Page 207 - A Helping Hand for Refugees

Boats deliberately sunk by human traffickers after taking the
refugees' money…

Boats from which all wireless and radar equipment has delib-
erately been removed to prevent the refugees being rescued...

Every year, hundreds of people die while trying to cross the
Mediterranean. Some 650 refugees and migrants are estimated
to have died in October 2014 when three boats sank while trying
to cross from North Africa to Europe. Such losses are still con-
tinuing.

On 16, February, 2015, calls for help from 12 illegal migrant
boats 120 miles to the south of the Italian island of Lampedusa
and 30-50 miles of the Libyan capital, Tripoli, again attracted
attention to the refugee problem. With the help of teams from

the Coastguard, 2100 migrants, including women and children,
were saved from death at the last moment.
Readers will remember that in October 2013, 363 refugees

drowned when a rickety boat sank off the island of Lampedusa.
The rescue mission known as Mare Nostrum was set up in the
light of international public pressure following that tragedy. How-
ever, since the rescue operations were costing Italy 10 million
euros a month and no help was forthcoming from other EU coun-
tries, the mission was terminated. Yet during it, the lives of more
than 100,000 refugees had been saved.

Rather than rescuing them, Triton, the lower-budget mission
set up in its place, has actually prevented many refugees reaching
EU countries and resulted in them being sent back to the coun-

tries they set out from. Many politicians in Italy, a country with
a moral responsibility, and especially Prime Minister Renzi, called
on EU countries to shoulder the burden together since Italy was
being left to face the refugee problem alone.

Adnan Oktar (Harun Yahya) 205