Faced with yet another tragedy that has struck the Mediterranean and the Aegean Sea, costing the lives of thirty-seven people, the Don Bosco 2000 Association expresses deep condolences and launches an appeal that can no longer remain unheard.
«What happened off the coast of Lampedusa and on the Turkish coast» declares the president Agostino Sella “It is not a fatality, but an open wound in the heart of Europe.” The images of a child of just one year who arrived at the Favaloro pier without his mother, saved only by the solidarity of another woman, represent a slap in the face of the collective conscience and profoundly question the sense of humanity of contemporary society.
According to the association, it is no longer acceptable that cold, abandonment and indifference are the response to those fleeing wars, poverty and desperation. The nineteen people who died from hypothermia on a dinghy that remained adrift for days, while it was declared impossible to intervene, highlight not only an operational limit, but also a serious moral failure of the rescue system.
Don Bosco 2000, committed for years to hospitality in Sicily and cooperation projects in Africa, reiterates the need for concrete and immediate interventions. There is an urgent need for a structured European search and rescue mission at sea, which does not leave the burden of interventions only to the Italian Coast Guard and NGOs, but guarantees international coordination in respect of human rights and life.
Likewise, it becomes essential to create legal and safe channels of entry, such as humanitarian corridors and regular mobility toolsand, to prevent journeys of hope from turning into real death sentences. Finally, the association calls for a shared responsibility: territories like Lampedusa and the whole of Sicily cannot be left alone to face an emergency that is European and global.
«Today we mourn nineteen victims in Lampedusa and eighteen in the Aegean» concludes the president. «But our commitment will continue every day, in the host communities and in the most fragile territories, to build alternatives to despair. We ask politics for a leap of humanity: we cannot allow the sea to become the cemetery of our conscience.”
