That has contributed to an increase in delayed rescues at sea and unlawful expulsions of asylum-seekers to dangerous places. The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, says more than 60 countries around the world are using COVID-19 as an excuse to skirt international law by closing borders and ports to asylum-seekers. The April journey, which NPR reconstructed based on passenger interviews and legal testimonies, illustrates what human rights groups say has turned into an assault on asylum rights during the pandemic. Instead, the crew shipped the passengers back to Libya, the place they had fled for their lives. According to international law, the rescue vessel was supposed to take the survivors to the closest safe port, which was in Malta. When they were finally rescued after six days at sea, several passengers were already dead. We believed we would disappear with it under the water." "Everyone kept screaming, 'We are all going to die!' " says Tsedal, an Eritrean whose last name NPR is withholding because she's a minor whose life is often in danger.
Two babies on board cried with such anguish that Tsedal could feel their wails deep in her chest. The passengers were suffering from dehydration and sunstroke. They were trying to cross more than 100 miles of the Mediterranean Sea to reach Europe. She and the other passengers, more than 60 migrants from the African countries of Eritrea and Sudan, had set off from neighboring Libya, where their lives had become unbearable. Stuck on a stalled motorized inflatable raft in the open sea, 15-year-old Tsedal began to panic.
0 kommentar(er)
