sank off the coast of Greece didn’t attract the same attention.

Watching the stark contrast in news coverage and rescue efforts was especially disheartening for Safa Chebbi, who is from Tunisia, where many migrants board ships headed for Europe in search of a better life.

“I feel very upset to see all the news about five people, because I grew up in Tunisia,” Chebbi, a member of Solidarity Across Borders, a migrant justice network in Montreal, told CTVNews.ca.

“Tunisia is a country where, especially the last (few) years, we have had a lot of migration by the Mediterranean Sea and almost every day people (are found dead) on the beach.”

TRAGEDIES OCCURRED DAYS APART

The Titan submersible, owned and operated by OceanGate Expeditions, was headed for the Titanic wreckage on Sunday when it lost contact with a surface vessel less than two hours into the journey.

The submersible was carrying five passengers, including the CEO of OceanGate, a French explorer, a British billionaire and two members of a prominent Pakistani family. On Thursday, all five passengers were confirmed dead, despite a massive search and rescue operation involving American and Canadian coast guards and military assets, along with British and French partners.

Days earlier, a vessel carrying an estimated 750 passengers from Egypt, Pakistan, Syria and Palestine sank off the coast of Greece. Only 104 people survived and more than 500 are missing and feared dead in the wake of the tragedy — one of the worst migrant shipwrecks in the Mediterranean Sea.

The Greek coast guard launched a search and rescue operation after the vessel capsized on June 14, but the response has been criticized from the moment the coast guard located the ship carrying the migrants until it went down.

MIGRANT DEATHS NORMALIZED: ADVOCATES

According to the International Organization for Migration, more than 20,000 migrants have died while attempting to cross the central Mediterranean from Africa to Europe since 2014.

In the first quarter of 2023 alone, 441 migrants died travelling on this route, the most fatalities to have occurred over a three-month period since 2017, the United Nations Agency notes.

Syed Hussan, executive director of Migrant Workers Alliance for Change, said the takeaway from recent migrant shipwrecks, including the capsizing of the ship off Greece’s coast, is that migrant deaths have become normalized.

“It’s horrifying,” Hussan told CTVNews.ca in a phone interview.

“We have, as a world, come to accept the deaths of thousands of people drowning in oceans, crossing borders on foot, across dangerous terrain.”

The issue of migrants travelling along dangerous routes in search of a better life is not a “distant foreign thing,” Hussan noted, pointing to the deaths of eight people whose bodies were pulled from the St. Lawrence River this March after they tried to enter the United States illegally from Canada.

Migrants save up money and sacrifice their lives to make such trips in an attempt to escape poverty and inadequate living conditions in the Global South, Chebbi said.

“(In their home countries) there is no hope and this is the only hope,” she said.

ADVOCATES SAY CLASS PLAYED A ROLE

The amount of resources poured into the submersible and migrant shipwreck search and rescue operations is telling of how society associates class with the value of a human life, Hussan said.

“Every life matters, but in this case … the ultra rich, their lives are being valued more for these adrenaline junkie rushes that they went on trying to go to the Titanic, whereas thousands of people are dying, just in search for a little bit more safety, a little bit more dignity,” he said.

Chebbi said it’s also upsetting how the world has humanized the five wealthy passengers aboard the Titan, by widely publishing and recognizing their names, but the stories of the migrants who drowned in the Mediterranean aren’t receiving as much attention.

“To see this difference between the treatment, it makes me really upset and angry,” she said, adding it’s “insulting” to all migrants and refugees.

MIGRANT DEATHS RESULT OF POLICY CHOICES

Both Hussan and Chebbi called the migrant shipwreck a consequence of externalization, which is an effort by wealthy, developed countries to prevent asylum seekers and other migrants from reaching their borders.

“It is a tragedy. But it’s an intentional policy choice,” Hussan said.

Chebbi seconded that remark, saying that externalization only encourages asylum seekers and migrants to undertake risky journeys, which may involve human smugglers and traffickers.

“We have to think about borders and to recognize that when we make more rules to make borders and complicate the process to travel, we will see more dead people,” Chebbi said.

“Because people, they never will stop migrants, especially when we have inequality between the (Global) North and the (Global) South.”

The advocates called on governments to improve their immigration policies and establish safe and regular migration routes to prevent further migrant deaths.

The UN has issued a similar call in light of the migrant ship tragedy.

“We urge all the concerned governments in host and transit countries to treat migrants in a safe, dignified and humane manner, in accordance with their international obligations,” it said.

In a written statement, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada said irregular migration routes to Canada and other countries present “very real dangers.”

“We encourage individuals to claim asylum in the first safe country they enter and to do so at a designated port of entry,” the federal department told CTVNews.ca.

“We will continue to work with the U.S. and other like-minded partners around the world to promote safe and regular pathways for people on the move, and to support other countries in establishing their domestic frameworks to offer protection to refugees and asylum claimants.”

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